My ReadyNAS Duo with 2 Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200 drives started to have problems this week. Disk 2 is indicating a failure and I can't copy all my data off Disk 1.
I'm thinking of either replacing both disks or replacing the whole unit. But I'm overwhelmed with the options and choices and quite frankly lost in terms of what to do.
For basic file and print sharing in a household with needs of at least 1TB of storage what's the pros/cons of:
Option A - just replacing both disks and starting over from a backup? In this case what disks are recommended, I've seen the HCL but again its overwhelming. If I want to keep the cost of the HD's under $250 total what's recommended? Is it possible to get enterprise class HD's for this price?
Option B - Get a ReadyNAS NV+ 4TB system for a very reasonable cost.
Re: Totally Confused with Options - need some help
First is to determine what your needs are and what your resources are.
Obviously, Option A will be the least expensive as you only have the cost of the drives. To answer your question about 2 enterprise drives for less than $250 - almost. Two Seagate ST32000641AS from Newegg will cost you $260 delivered. They do have the 5 year warranty. However, they seem to suffer a lower customer approval rating than would be expected with 74% rating them as a 4 or 5 on a scale of 5, but a high 13% rating them a 1. On the other hand a noted enterprise class drive the Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 HUA722020ALA330 will cost your $440 for a pair delivered from Newegg. There are only six ratings (it's a very expensive drive) 4 rate a 5, 1 a 3 and 1 a 1.
The highest rated drive that is on the HCL list and is on Newegg is the Samsung HD204UI. This is a fairly recent drive and has just recently shown up on the HCL. The customer ratings (1,111 of them) show 69% give it a 5 and 14% a 4 (I generally combine 4 and 5 ratings) for a combined 83%, which is high. Only 8% rated it a 1. Two delivered to your door will set you back $160. The other two drives, the Seagate ST32000DL003 (63% 4 and 5) and the WD WD20EARS (61% 4 and 5) but are relatively equal in price ($160 for a pair of Seagates and $174 for a pair of the WDs). I like to look at the ratings and then read the comments. Members of this forum who have commented have had mixed luck with the Seagates as well as the WD. Some love them and some want to throw them out the window.
Option B will obviously cost you ($310 delivered from Newegg) more, but will give you the future expandability of the four bays. You should look at low long you have had the Duo, what volume of data you started with and what volume of data you have now. That will tell you whether a single 2TB volume (actually 1931GB) will last a while or whether you will run out in a short time. Saving video files gobbles up disk space at an alarming rate. I started with two 500GB drives in an NV+ four years ago and for two of those years it was just fine. I expanded by adding a third and then a fourth drive. Last year when I moved my primary volume to a newer platform, the NVX, I had 800GB of files, but was saving video files. I now have a data volume of 1.7TB on that NVX. If the Duo will last you a year or so, go with just the drives and save toward an Ultra 4 (or 4 Plus).
