QNAP NAS - device in degraded mode

[Charlotte]

My NAS discs (and the spares that use for backups) are all formatted as EXT4 which means that they won't be readable natively using my Mac-based system.  This is less of a problem that you would think.

I also just have the NAS on my desktop, plugged directly into my MAC via an ethernet cable.  It's reasonably fast.

[nikki]

Hmmm... your backup should be a backup and kept quarantined so in the event your machines get infected etc. You know your backup is safe. That's one of the reasons for recommending more than one external HDD so you can rotate and thus there's always a recent off line backup - not vulnerable to any cryptoware.

That sounds sensible.

My NAS discs (and the spares that use for backups) are all formatted as EXT4 which means that they won't be readable natively using my Mac-based system.  This is less of a problem that you would think.

How do you do your back-ups, Charlotte? As an external device via the usb on the front (assuming your QNAP is similar to mine)?

If you need fast of faster access to your storage, is connecting a cat5e viable?

I also just have the NAS on my desktop, plugged directly into my MAC via an ethernet cable.  It's reasonably fast.

Will have to have a think about that. Clear horizontal surfaces are a bit of a rarity in this flat, so I'm not working at a desk conveniently close to the NAS. Mass sort out, tidy up and furniture moving would all definitely have to happen after MA deadline!

[Charlotte]

The ideal position would be to have my desk located near the router so I could plug straight into that (it is a NETWORK Attached Storage device, after all) but the router's downstairs and my desk is upstairs.  You've got to set the NAS up on the router so it can do a software update, but after that, plugging it straight in seems to be all okay.

I have a QNAP TS-410 4 bay NAS as my main storage device.  At the moment, it has two WD Red 4TB drives in it configured as RAID1.  I do my backups via an Anker eSATA to SATA external hard drive docking station (about £35 on Amazon) and I have another pair of 4TB drives that I use.  Every week, I back up the NAS and move the drive down to the safe in my studio.  I retrieve the old one down there and plug it into the docking station ready for the next backup.  That way, I have at least three perfect, primary copies of my data, plus whatever's on my computer and in the cloud.  It's not bulletproof, but it's pretty solid.

[Kim]

No off-the-shelf NAS here, but in the server I have two disks in a live RAID1 for storage, a third disk taking incremental nightly backups (so you can retrieve last week's version of the file you just mangled), and a USB external drive on a shelf that gets plugged in once a month and synchronised, but is otherwise air-gap isolated against hardware failure, user error and 1337 h44x0rz.

Really important stuff (a few hundred meg, mostly code and documents) is duplicated on another machine off-site, in case of fire, police raids or catastrophic burglary.

[Afasoas]

The other option for backups is a second cheap NAS that is scheduled to be on for the backup window. This is what I used to do ... thus my backup is also RAID1.
Anyway... if you can't get your NAS anywhere near your router, there is other magic you can do. For speed, the Macbook/PC laptop could just be plugged into the same switch... which could in turn be connected to your router wirelessly or via Ethernet over mains (Powerline) adapters.

If your access to large files is less frequent, you could get away with plugging Cat5e into the MacBook/laptop only when you need to... using it in your lap as if an additional power cable was plugged in. You can buy Cat5/6 cables in lengths up to 20m relatively cheaply.

Personally, (more for Kim/Charlotte) I switched to using my own Linux server, which runs ZFS as a file storage system. Four disks in two RAIDZ (RAID1) configuration. It's fast because of clever caching and Copy on Write (CoW). But the best part is snapshotting the file system. I am planning on taking a snapshot, transmitting it to a second server, restoring it on the second server... which can be done via SSH in a single succinct command. Then daily new snapshots will be taken and transmitted/restored on the backup server. Snapshots will be retained on the server for 31 days. This means I have regularly nightly backups but also I can restore a file for any given day in the last month. Snapshots are very cheap to take and maintain due to CoW. The best part is you can use any old PC if you want to by using FreeNAS.

I have all the parts to build the second server ...  just need to move my mail server from the old NAS box to a new device and then I have enough disks!

[nikki]

Spent a large chunk of the morning trying to sort out internet connection problems on hold, so no new developments. Also drive 3 is still only sixtysomething% formatted...

Both router and NAS are in the bedroom due to attic flat related heating issues. I'll rummage around and see what cat5 cables I've got and experiment with how that might work.

Thanks for the extra info Charlotte, although I now have studio AND safe envy!

[Afasoas]

How far's your laptop normally situated from the nearest power outlet?
Alternatively, your could use Wireless AC but that's still £££ right now.

The other option is storing everything locally on your laptop, but use rsync/grsync | robocopy/SynchToy ('nix/Windows) to regularly synchronize the files on your laptop with the NAS.

[nikki]

I usually have a power socket about 2 feet away.
I usually have no spare £££
I have no idea what rsync/grsync | robocopy/SynchToy, but the laptop's bustin' at the seams so that option's probably out anyway!

I haven't got around to trying a cat5 cable yet, but I've been pondering and am not sold on FAT32 for the external drive. I'll have a think about other options.

[Afasoas]

The only problem with FAT32 for this kind of thing is the maximum file size of 4GB. What platforms do you need to be able to access the external hard disk?

[Morat]

I usually have a power socket about 2 feet away.
I usually have no spare £££
I have no idea what rsync/grsync | robocopy/SynchToy, but the laptop's bustin' at the seams so that option's probably out anyway!

I haven't got around to trying a cat5 cable yet, but I've been pondering and am not sold on FAT32 for the external drive. I'll have a think about other options.

Robocopy is very small so it will fit on your system if there's even a smidgen of space left, and is generally used with the command line although there are GUI frontends available. It's very powerful magic when you get into the further reaches but it's still an excellent option for copying lots of files from A to B. (or C: to E:)

[Mr Larrington]

Robocopy don't half hide its light under the proverbial bushel thobut.  I came across reference to it while looking for "how do I do X", thought it looked handy and only then discovered that it's been on Windows boxes for six years (and you can download a version for XP as well).

[Afasoas]

Nikki appears to be a Mac user so Robocopy is out of the question

[nikki]

I've borrowed a thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor and also located some cat5e cable!

Looks like that might be an easier way of accessing stuff than faffing with external hard drives, so I think disk 3 can just be a regular back-up drive, in which case I'll aim for the same format type as the disks in the NAS.

Next mission: Ubuntu Live CD...

Getting ahead of myself question: what do I do about the data on the faulty disk before sending it back to WD?

[Kim]

Getting ahead of myself question: what do I do about the data on the faulty disk before sending it back to WD?

If it'll talk to a computer for long enough, "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$device" (quadruple-checking that $device is the one you want to erase, as that can otherwise ruin your day).  You can probably even do that on a mac, though I'd consult someone who actually knows what they're doing with macs - rather than treating them as idiosyncratic BSD boxen - before trying.  For all I know, there's a menu option in Disk Utility for that.

If not, you decide whether the security of the data is worth more than the cost of just buying a new disk, and if necessary take a sledgehammer to the platter, cough up for a new disk and learn about encryption for next time.