Setting up network-attached storage

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Selwyn McDonald

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I have purchased:
1 x Synology DS713+ NAS
2 x Western Digital 3TB HDD type WD30EFRX
to connect to a wired network at home.

I want to use the NAS to store all my data and media files on one HDD (disk A). I would like the other HDD (Disk B) to automatically make a back-up of disk A at 3 a.m. every day.

My media files are video, photographs and mp3s. At some point in the future, I would like to set-up up a video server to watch the video files on TV. At some point in the next few weeks, I would like a Logitech Squeezebox system that I have to access the mp3 files in the NAS.

I can access the wired network using computers running either WIndows XP or Ubuntu 10.04. Would prefer to control the NAS from a Ubuntu machine but don't feel strongly about it.

Couple of questions:

How should I partition disk A? One big 3TB partition, or four separate partitions for video, photos, sound and documents? (Presumably disk B should have the same partition structure.)

What software would be appropriate to sync disk B with disk A automatically every night?

Thanks for your help. I realise that there is no 'correct' answer. I just wanted your opinion on what you would do if faced with the same requirements

P.S. I don't want to set up a RAID 1 mirror
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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Jul 2, 2006
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Why don't you want to setup a RAID mirror? It does exactly what you want, without external software. Otherwise everyday at 3am, you have to leave a PC turned on, to copy the files to the PC, across the network, to your RAM or pagefile if you are low on RAM, back across the network to the other HD. Way more power consumption and network saturation for no reason.
 
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ss202sl

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May 23, 2012
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A raid 1 mirror will work really well for your purpose. Just remember that this is protection against a hard drive failure, and not an actual backup. A backup will protect you against virus corruption, accidental deletions, and a catastrophic event (a fire takes out the NAS). I'd set the NAS up with raid 1, and then periodically back up to an external drive that you can take off-site.
 
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popatim

popatim

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When you setup the Synology, just install their Time Backup package to the nas. Create a single shared folder on the second drive and then you can configure TB to save everything to it at the time/times you want. Internally TB will only save to a system shared folder. Exteranlly can be to an external drive or another synolgy nas on the network.

http://www.synology.com/support/tutorials_show.php?lang=us&q_id=527
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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That helps if there an app/package for the NAS that will do it all automatically.
 
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Selwyn McDonald

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That is exactly what I'm looking for. Furthermore, your link shows that the same Synology Package Centre allows me to create the Logitech Media Server. Thanks popatim!
 
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Selwyn McDonald

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Thanks for your post.

I did think about RAID but came to the conclusion that I probably wanted protection against accidental file deletion by my teenage children more than protection against hard drive failure.

Doing a daily file sync means that the most I'll ever lose is one day's data if one of the HDDs fails.
 
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Selwyn McDonald

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Thanks for your reply. I'm hoping the Synolgy software will mean that the NAS can do a 'standalone' back-up rather than be prompted by a network-connected p.c.

Any thoughts about disk partitioning? Is it correct that you don't partition network drives, you set up "shares" on them?

Edit: Hmm, there could be a 2TB limit on partition size for 32-bit Windows XP. Need to plan ahead...

 
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