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8 watchers
9 Jan
9:31am, 9 Jan 2025
26,375 posts
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larkim
I suppose it depends on your needs, but I've had a very simple backup disc attached to a router (an Asus one) via USB in the past which provided what I needed. Are you looking for a NAS where you will just move files to as you need it, or thinking more about a dedicated backup server that routinely grabs data and backs it up, including identifying changes etc etc. The former is more what I had (I do have a proper consumer grade NAS as well), the latter is more complex and I would suspect buying a fully built system from a provider would be a better choice in the long run unless you had the tech capabilities to manage and configure the server yourself (which you may well have!) |
9 Jan
11:11pm, 9 Jan 2025
23,473 posts
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rf_fozzy
OK sorry, been busy all day today, so not had chance to reply to some of the suggestions. Why not buy a commercial solution - no particular reason other than the cost and the fact that they will be massive overkill for what I need (<8TB storage). I could, in theory, buy the components and build and potentially purchase software to set up and manage the system, but I think that this would also be overkill for the storage requirements I need (hence this thread). This was what I was originally planning on doing. Essentially I need a network storage solution only accessible on a home network. Much like cloud storage which I considered, but...cloud storage is expensive - e.g. Dropbox is £17/month (so £200/year) for 3TB and I need a bit more than that ideally (it's also limited to single user which isn't great). It also ties me into a particular provider..... Additionally my experiences with OneDrive via work is that when it works, it's fine, but when it breaks, it's just a PITA. And file download is s.....l......o......w...... - even on fast networks. I'd rather shift my stuff off from Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive and only use those as required for ongoing project files. The Raspberry-Pi solution I posted on the previous page seems to be a nice cheap sensible solution - esentially all you need is a Pi and power supply, a powered USB hub and then external USB storage - so the expensive bit is the storage. The bits I don't know about this approach is (a) how robust the set-up is - would it survive being switched on and off without failing? And would it need reinitialising if it does get switched off? And (b) how to do the mirroring - i've not done that sort of thing before, and although it shouldn't be beyond my capabilities, I'm not sure what a Raspberry Pi can handle, having not used one before. If it'll do what I want, then it should be a low power (low running cost) and cheap solution to my problem - and certainly buildable for less than £400 - so would make it's money back pretty quickly in comparison to alternatives. Comments and corrections to my suppositions welcome! Teach me! |
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10 Jan
10:11am, 10 Jan 2025
26,383 posts
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larkim
My worry about the Pi solution is that you need to have at least some confidence in your competence to manage the Pi side of things in Linux. If you're OK with that, then there's no issue. Personally I'd buy an off the shelf NAS which should come in at less than £400 and be ready to do what you need with warranty support behind it. My Zyxel NAS with only a 1TB disc in it has been running happily for 14 years or so now (I just checked when I purchased it, and yes it really was in 2010) without skipping a beat. The shell cost me £59.99 and the disc at the time was probably about £100 or so. Yes, it is an old HDD and if I had to take the disc out now it would probably be unreadable by any other device, but it does just work, look neat and tidy and serves our home well. (Though I do use Google Drive more these days, but the rest of my family still happily uses the NAS). |
10 Jan
10:29am, 10 Jan 2025
1,575 posts
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Sam Jelfs
I would look at something like the QNAP TS-233 - should be able to get it under £200, add a couple of decent sized drives, job done. As Larkim says, rolling your own on an RPi is fine so long as you are happy to do all then setup, tweaking, maintenance etc.
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10 Jan
10:52am, 10 Jan 2025
22,571 posts
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Chrisull
There's almost certainly going to be add-ons/extensions in Linux that manage that kind of thing. I'm guessing as fozzy mentioned the rPi route, he is exactly happy doing it. rPI using Linux can do pretty much what you need it to. If it's underpowered, then a NUC should be able to handle it instead, but I don't see why an rPi couldn't handle it, it's not going to be expensively computationally. The concerns are around rebooting and mirroring. rPis are super robust on restarting in my experience and quick and consistent. Mirroring won't be difficult either. But yeah don't reinivent the wheel. 10 years ago I synced my itunes with my stereo speakers via wifi/raspberry pi setup. Took a lot of loading drivers by hand and jiggling of config files at the time. Now when I went back to upgrrade and the same app installs straight onto Iphone and remotely configs it automatically. Managing your own storage feels like a common place requirement, I can't believe there won't be either apps, or github libraries that do it already. |
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10 Jan
11:49am, 10 Jan 2025
26,384 posts
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larkim
Agree with Chris there are clearly likely to be tools (both graphic and command line) that will sort things out - after all, all you are really looking to do is create a SMB share on your network and then have a scheduled copy of that share to another local drive. Pretty easy stuff. And it would be a fun project to do too. I may have a go myself now that I've realised my NAS is 14 years old!! That said, one of the enhancements I would like to have would be to have a NAS that automatically backs up at least some of its content to a cloud service for that additional redundancy in the event my house burns down!! |
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10 Jan
1:25pm, 10 Jan 2025
23,474 posts
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rf_fozzy
@Sam Jelfs That system still needs drives on top though? So probably another ~£500 on top? My thinking with the pi solution is that the pi is only about £50. Plus a £20 powered usb hub. I'm ok in Linux if there are instructions (which my understanding is that there is out there). I've not worked with NAS at all and don't know how that OS works. |
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10 Jan
1:47pm, 10 Jan 2025
26,385 posts
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larkim
If you're looking at £500 for drives, then how does the rPi solution come in at under £400?
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10 Jan
1:54pm, 10 Jan 2025
1,576 posts
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Sam Jelfs
With the RPi you are still going to need the drives though? (unless you have a pair of 4TB USB drives with decent read-write speeds already) By the time you have bought the RPi, a decent power supply, a decent powered USB hub, and paid the premium for the drives compared to a 2.5" SSD, I don't think the price will be much different. I would price up both solutions from a reputable supplier, and see what the real cost differences are first. Personally I would also be tempted by spinning rust rather than SSDs assuming you are not after really high speeds and it is just for backing up to / from, not working off. |
10 Jan
2:08pm, 10 Jan 2025
7,600 posts
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bigleggy
If I need SSD's then I wait for Black Friday or some other 'sales' event. They are one of the few things that genuinely come down in price.
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