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Howdy, |
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I've pretty much reached a limit on my backups. I'm up to a 16TB hard |
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drive for one and even that won't last long. Larger drives are much |
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more costly. A must have NAS is quickly approaching. I've been |
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searching around and find some things confusing. I'm hoping someone can |
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clear up that confusion. I'm also debating what path to travel down. |
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I'd also like to keep costs down as well. That said, I don't mind |
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paying a little more for one that would offer a much better option. |
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Path one, buy a NAS, possibly used, that has no drives. If possible, I |
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may even replace the OS that comes on it or upgrade if I can. I'm not |
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looking for fancy, or even RAID. Just looking for a two bay NAS that |
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will work. First, what is a DAS? Is that totally different than a |
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NAS? From what I've found, a DAS is not what I'm looking for since I |
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want a ethernet connection and the ability to control things over the |
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network. It seems DAS lacks that feature but not real sure. I'm not |
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sure I can upgrade the software/OS on a DAS either. |
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Next thing. Let's say a NAS comes with two 4TB drives for a total of |
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8TB of capacity from the factory, using LVM or similar software I |
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assume. Is that limited to that capacity or can I for example replace |
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one or both drives with for example 14TB drives for a total of 28TBs of |
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capacity? If one does that, let's say it uses LVM, can I somehow move |
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data as well or is that beyond the abilities of a NAS? Could it be done |
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inside my computer for example? Does this vary by brand or even model? |
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Path two, I've researched building a NAS using a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB as |
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another option. They come as parts, cases too, but the newer and faster |
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models of Raspberry Pi 4 with more ram seem to work pretty well. The |
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old slower models with small amounts of ram don't fair as well. While I |
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want a descent speed, I'm not looking for or expecting it to be |
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blazingly fast. I just wonder, if from a upgrade and expansion point of |
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view, if building a NAS would be better. I've also noticed, it seems |
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all Raspberry things come with a display port. That means I could hook |
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up a monitor and mouse/keyboard when needed. That could be a bonus. |
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Heck, I may can even put some sort of Gentoo on that thing. :-D |
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One reason I'm wanting to go this route, I'm trying to keep it small and |
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able to fit inside my fire safe. I plan to buy a media type safe that |
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is larger but right now, it needs to fit inside my current safe. Most |
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of the 2 bay NAS or a Raspberry Pi based NAS are fairly small. They not |
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much bigger than the three external hard drives and a couple bare drives |
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that currently occupy my safe. |
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One thing I'd like to have no matter what path I go down, the ability to |
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encrypt the data. My current backup drives are encrypted and I'd like |
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to keep it that way. If that is possible to do. I suspect the |
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Raspberry option would since I'd control the OS/software placed on it. |
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I could be wrong tho. |
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One last thing. Are there any NAS type boxes that I should absolutely |
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avoid if I go that route? Maybe it is a model that has serious |
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limitations or has other problems. I think the DAS thing may be one for |
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me to avoid but I'm not for sure what limits it has. Google didn't help |
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a lot. It also could be as simple as, avoid any model that says this in |
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the description or uses some type of software that is bad or limits |
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options. |
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Thoughts? Info to share? Ideas on a best path forward? Buy already |
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built or build? |
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Thanks. |
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|
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Dale |
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|
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:-) :-) |