NAS Newbie needs recommendation

[diecaster]

I am ex data-center manager and I abhor NAS or RAID unless you really need it. There is juts more systems and drives that can fail. People that need NAS and RAID for home setups are few and far between. I know that everyone and their brother sells home network solutions, but most people don't need RAID or a NAS.

 

Simple really is best. Especially if you already have a backup plan that included off-site backups and don't have a need to be up in 10 minutes after a failure.

 

For audio, I prefer a dedicated headless server with enough attached storage to handle all of my audio files plus some extra room for expansion.

[diecaster]

If you are accessing the same data from multiple machines, then yes, a NAS does make sense. I was talking about people that have a bunch of music files that could be stored as direct attached storage to the music server yet buy a NAS with RAID.

[diecaster]

7 minutes ago, rickca said:

I think RAID 1 (mirroring) makes sense if you buy a lot of music.  I don't understand why anyone gets into things like RAID 10 (striping with parity) for music files.  You can just buy two large capacity drives today and mirror them.  Does anyone need more than 12TB?

 

Why does RAID1 makes sense unless you need the high availability? It's not a backup. All RAID1 does is double the chances of a failure. 

[diecaster]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

It's a lot easier than managing a backup.  Of course, it doesn't give you an offsite copy.  I'm not trying to convince anyone to do this, I'm just saying it makes more sense than fancier schemes like RAID 10.

 

Don't fall into the trap of letting any level of RAID alter your backup plan. RAID is not a backup plan in any way shape or form. It is a high availability tool. That's it.

 

You pick RAID10 because you want the speed of RAID0 with the high availability of RAID1. Again...not a backup plan.

[diecaster]

Yeah, ignore a guy that used to run a large data center and a major bank systems administrator. They don’t have any idea how storage systems work or their pitfalls and strengths.