New NAS Raid Setup

[Guest]

Hi

I have recently been looking into various storage/backup ideas for my home soho network as A) am running out of storage space on my pc's and B) I am looking for a better backup solution

The idea I have currently come up with is to store all of my larger files, Photos/Music etc on a 2 port NAS Raid drive which will also automatically backup all of the machines on my network. I will then have 2 Mirror drives (which will become my main backup) which I will just swap out as and when I visit my parents so a copy is always kept of site the assumption being that when I do this the primary drive will just update the second one each time I swap.

The main question is whether this is a stupid idea, I know its not the cheapest but I can get the drives stupidly cheep so the only real outlay will be the NAS (i'm looking at an empty Seagate Ready NAS duo) plus i've got backup drives now and I know how much I don't backup and in my head this is an easier option.

Other questions I have are

the manufactures claim that you can 'delete protect' files, is this true as I am aware one of the problems of Raid is that deletion is mirrored.

Secondly I have read that removal of the wrong drive can cause huge problems, is this always the case (I would be using a basic Raid1, 2 drive 'mirror' array) I would for safety only ever remove the drive with the unit off anyway? would this still cause problems if it was booted up with the wrong drive changed?

Does it always mirror the second drive to be the same as the first or is it more like a sync i.e. is it a 1 way mirror?

cheers

and other than the obvious initial setup what problems am I likely to come across

 

[tkrl26]

hm.... here is some food for thought...

Why not go with a NAS that has a USB port for external storage, and back up to that? Its a whole lot easier and safer than swapping drives and rebuilding them.

The RAID config's are stored in 3 places with 2 drives, one config on each drive, and a config in NVRAM... This only protects the RAID not data, but it does mean that if a config becomes corrupt you can rebuild the RAID from one of the configs and your data 90% of the time will be fine.

The only time you should worry about what drive to remove is in a RAID 5/0.

It is not really a sync b/c they are written at the same time, the only time you would sync is when you are rebuilding an array.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I think i'll go for that option, the NAS with a USB port for backup.

that being the case do I need Raid, am I going to benefit from having raid1?
There are a number of single drive consumer NAS units on the market, am I better off going for one of these or are the not that great, am I better off spending a little extra and getting a more business orientated one?

any recommendations of a make/model?

Cheers