NAS - Upgrade or start new

jimbling

Hey guys, hoping ye can help me a bit......

I have a 500GB WD Netcenter (model: wd5000b019) NAS that I bought about 4 years ago.
At the moment, that is full and I also have two other 500gb USB drives pretty full as well. I'd like to consolidate all this into the one drive. I was wondering if I could just replace the hard drive in the Netcenter with a new 2TB drive? I can't seem to find any information on what the system will support, but I'm thinking it probably won't.

If not, I guess it's time I got a new setup and I'd like some advice on that too. I don't want to spend too much as I'm on a bit if a budget right now, but if I am going to purchase new hardware, I'd like to future proof myself a little bit.

The system will mainly be used for media, but may start keeping pc backups going forward. I'm not sure about all the RAID stuff to be honest, other than its all about backups etc... Not sure what I need there.

I saw this offer on amazon for the Buffalo Linkstation 4TB, which seems extremely reasonable for an enclosure and two 2TB drives. I presume there's good reasons for cheap price, but is this NAS good enough for home use?

I was also thinking it might be best to just buy a good enclosure with, say 4, bays. Start with one 2TB disk and upgrade with new drives as required. To try and future proof a little bit. I'd preferably not to spend more than 300 to start it off really.

Any advise? Other Options etc?

Kevso

Hi Jimbling,

I'm looking into NASs at the moment as well and have a similar topic on here about my needs. I can't give you any info regarding upgrading your old model but will share the little I know on the rest of your queries.

For the price stated, the link station duo you posted the link to is great value. From what I've seen Buffalo systems are reasonably priced compared to other similar options like Synology an Qnap which whilst being good products covering pretty much all the bases, they tend to charge a premium for that service. The Synology for example will charge you €175 before you even look at getting hard drives.

One thing to be careful about though is if you will be using it with a MAC and backing up the MAC on it. Some systems are not fully compatible with time machine on OSX Lion so its good to double check this aspect if you do have a MAC.

RAID as you inferred is simply a mirror image of your information that covers you in case one of the drives should fail. If RAID is not a priority for you, there are cheaper systems that can cover most of your needs such as the Buffalo Livestation Live 2TB which retails at about €180 online

Good Luck

Khannie

Not sure if you have any linux experience, but any computer with enough bays can act as a NAS with RAID support if you're running linux on it. You could start with 1 x 2TB drive and add more later, migrating to RAID 5 for failover if and when the time comes (the RAID support is provided by linux, so even if you change the underlying hardware there is no issue maintaining the RAID array).

Linux supports all of this out of the box and is actually reasonably straightforward to set up these days. I've been using it for several years now. Process is basically:

Install linux.
Set up RAID array (or not since you're just starting out with 1 drive).
Configure networking.
Set up network sharing (1 install, 1 config file edit).
That's it.