QNAP TurboNAS TS-659 Pro II

[Demon Cleaner]

I set it up yesterday, with 6 Hitachi Deskstar 5k3000 2TB disks, and set it to Raid 5 mode. This was done very fast, I was quite surprised, the NAS did the whole Raid 5 configuration in about 10 minutes.

I also started copying my stuff to it, still will need longer time until everything is copied, but so far I'm happy with the transfer rate, which stays constantly at 70MB/s. Only copying from my main disk was a bit painful, as that one is always spinning because torrents are up/downloading, and so I only got 10MB/s.

You can find all of the information about the QNAP TurboNAS TS-659 Pro II here (http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=167).

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/QNAP-Turbo-NAS-TS-659-Pro-II_02.jpg

[Harrison]

It does look like a very nice NAS, and I can tell you are already much happier than you were with the Buffalo unit you tried some time ago.

[Demon Cleaner]

Definitely a lot happier than with the Buffalo Terastation. But I'm glad I sent that back at that time, it was painfully slow, and just imagine, that was only 1TB, I could have put other HDDs inside, but still, that wouldn't have increased the speed, and copying even more files would have been an even slower process.

I now copied already most of my stuff there, giving me already 2 spare disks in my tower, one of which I use now mainly for movies. My PS3 and Dreamcast games are now stored on the NAS, and also my barebone backup, which I can now access from every PC.

My new Mede8er also works fine with it, only had to do some research to get it working, as the Multimedia folder is by default locked, and from the media player I couldn't access it via admin or other user defined account. I then saw that there's also privileges for guests, which has default denied access, so I set that to read only, and eventually got it working.

I also set up the NAS to send my notifications of any problems or errors via mail and SMS, works fine, and it's quite nice to know if your NAS has a problem when you're not home or next to it (doesn't replace girlfriend though :))

I would say that I don't use most of the applications and functions it offers, but it's always nice to know that you have them and can use them at any time.

So far, 100% thumbs up for the Qnap :thumbs:

[Demon Cleaner]

As I copied my movies to a new disk now, I still had to copy 1 movie to the NAS. It was 15GB in one file, and it was transferred with an average of 90MB/s, which is quite amazing.

[J T]

Good grief, that's quite the NAS setup you have there - some serious gear.

I'm currently using a 1TB WD thingy that I bought on special earlier in the year, which is positively runty in comparison.

[Harrison]

Are you going to test any of the additional features on this NAS? I would be interested in find out how good the built in print server is, and also the Bit Torrent server. I also read it supports Acronis True Image which would be great to use for OS backups.

I'm also really interested in this device as I read some more about it and found out it can be used as an HTTP and MySQL server, which would be brilliant for use as a web development test server. It also seems to support Joomla which is interesting. And even Telnet and SSH login. So in theory this could actually be used as a full server out of the box. Quite cool.

Also noticed they make 4 and 5 bay versions that cost a lot less. I would probably only need a 4 bay one for video editing and photography storage.

Final question. Do you know what their customer support is like? After looking around their website I'm impressed with the content. I was previously interested in the Synology NAS's but have read a lot of bad forum posts about their customer support, and also issues with their NAS software locking users out of the system if a host PC crashes, so it seems that company's products are to be avoided and you definitely made the right choice with QNAP.

[Demon Cleaner]

I didn't test the Bit Torrent feature yet, as I think there's no need for me, as my PC is running 24/7 anyway, and it's easier to manage.

I don't need the print server.

Might check out the Acronis True Image feature, as I have my backups at the moment on a local disk, which is not the best, although I don't hope that all the disks collapse together in one go. I'm also using Acronis True Image, so it might recognize the backups, will let you know later.

My friend who told me to get the Qnap, told me that their support is amazing. He installed a firmware on his device which was very new, and quickly later he noticed that it was removed again from their website, and he had problems with it, not getting the NAS to work anymore. So he called support, they replied immediately, and the guy from Qnap connected himself to his NAS and fixed the problem straight away, making him able to use his NAS again, only 15 minutes after calling.

