Hi all.
I'm needing/wanting a new NAS for personal use; storing movies, music, etc.
I have a couple Netgear ReadyNAS right now, and have installed many of them for clients. Overall, I'm fairly happy with them and they have worked pretty well but I'm having some issues cropping up that are wearing on me; one clients' NAS isn't booting properly/regularly for some reason, and - this is a big one - on another, the "Replicate" - remote backup to another NAS - isn't working any more.
I've been working with Netgear's email support on both of these issues, which is obviously very slow - 12-24-ish hours in between replies.
Overall, I'm not super impressed with Netgear's support however.
In any case, for my personal stuff, here's what I really want in a device:
- Local backup to USB.
- The most important to me is a GOOD, RELIABLE OFFSITE BACKUP to another device that I own. For a lot of reasons, I'm not interested in any cloud solution for my personal media, one big reason is I've got so much stuff the cost would be prohibitive; about 1TB of stuff total.
- Good performance. I'm very happy with my ReadyNAS Ultra 6's ability to stream 1080p movies to my WD TV Live media player and even my iPad. No issues whatsoever. Any PC should easily be able to do the same or far better performance-wise.
- I don't really need any fancy services that some of the NAS's claim to offer, with what seems to be mixed results. I use iTunes/AirPlay to listen to my mp3s and iTunes doesn't care where my media is stored, and I have my WD TV Live and a great iPad app to watch movies, again doesn't matter where they're stored. I will take Plex for a test drive though, and again seems like having a Windows machine will make it easier here...
Netgear's Replicate has been pretty good overall, but the support is really troubling. Their new 6.0 OS seems intriguing, but I've seen remarks from very experienced former Netgear employees that it's very buggy. OS 6.0 is supposed to have replicate built in, allowing you to (theoretically) backup one NAS to another in an off-site location, but it's still very new & remains to be seen how well it works.
Synology; I can't get a good read on how well their remote backup to another Synology works. I can't even figure out WTF it's called; network backup, server backup, remote backup....jeeze.....is it that hard to give the service one name??
So I'm thinking I have enough spare PCs lying around that are far more powerful than any of these other NAS, I could just load a fresh install of Windows 7 (no, I have no interest in learning/tinkering with a FreeNAS or similar) run plex which seems to be pretty cool, load cobian for a good reliable USB backup, load crashplan onto it, and load crashplan onto a secondary PC that I could keep offsite.
Crashplan seems to work very well and very reliably, even for large amounts of data, it just keeps plugging away until it's done. I really like the interface and email alerts. Same for Cobian for my local backup to USB.
If I really wanted to get fancy, I could maybe throw an additional HD into these PCs and do a basic software RAID 1 through Windows too, or just use Acronis to image it or something...not sure yet. Is there a good software RAID monitor for Windows? I fully understand that software RAID is less than ideal, however this is for my own personal use and everything will be constantly backed up, which is really more important than any downtime I may face.
Problem solved....?
Plus there's cost to consider; the NAS's I'm looking at are around $1k a piece with 2x2TB drives....I could outfit the PCs I've got with some 3TB internal drives, USB drives for backup and probably be completely done with 2 units like I want for under $500.
What do you guys think?
I think I'll get started with one PC to see how it performs in my actual network for streaming & give Plex a spin....
I'm needing/wanting a new NAS for personal use; storing movies, music, etc.
I have a couple Netgear ReadyNAS right now, and have installed many of them for clients. Overall, I'm fairly happy with them and they have worked pretty well but I'm having some issues cropping up that are wearing on me; one clients' NAS isn't booting properly/regularly for some reason, and - this is a big one - on another, the "Replicate" - remote backup to another NAS - isn't working any more.
I've been working with Netgear's email support on both of these issues, which is obviously very slow - 12-24-ish hours in between replies.
Overall, I'm not super impressed with Netgear's support however.
In any case, for my personal stuff, here's what I really want in a device:
- Local backup to USB.
- The most important to me is a GOOD, RELIABLE OFFSITE BACKUP to another device that I own. For a lot of reasons, I'm not interested in any cloud solution for my personal media, one big reason is I've got so much stuff the cost would be prohibitive; about 1TB of stuff total.
- Good performance. I'm very happy with my ReadyNAS Ultra 6's ability to stream 1080p movies to my WD TV Live media player and even my iPad. No issues whatsoever. Any PC should easily be able to do the same or far better performance-wise.
- I don't really need any fancy services that some of the NAS's claim to offer, with what seems to be mixed results. I use iTunes/AirPlay to listen to my mp3s and iTunes doesn't care where my media is stored, and I have my WD TV Live and a great iPad app to watch movies, again doesn't matter where they're stored. I will take Plex for a test drive though, and again seems like having a Windows machine will make it easier here...
Netgear's Replicate has been pretty good overall, but the support is really troubling. Their new 6.0 OS seems intriguing, but I've seen remarks from very experienced former Netgear employees that it's very buggy. OS 6.0 is supposed to have replicate built in, allowing you to (theoretically) backup one NAS to another in an off-site location, but it's still very new & remains to be seen how well it works.
Synology; I can't get a good read on how well their remote backup to another Synology works. I can't even figure out WTF it's called; network backup, server backup, remote backup....jeeze.....is it that hard to give the service one name??
So I'm thinking I have enough spare PCs lying around that are far more powerful than any of these other NAS, I could just load a fresh install of Windows 7 (no, I have no interest in learning/tinkering with a FreeNAS or similar) run plex which seems to be pretty cool, load cobian for a good reliable USB backup, load crashplan onto it, and load crashplan onto a secondary PC that I could keep offsite.
Crashplan seems to work very well and very reliably, even for large amounts of data, it just keeps plugging away until it's done. I really like the interface and email alerts. Same for Cobian for my local backup to USB.
If I really wanted to get fancy, I could maybe throw an additional HD into these PCs and do a basic software RAID 1 through Windows too, or just use Acronis to image it or something...not sure yet. Is there a good software RAID monitor for Windows? I fully understand that software RAID is less than ideal, however this is for my own personal use and everything will be constantly backed up, which is really more important than any downtime I may face.
Problem solved....?
Plus there's cost to consider; the NAS's I'm looking at are around $1k a piece with 2x2TB drives....I could outfit the PCs I've got with some 3TB internal drives, USB drives for backup and probably be completely done with 2 units like I want for under $500.
What do you guys think?
I think I'll get started with one PC to see how it performs in my actual network for streaming & give Plex a spin....
