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NAS DRIVES

SBASHAKUS
Follower

NAS DRIVES

I'm looking at NAS drives and have some questions about the redundancy, reuse, and portability of the drives (or info on the drives). I have a bunch of questions, so please be patient with me:

Does it make sense to use NAS as a backup drive to PC's? 

If the PC drive failed, can I simply remove the drive from the NAS and replace the one in the PC? 

In general, can I take a HD out of the NAS drive and put it into a PC with all the data retained?

If no, how do I get the get data off the drives if a NAS drive fails?

Does Netgear proprietary RAID preclude reading these drives outside of THEIR NAS drive?

 

Please explain pros/cons of these setups (Flex-Raid vs X-Raid) with failure scenearios: 

-What happens if 1 HD Fails?

-What ahppens if a 2nd HD fails without attending to the 1st one yet?

-What happens if the NAS device fails? (Am I forced to purchase another Netgear due to proprietary RAID?)

 

I have 4TB of photos and would like a network shared area for files & documents too.  I own a domain as well. How do I create a shared drive using my domain name?

 

Thanks for your input!!

 

Model: RNDU4000|ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Chassis only
Message 1 of 4

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Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: NAS DRIVES

@SBASHAKUS

 

Welcome to the Community!

 

Does it make sense to use NAS as a backup drive to PC's? 

While you can use the NAS to have backup of data from your PC, it is still not enough and a common misconception that having a backup on a NAS means it is secured. RAID helps you or protects you from failures but backing up data with multiple copies on different devices or on a cloud is always a best practice to preent data loss.

 

If the PC drive failed, can I simply remove the drive from the NAS and replace the one in the PC?

In general, can I take a HD out of the NAS drive and put it into a PC with all the data retained?

If no, how do I get the get data off the drives if a NAS drive fails?

No, the disks will not be accessible just like a normal disk would. YOu will be able to use it on your PC if you have a Software that will help you run the RAID config or atleast you can use a recovery software to take out the data on the RAID disks. Example of Recovery software would be ReCLAIMe or R-Linux

 

Does Netgear proprietary RAID preclude reading these drives outside of THEIR NAS drive?

Any RAID drive will need software or be configured to be read outside their device.

 

Please explain pros/cons of these setups (Flex-Raid vs X-Raid) with failure scenearios: 

Kindly check this links regarding X-RAId and Flex-RAID

https://kb.netgear.com/22802/What-is-X-RAID-and-how-does-it-work-with-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-syste...
https://kb.netgear.com/22808/What-is-Flex-RAID-and-how-does-it-work-with-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-sy...

 

-What happens if 1 HD Fails?

on RAID1,RAID5 your NAS will go on degraded mode where the protection kicks in, You still have access to your Data.
On RAID1 setup, you will have the mirror disks take over and will have to replace the failed disk. Same with RAID5, RAID5 allows 1 disk failure and you will be able to get the data under degraded mode. Backing up data and Replacing disks upon failure is always a priority.

JBOD/RAID0 setup does not have protection which means, getting 1 disk to fail gets you no data at all. There might be chances to recover but slim to  none.


-What happens if a 2nd HD fails without attending to the 1st one yet?

RAID 6 configuration can withstand a two disk failure but RAID 1 RAID 5 or RAID 0 will get your data inaccessible/lost/

 

-What happens if the NAS device fails? (Am I forced to purchase another NETGEAR due to proprietary RAID?)

Purchasing the same model or architecture is recommended and you will just have to plug in the disks and boot. Purchasing a different platform you will need assistance to have your data accessible on the new device.

 

-I have 4TB of photos and would like a network shared area for files & documents too.  I own a domain as well. How do I create a shared drive using my domain name?

 

Please see 
https://kb.netgear.com/19864/How-do-I-map-a-network-drive-in-Windows

Please let us know if this is what you are looking for. Or if you want to use your domain/web to share your files.

 

HTH

 


Regards
 

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Message 2 of 4

All Replies
Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: NAS DRIVES

@SBASHAKUS

 

Welcome to the Community!

 

Does it make sense to use NAS as a backup drive to PC's? 

While you can use the NAS to have backup of data from your PC, it is still not enough and a common misconception that having a backup on a NAS means it is secured. RAID helps you or protects you from failures but backing up data with multiple copies on different devices or on a cloud is always a best practice to preent data loss.

 

If the PC drive failed, can I simply remove the drive from the NAS and replace the one in the PC?

In general, can I take a HD out of the NAS drive and put it into a PC with all the data retained?

If no, how do I get the get data off the drives if a NAS drive fails?