At my work there's about 5 people using Qnap NAS because of him, who told everybody that it's really worth the price, not only for the quality and features of the device, but also for their great support.

TESTED: I'm currently making a backup with Acronis True Image to the NAS using the Acronis True Image inbuilt FTP connection, works very well.

[webdevii]

I set it up yesterday, with 6 Hitachi Deskstar 5k3000 2TB disks, and set it to Raid 5 mode. This was done very fast, I was quite surprised, the NAS did the whole Raid 5 configuration in about 10 minutes.

I also started copying my stuff to it, still will need longer time until everything is copied, but so far I'm happy with the transfer rate, which stays constantly at 70MB/s. Only copying from my main disk was a bit painful, as that one is always spinning because torrents are up/downloading, and so I only got 10MB/s.

You can find all of the information about the QNAP TurboNAS TS-659 Pro II


I dont know how your experience was with buffalo, but mine was terrible. 2 weeks after I had my unit it failed with an E07 logic board failure, we did the rma dealy got the mind you refurbished replacement unit, keeping in mind my unit was less than 2 weeks old, I felt short changed, but let it go. 2 months later same error E07 Logic Board Failure, once again did the RMA thingy mind you both RMA's were Advanced to be sure I did not get my same unit back. It has been running now for 3 months with no errors so far. Other than the unit being faulty oob, it was a nice unit, if you had lots and lots of free time to put up with the slooooww transfer speeds. So I began digging and found Synology and Qnap as 2 of a possibility of 3 or 4 others I wont even mention the names, I know from past experience with those companies they are junk oob. With all that heartburn and work, I found someone that offered me $400.00 Cash for the Buffalo I even tossed in my totally legal collection of software, movies and music

I just wanted to be done with it. Although with the sale of that came the agreement of me coming to his house to install the unit. I would rather do that than have the customer attempt it and jack everything all up.

So now that the saga of the failing Buffalo is over with, I just purchased the Qnap TS659 Pro II with 5 x 2TB Deskstar drives installed.

The question I have for you since you seem to have the same drives and I do believe the same unit, did you notice a big performance data transfer rates and what not. I do have Verizon Fiber Optic service with 50/50 synchronous bandwidth along with a dynamic IP.

With the Buffalo I was averaging 25 - 40 Mbs at best on the transfer rate up or down. Does it seem like the Qnap out performs the Buffalo. I so much wanted to have the Constellation drives installed but but got stuck short on cash so I had to go with the Hitachi Deskstar Consumer drives.

Also another question for you, I currently have all of the data that will eventually be installed onto the nas in the form of One File Rar's, the unit I have this data sitting on is a Startech 4 Bay Raid Box that plugs into my eSata controller. Can I direct connect the Startech to the Qnap and do a direct data transfer to the device? Or do I need to do it over the Network, as was with the Buffalo.

The only reason the Startech is in the picture is to be able to have space to archive up all the data into oone file rar's then transfer them to the Qnap. This way anyone downloading for one can just download 1 file, and for 2 if Qnap is anything like buffalo it will make any multi file folder into a zip called download.zip which I found proved too unreliable.

Thank You for listening and putting up with my bitching and whining, I do have plenty of cheese and a bottle of real wine. hehe haha just had too toss in a bit of humor to lighten the load.

Thank You in advance for anything you can do....
Regards
Rob

[Demon Cleaner]

My NAS is almost full now, only have 400MB left, and this is because of the loads of 1080p movies and series, which take now already 6.5TB of space.

I already deleted some of my retro stuff, as I mentioned in another thread I think, and I also deleted not needed stuff, like the japanese DC set. Also cross checked most of the stuff, as the US and EU sets basically contain a lot of the same stuff.

I even removed all my PS3 games from the NAS a while ago, and stored it locally, as it has already 2TB in size.

So I came to the conclusion to buy a new NAS.

