Data Storage With Redundancy For Home Use

A loss of data can be prevented in normal operation, but all of the measures that can be taken do not replace the need for regular backups. The use of at least two hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration enables the mirroring of information should one of the drives fail.

If you take both of these criteria into consideration—lower power consumption than a full-scale computer and the redundant storage of data—you will soon come to the conclusion that a NAS device is the best possible compromise. This storage technology has already been used by large businesses for a number of years, and is now making its way into SMBs and even into home environments.

Saving To Two Hard Drives

NAS devices used in businesses generally contain at least four hard drives. To accommodate smaller organizations, particularly with regard to price, NAS devices for the Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) sector and the private user are now being offered with one or two hard drives. In both instances, the potential buyer is still able to purchase units with hard drives already pre-installed by the manufacturer. Pure NAS cases without pre-installed drives can also still be purchased, thus reducing prices even more. It is even cheaper if you decide to go for a NAS case with just one hard drive slot. For the purposes of data security, a NAS device with two drives is preferable to one with a single drive.

RAID Modes For Home Use

Until very recently, RAID technology was mainly used in large companies and mostly required special controllers that are not only very expensive, but also require specialized knowledge. Now this technology is being included in more and more lower-priced units. The implementation of RAID capabilities into hard drive controllers on motherboards means that this technology is also available for private users. And this can also be seen with NAS devices. The user interfaces have been made more user-friendly. In addition to simply setting up drives and user accounts on the NAS devices, it is also possible to easily configure the various RAID modes without the need for a storage background.

In order to see how capable these NAS devices really are, we have decided to use the Maxtor Shared Storage II as an example. The following pages will reveal the impression this unit left behind, and how it performed in our tests.