Sponge Posted June 7, 2008 Report Share Posted June 7, 2008 I'm looking at some NAS for backup duties (pictures and video) and like the look of these two units. They have very similar specifications and it seems like the only difference is that one has 1 x 1TB drive and the other has 2x500GB drives. My questions are: has anybody used one of these? Do you think one configuration is better than the other? (The former is slightly cheaper than the latter.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crasher Posted June 10, 2008 Report Share Posted June 10, 2008 Hi I've not used either of the WD drives mentioned, but i do have a Buffalo 2TB NAS at home as my main media/photo server. Its internal config is 4x500gb SATA drives, and i'm running it with its out-of-the-box RAID mode (so about 1.5TB usable). I've been exceptionally happy with it since i got it (about 6 months ago) - the only time its been powed down has been when we've had power cuts otherwise its been running 24x7 without a hitch. So happy that i will be buying another one to have as backup/fail-over Not much to choose between the 2 drives you have highlighted, except the one with 2x500gb dirves enables you to opt for a RAID config. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponge Posted June 10, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 10, 2008 Thanks for the input. RAID is a consideration, but I don't want to lose 500gb mirroring them and I don't need the performance, or potential data loss, of striping them. But I am wondering if the 2x500gb will allow me to use each drive independantly. That way I could use one for video and one for pictures. So if one drive fails, I don't lose everything. (Bear in mind this will be a backup of a backup, so I won't literally be losing 'everything'.) The single drive option would give the full TB, but if it fails, I lose everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mook Posted June 10, 2008 Report Share Posted June 10, 2008 What are your criteria? If you want performance, use one disk for each task. If you want resiliance, use a RAID1 pair. Given your last comment above, you should go for dual 500GB drives as a RAID1 pair Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mb Posted June 10, 2008 Report Share Posted June 10, 2008 I have used a Buffalo as my music server with good success for a year - you need to get one of the Link Stations as they will serve music etc. out the box rather than becoming a "project". Workwise we use a snap server which has also been very good for remote backup for DR although the size is a bit small & was a lot more expensive than the Buffalo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Tone_ Posted June 16, 2008 Report Share Posted June 16, 2008 I have used a Buffalo as my music server with good success for a year - you need to get one of the Link Stations as they will serve music etc. out the box rather than becoming a "project".Workwise we use a snap server which has also been very good for remote backup for DR although the size is a bit small & was a lot more expensive than the Buffalo. Mee too - would recommend these as your data being spread over a few disks means you get some protection! Deffinately consider some form of RAID array. The downside is that copying data up to the NAS is slower beacuse of the RAID 5 array I have. I have a GB lan (Cat 5e cabling and Gig switches) and copying large data files can shows network throughput at 13mb/sec which is not fast at all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mb Posted June 17, 2008 Report Share Posted June 17, 2008 I suppose you could argue if it is purely backup (opposed to extra capacity) then RAID 0 or no RAID would be OK as if it fails then you can rebuild from the original data Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjn15 Posted June 22, 2008 Report Share Posted June 22, 2008 Maybe look up QNAP. Quality piece of kit. P. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riz Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Wooohooo just bought a 1TB WD USB drive.... plenty of space! Yeehaaa. Must say the look quite good too...... Riz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mac Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 1Tb is not a lot of space I carry more than that in my laptop & laptop bag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riz Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 1Tb is not a lot of space I carry more than that in my laptop & laptop bag Hey come`on im just a poor northerner...... Ive still got my trusty sony bricktop with 1GB Ram and 80Gb Hdd... only ever used 40GB of it.... also got a 60GB PlayStation3 and 2 20GB Creative portable 2.5" USB drives... oh and a classic 20GB iPod.....1TB is more than enough for me... was only going to get 500GB but went for the 1TB model in the end....... I have now managed to backup my PlayStion3 and Laptop.... wooohooooo..... Riz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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