Upgrading is not really an option, as I would have to remove all the 6 2TB disks to replace them with 3TB ones, 4TB being still way too expensive. And that would leave me still with "only" 18TB, minus the Raid 5, and to be even more on the safer side, I would like to be in Raid 6.

So I will probably buy the Synology DS2413+, which has 12 bays (biggest Qnap only has 8 as is more expensive), and I will then install 12 WD Red 3TB disks in it, which are 24/7 disks meant for NAS environments. The DS2413+ also gets very good reviews everywhere. You can even expand the DS2413+ with a DX1211, to have 24 bays, perhaps for the future ;)

Then I can copy all my stuff back to it, and start collecting again :)

Extensive review can be found here: http://www.techspot.com/review/649-synology-diskstation-ds2413-nas/

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/zbild5-3493993F15-282_600_zpsc09b3608.jpg (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/cioprgr/media/zbild5-3493993F15-282_600_zpsc09b3608.jpg.html)


With no real competition, the choice for those seeking maximum storage capacity in a NAS really need not look further than the DS2413+. As was the case with the DS2411+, we have found the DS2413+ to be an ideal solution for professional photographers, video editors and graphic designers who require massive amounts of storage out of the box with plenty of room to expand using Synology's add-on box.

Since reviewing the DS2411+, Synology has vastly improved its DiskStation Manager software -- and that’s saying something given how good version 3.1 was. Build 4.2 is more powerful than ever with support for all the latest technologies and features. It would be one thing to recommend the DS2413+ because of its unrivaled capacity, but we think it's one of the best quality NAS devices money can buy, in both hardware and software.

Score: 90/100

Pros: Plenty of storage and expandability, that's the number one reason to buy this NAS. Software is feature complete and accessible. Price is steep but reasonable given the competition.

Cons: We thought hard, the DS2413+ really is good.

[Harrison]

Now that is a serious NAS. I've not seen a 12 bay desktop NAS before and it looks like a nice solution. I noticed it has 2 LAN ports.. does it support LAN bonding? This allows you to connect the NAS via both ports to a supporting Gbit Switch to double the speed of data transfer to and from the NAS for much improved speed when multiple clients are accessing it at once.

Just remember that QNAPs support and community is one of the best in the NAS world and Synology's is often commented as not being so good.

Have you also looked at the rack mount NASs available? You can get 12 and 24 bay ones and a small rack cabinet on wheel that could be hidden under a desk could be an alternative solution. The other advantages of rack mounted NASs is they often have a UPS built in and a redundant PSU.

What you going to do with the QNAP once you upgrade? Sell it? Or keep it as a secondary backup solution? I know it is overkill, but you can set them up to backup the most important directories to the second NAS.

[Demon Cleaner]

The LAN bonding is called link aggregation, and yes, the 2413+ has that, although you need a switch with a IEEE 802.3ad standard, and as I looked around a bit, they're quite expensive. On the Synology site, they mention 3 of these switches which are compatible with the link aggregation function, the 3com 4200G, the HP Procurve Switch 2824 and the Voltek NSH-2926.

The rack mount NASs are also very expensive, that wouldn't be the best solution.

I planned on selling my QNAP, as I wouldn't keep it as backup, because I wanna run the 2413+ in Raid6 mode, so that we be already quite secure.

[Demon Cleaner]

Gonna probably buy it next week, I'm very close, 90% of me are fine with it :)

How much would you think I could sell my Qnap 659 Pro II with 6x2TB disks? I only find prices of the newer model, the 669 Pro, but it seems to be almost the same, and it is 900€, although the disks I have are not available anymore, but on my bill I can see that they were just 62€ anyway 2 years ago. My NAS was 1100€ with the delivery.

I could get the 2413+ here in Luxembourg for the same price like in the German online shop where I always order, but the disks are 7€/disk more expensive. I want to order 13 disks, to have one spare one from the start. I mailed the shop in Luxembourg if it would be possible to get a little discount on the disks, hopefully they will agree. On the other side, I wouldn't have to pay for delivery, as I could pick it up from there. Probably they also have everything on stock, so I could get it straight away, although they told me that it would be ready in 2-3 working days.