No, the disks will not be accessible just like a normal disk would. YOu will be able to use it on your PC if you have a Software that will help you run the RAID config or atleast you can use a recovery software to take out the data on the RAID disks. Example of Recovery software would be ReCLAIMe or R-Linux

 

Does Netgear proprietary RAID preclude reading these drives outside of THEIR NAS drive?

Any RAID drive will need software or be configured to be read outside their device.

 

Please explain pros/cons of these setups (Flex-Raid vs X-Raid) with failure scenearios: 

Kindly check this links regarding X-RAId and Flex-RAID

https://kb.netgear.com/22802/What-is-X-RAID-and-how-does-it-work-with-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-syste...
https://kb.netgear.com/22808/What-is-Flex-RAID-and-how-does-it-work-with-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-sy...

 

-What happens if 1 HD Fails?

on RAID1,RAID5 your NAS will go on degraded mode where the protection kicks in, You still have access to your Data.
On RAID1 setup, you will have the mirror disks take over and will have to replace the failed disk. Same with RAID5, RAID5 allows 1 disk failure and you will be able to get the data under degraded mode. Backing up data and Replacing disks upon failure is always a priority.

JBOD/RAID0 setup does not have protection which means, getting 1 disk to fail gets you no data at all. There might be chances to recover but slim to  none.


-What happens if a 2nd HD fails without attending to the 1st one yet?

RAID 6 configuration can withstand a two disk failure but RAID 1 RAID 5 or RAID 0 will get your data inaccessible/lost/

 

-What happens if the NAS device fails? (Am I forced to purchase another NETGEAR due to proprietary RAID?)

Purchasing the same model or architecture is recommended and you will just have to plug in the disks and boot. Purchasing a different platform you will need assistance to have your data accessible on the new device.

 

-I have 4TB of photos and would like a network shared area for files & documents too.  I own a domain as well. How do I create a shared drive using my domain name?

 

Please see 
https://kb.netgear.com/19864/How-do-I-map-a-network-drive-in-Windows

Please let us know if this is what you are looking for. Or if you want to use your domain/web to share your files.

 

HTH

 


Regards
 

Message 2 of 4
StephenB
Guru

Re: NAS DRIVES


@SBASHAKUS wrote:

 

Does Netgear proprietary RAID preclude reading these drives outside of THEIR NAS drive?

 


To clarify this, Netgear's RAID isn't proprietary. XRAID and FlexRAID are tools built on top of standard RAID.

 

With both XRAID and FlexRAID, a standard linux tool called mdadm creates the virtual disk, and the standard btrfs file system is created on that virtual disk.

 

If the disks can be connected to a linux PC, they can be manually mounted if you know how. 

 

They can't be mounted directly onto a Windows or macOS PC for two reasons - the PC doesn't have built-in support for mdadm, and it doesn't have built-in support for the btrfs file system.

 


@SBASHAKUS wrote:

I own a domain as well. How do I create a shared drive using my domain name?

 


Assuming you are simply asking how to access a network share on your home network: 

 

We'd need more information on what you want to do, as there are a lot of details that matter.  For starters, does your domain name resolve to a hosted service, or does the domain name resolve to your home router?

 

The NAS does support WebDav ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV  and https://kb.netgear.com/23847/How-do-I-enable-WebDAV-on-an-individual-shared-folder-on-my-ReadyNAS-OS...)

 

 

 

 

Message 3 of 4
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: NAS DRIVES

A NAS makes a very good PC backup location.  That is, a place where you have copies of data that's also on your PC's for failure or virus recovery and occasional unintentional file deletion.  It alone is not enough to keep safe any data you have offloaded from your PC.  You should have a second copy of that somewhere.  Of course, two copies under the same roof are still subject to concurrent loss due to fire, theft, flood, tornado, hurricane, etc.  So whether you also have an offsite (likely web based) backup depends on hthe value of your data.  It is certainly much faster to recover from a NAS than a web-based backup service, so the NAS is primary.

 

No, you can't just take a drive out of the NAS and put it in the PC.  What you do is put a new drive in the PC and then run the same software you use for backup in the recovery mode, putting the data from the NAS on the new drive.  I happen to like Acronis True Image, which is a paid program, for my backups, but there are free options.

 

As for creating a shared drive, I recommend you take a look at OwnCloud or NextCloud.  Addons for each are available at a reasonable cost at rnxtras.com.  If you are comfortable with Linux (and from your questions, I suspect you aren't), you can install them directly for free.  But Whocares at RNXtras does a lot of the work for you and asks only a small fee in return -- basically enough for him to keep the web pages up.

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