One of my two bay USB 3.0 external enclosures has just died (And my backup 2 bay drive dock has also died) , so I need to replace it with something 'decent'. It did have a couple of 1TB drives installed, my new solution could be filled with 1TB drives, or I have a couple of 4TB drives to throw into the mix if I so choose to. Options: 1) A HP MicroServer running an open source NAS solution (£115 after cash back) 2) A reasonable quality 2 or 4 bay NAS (EG Synology) £120 - £250 3) Another USB 3.0 enclosure. The primary purpose is purely as a backup destination. File based backups and OSX Time Machine backups. Having it network attached and readable from a WDTV Live would be 'nice' but not essential. Has to be OSX friendly and not require a PC to manage it. I can manage from Windows but don't really want the hassle. Nor do I want to run a full fat server install to manage. Speed isn't the most important factor, and can't be thunderbolt based because a) I'm not made of money, and b) Both thunderbolt ports are driving external displays. I've run freenas before but migrated to USB 3.0 storage as it was quieter and smaller than the old P4 rig it was running in, and didn't have the occasional hassle of share privileges having off days. I'm now thinking that the HP server might be the way to go. Any advice? Anyone recommend a really solid USB 3.0 enclosure?
Retail USB 3.0 box with HDD pre-installed? At least that way you might get a multi-year warranty. Depends what your back regime is like and how fussed you are plugging/unplugging cables. If you only back once every so often it's not worth having a NAS on 24/7 really. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/external/desktop/ Kingston DTHXP30/1TB - 1TB USB 3 flash drive?
Pretty A little bit pricy for something which is basically a fourth line data store. I tend to run overkill when it comes to backups. My setup is a bit like inception, only replacing all the dreams and limbo mumbo jumbo (But such lovely entertaining mumbo jumbo) with nested layers of data integrity. Yeah I know I said something decent, but there are limits! Plus if I was going with solid state and I'd just grab a 2.5" SSD, better bang for the buck. But still overkill for a backup device, especially when I've got half a dozen 1TB drives sitting in the spares box. To tide me over I've picked up a couple of generic 3.5" enclosures. Hopefully they'll die this side of 12months rather than in the 13th. Makes getting the inevitable Amazon refund easier!
If you've got spare drives, NAS them then. Build separate RAID 1 arrays and manually/use software to sync them periodically. I do this with my NAS, this way I don't accidentally delete something manually, as there's a backup of the backup. The drives are on power-down so only spin-up when I access them. The system drive is a basic SSD so the OS has no need to access them. If you enjoy the PC DIY side, go for the HP box as it's still cheaper than a full DIY box. There's enough discussion on the Microserver that should cover your questions I expect it has the necessary drive power-down functions in its BIOS etc. I re-used old kit (i5-2500K) and got mine down to 30W, which was bsaically the limitation of the PSU's minimum efficiency. EDIT: Just reading about the Microserver - idle is about 25-30W as well, practically the same as I'm seeing.