The other problem buying it online is, that I would have to send the money via bank transfer, as it will be almost 3000€, and my VISA limit is quite lower, and with the bank transfer, you never really have 100% guarantee, because if the money gets lost somehow, you're not really able to track it, and see if the seller didn't receive it or not, so I prefer to not use that method.

[Harrison]

I would definitely go with the more local store where you can collect in person. I never do money bank transfers for the reason you said.. you have no guarantee for your money and no way to dispute or reclaim the money if anything went wrong. Plus with the local store you can take drives back if they fail (as most carry a 2-3 year warranty against failure).

That is definitely some serious money to spend on a NAS, but it's also some serious storage too. If you get it I would love to find out how you get on with it.

[Demon Cleaner]

Just got a mail from the guy from the shop, and he only wrote to me, then continue to order at Cyberport. WTF!!

I wrote him back now that this was only a question, I didn't mean to offend him.

- - - Updated - - -

I probably found another solution, as the guy doesn't seem to reply anymore, he even replied me twice on Sunday!!

The NAS with 12 WD Red 3TB would be there, or any other shop around 2800€.

I also order sometimes at Easytecs, found them to be reliable (so far), and they sell it for 2650€, but they are using Hitachi Deskstar disks. They also sell it with 12 Hitachi 5K4000 (4TB) for 3200€, so basically for 400€ more than the other shop, but I would get 12TB more!

I read some reviews about these disks now, and they seem to be quite reliable, low power consumption because of the 5400rpm, but still performant enough, and approved for 24/7 activity.
I must say that I use the Hitachi 5K3000 (2TB) in my Qnap since 2 years now, and so far I didn't have problems at all. Aren't they manufactured now by WD anyways?

[Harrison]

Yes, I think they might be. Most drives now are all owned by with WD or Seagate.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[Demon Cleaner]

I ordered it today with 48TB, and I also ordered the 2GB RAM expansion for it, was only 45€. Had to do the payment via bank transfer though.

[Harrison]

48TB. Very nice. :-)

I'm a little jealous of that storage. Should keep you going for some time! Well, until 4K becomes mainstream, then I'm sure you will fill it fast. :lol:

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[Demon Cleaner]

:lol: that's true, let's just hope it never comes :lol:

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Btw, what is your opinion on using Raid? I read some stuff about it now, and some say it's not the best option, as writing to disks in a Raid could produce errors, and a rebuilt would then only succeed in 50% of the case, especially when using big disks. It would be better to use the single disks. But then again, I have no security if a disk fails? This got me puzzled now, I had so far good experience with my NAS in Raid5 mode, and this one, I would even put into Raid6.

I know that without Raid you would have more space, and the transfer rates would be higher, but what about security?

EDIT: I read now that Raid5 with hot spare is a good choice, as it is exactly the same than Raid6, but it's faster.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, so apparently Raid5 with hot spare only makes sense if you use more than 1 Raid. Got that told at the Synology forums.

[Harrison]

The fastest version of a Raid is Raid 1, where the data is stored identically across 2 identical volumes. This could be 2 disks, 4 disks etc.. this is actually faster than using all the disks as JBOD is because when reading from the disks the system can read from both at once and in different locations, so it greatly reduces seek times. With Raid 1 you have the mirrored copy, but you don't have any Parity, so you can't rebuild data if a drive fails.

I don't know what version of RAID to suggest. The only real advantage of RAID 6 is the addition of 2 Parity blocks, so it can cope with the lose of 2 drives at once and still rebuild the set, whereas RAID 5 can only cope with 1 disk failure at a time.

I have also read that larger disks are more prone to failure in a NAS compared to smaller ones. You could also look at a RAID 0+1 setup, but you lose a lot of disk space doing this.

