Can you use a NAS hard drive as a regular hard drive?

Yes you can use it as a regular desktop drive. A “NAS” drive is just designed to be left on 24/7 year-round. So it’s built a little more robustly than a desktop drive. In other words, it’s an enterprise drive, while a regular desktop drive is a consumer drive.

How many drives do I need for NAS?

Three drives is the minimum for RAID 5, which can survive the loss of one drive, though four drives is a more common NAS system configuration. Five drives allow for RAID 6, which can survive the loss of two drives.

Which RAID is best for backup?

RAID 1. This level offers the most amount of redundancy or backup also known as failover, the exact opposite of RAID 0. The minimum number of drives required are two for duplexing and gives out fifty percent capacity with the other half being used for backup.

Should I use RAID for NAS?

RAID 5 is most recommended for NAS deployment since it strikes a solid balance between performance and redundancy. As an added bonus, you could even hot-swap the failed drive without powering down the system and the RAID array should be able to recover without data loss.

What is the best backup system?

The best cloud backup service you can get today

1. IDrive Personal. The best cloud storage service overall. Specifications.
2. Backblaze. The best value in cloud storage services. Specifications.
3. Acronis True Image. The best cloud storage service for power users.
4. CrashPlan for Small Business.
5. SpiderOak One.
6. Carbonite Safe.

Is 4TB enough for NAS?

If you are using NAS for business or something that requires a lot of media storage, you would most likely need about 4 TB or more.

Can I mix drive sizes in a NAS?

NAS Drives. Synology does allow you to mix different make and size drives. But I would still recommend mixing only similar kind of drives.

Which RAID is faster?

RAID 0
RAID 0 is the only RAID type without fault tolerance. It is also by far the fastest RAID type. RAID 0 works by using striping, which disperses system data blocks across several different disks.

Do you need a separate backup system if you are using RAID?

While RAID arrays can provide enhanced data protection, their extra disks should not be considered as backups. If your main drive is a RAID array, you still need to back it up. If you have, say, 12 TB storage on a RAID array, you’ll want to back it up to another device.