NAS setup: what drives, RAID, etc?

Scykoh · Dec 18, 2015

So I'm getting a NAS, the Synology DS1515+ (5 bay), and I wanted to ask for your opinion on what drives I should populate it with and in what RAID setup.

My particular use has 2 main needs: 1) transferring HD video footage between 2 PCs for video editing, so speed is incredibly valuable here, and 2) storing HD video footage for archival, speed is not so important here but a setup to protect things in case of drive failure is important.

So if it's possible to have some drives setup for max. speed and the other setup for most TBs of storage and drive failure protection, that would be optimal but I'm ignorant with NAS' and don't actually know what's possible.

Thanks for any help!

06yfz450ridr · Dec 18, 2015

raid 10 but you need bigger drives since it uses half the available space for parity but you can have a drive from each set die and still function. raid 5 is slower

I would do raid 10 with a hot spare since you really want to do raid 10 in 4, 6 8 drives etc

wd reds arent bad but they arent super fast, 5400 drives the wd red pros are a bit faster but more expensive.

Honestly wd re is the enterprise drive that is made to handle lots of writes and have a 5 year warranty .

how much are you trying to spend for 5 drives? how much space do you think youll need?

I have used reds for nases and the re's, the re's are some nice drives

Scykoh · Dec 18, 2015

06yfz450ridr :

Well, more storage is better but I probably use about 5-10GB per day, so even 6TB would likely last a couple years, 12TB if possible would last even better. As long as it's somewhat reasonable to offload the archival stuff to a separate drive and swap in a new drive for the NAS that's fine too.

The working drive doesn't need to be large at all, even smaller than 1 TB is fine. Would an SSD work drive + 4 drive RAID 10 (or 2, 2 drive RAID 1's since speed isn't really an issue and that would be 2x TB) be a good setup? Price isn't much of a factor, within reason. I could get 4x 6TB WD Pros and a 1TB SSD work drive. Or, if SSDs are a bad idea for some reason, 5x 6TB WD Pros with a 2 drive RAID 0 work drive and a 3 drive RAID 1 storage?

Heh, sorry if this sounds all over the place! Really no clue what's optimal. I'm also open to buying an 8 bay NAS if there's a significant reason to do so but it might be overkill.

kanewolf · Dec 18, 2015

I am a fan of HGST drives. If you want better performance than WD Reds, then go with the Red PRO.

With two PCs, probably simultaneously accessing large files, you will want to add a managed switch which can do LAG (link aggregation). That way you can connect two ethernet ports from the NAS to the switch and each PC can have full gigabit bandwidth.

06yfz450ridr · Dec 18, 2015

Scykoh :

well honestly the 8 bay might be better , you wont need an ssd since you wouldn't want to mix that in with the raid since you will loose a bunch of space unless they are all equal, you could use it as a cache only drive but I doubt you will need that.

I would spend a bit more for the 8 bay and you can do a raid 10 with 4 drives for your main and 3 for a second array that will duplicate/backup the first array and have a hot spare.

there are a lot of possibilities, what switches do you currently use? you will really want to have aggregation setup to the switch and if possible 2 cables into your pc.

I wouldn't use ssds in a nas especially consumer drives, they can't really handle the writes. a raid 10 with decent drives is most likely going to be plenty fast, to utilize over 100 MB/s you need aggregated links to your pc or a single 10 gig link, with a 10gig switch and adapter in your pc.

even then you will want to aggregate anyways so you can pull say 100 MB/s on both pcs at the same time if needed

Scykoh · Dec 18, 2015

06yfz450ridr :

Scykoh :

well honestly the 8 bay might be better , you wont need an ssd since you wouldn't want to mix that in with the raid since you will loose a bunch of space unless they are all equal, you could use it as a cache only drive but I doubt you will need that.

I would spend a bit more for the 8 bay and you can do a raid 10 with 4 drives for your main and 3 for a second array that will duplicate/backup the first array and have a hot spare.

there are a lot of possibilities, what switches do you currently use? you will really want to have aggregation setup to the switch and if possible 2 cables into your pc.

I wouldn't use ssds in a nas especially consumer drives, they can't really handle the writes. a raid 10 with decent drives is most likely going to be plenty fast, to utilize over 100 MB/s you need aggregated links to your pc or a single 10 gig link, with a 10gig switch and adapter in your pc.

even then you will want to aggregate anyways so you can pull say 100 MB/s on both pcs at the same time if needed

To be honest I have no idea what a switch is, I'm completely new to any type of networking stuff other than just plugging a PC into a router

06yfz450ridr · Dec 18, 2015

even as said before you could do 2 raid 1s if speed isn't a huge issue, might even want to just pick up a 6tb external and use that to set auto backups.

no raid 0s either, stay away from them.

a switch is where you are going to be plugging your device into to connect multiple devices to your router/firewall.

your router might have ports on them that you could use but you are going to max out your cpu in that device so you really aren't going to want to use that

http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-SG300-10-10-port-Gigabit-SRW2008-K9-NA/dp/B0041ORN6U

with a managed switch youc an control basically every aspect of your "network"

you really want link aggregation which allows you to use two feeds into the switch from the nas/ pc etc which is used for more bandwidth as well as a failover if a cable goes bad or gets unplugged etc

2 raid ones is going to be the cheapest but I would do a raid 10 for the main and a raid 1 for the backup/archival.

and even use an external for a backup of the archival just in case, they are cheap enough

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