[Demon Cleaner]

I know about all the Raids, and my idea was to use Raid6 anyway, don't mind that much about speed. I don't want to lose too much space, otherwise I will end up again with limited space. I wanted to buy this NAS and intended to use Raid6, like I already wanted to do with my Qnap, but with the Qnap I would have the problem with little space if I used Raid6. The Raid1 was never an option for me, neither was Raid0+1, exactly for the limited space reason.

It was fine so far with the Qnap and Raid5, ran perfectly for 2 years without any problems, so hopefully this one will do the same in Raid6. But one thing is for sure, if one disk would fail in the 2413+, I would switch it off, until I would have a replacement disk, otherwise I would run the risk that another one would fail ending up with losing all my data. I already wanted to order a spare disk straight away, but they're 180€, and I'm already spending 3300€, but I might want to order it anyway. But I think I should, as ordering one later if it happens might take some time.

One thing is sure, and I read that in every NAS forum, they always say to still make backups, at least for the stuff that is most important, and that's what I do, I have all my photos f.ex. backuped up on an internal disk, don't care so much about movies or series, as I could download them again, although that would be a time consuming procedure, and of course it would be a real pain, as also all my series and movies are done with Yadis and YAMJ to have the nice interface on the Mediaplayer. That was time consuming!!

I also store my music on one internal disk still, as it's quite small compared to other stuff, but I cannot have 20TB of movies and 10TB of retro stuff, and still have a backup of that, then Raid6 must be secure enough. It's still attached to my UPS, that at least protects it from power failures, so the disks are already a lot safer.

To have the real thing, you would need 2 NAS and mirror them completely, but hey, that's a lot of ca$h.

[Harrison]

What UPS are you using? I need to get one soon.

[Demon Cleaner]

I'm using the APC Back-UPS Pro 550 (model BR550GI) and I'm very happy with it. It's 330 Watts, and I plugged my NAS to it, and my modem. I'm also using it for my ethernet connection, so it goes first in the UPS, then to the modem.

The NAS recognizes straight away that a UPS is connected, and you get a little extra menu. Mine would run for approx. 25 minutes if there's a power failure. I set it up so that if there's still no power after 10 minutes, it will make a proper shutdown of the NAS, and then, if the power comes back, it will also restart the NAS again. I probably will buy another one to plug also my PC in, because that's on the other side of the room, 7m away from the NAS. And you can get this UPS for only 120€.

http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR550GI

Btw, my Synology got already dispatched yesterday, I'm eager to get it. And I also know now that the bank transfer went well.

[Demon Cleaner]

Got it today, installed the RAM expansion, and I'm currently installing it, will take some time..............

Creating Raid 6 now, leaves you at 36.34TB total.

It's quite funny when you think, starting with 48TB, which are in reality only 43.68TB (4TB = 3.64TB), then after applying Raid 6, you're at 36.34TB.

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Raid 6 was configured quite fast, but it asked me also to perform a disk check, it would then check for bad sectors and stuff and correct them, so I also ran that, and it's running since 20 hours now, and it's at 17%, so it will take 3 more days before I can use it.

[Demon Cleaner]

At 30% now, come on, I wanna try some stuff :(

[Kin Hell]

At 30% now, come on, I wanna try some stuff :(

This is one of the drawbacks when dealing with raid arrays on cheap NAS boxes for the home. The worst thing you can do in a cheap NAS box is add drives at a later date. Fill it from new or spend up to 3/4 days adding a new drive. :nuts:

[Harrison]

Any NAS/server will take a long time to build a large RAID 5/6 array for the first time that contains large volumes and a large number of disks. But once configured it should be fine, and hot swapping a failed drive in a RAID 6 setup actually shouldn't be noticed as it should rebuild the data across the set to the replacement drive in the background, and still be able to access the data during the process.

[Demon Cleaner]

63%

Like I said before, the Raid 6 was configured in less than 10 minutes, like it also was on my Qnap, the NAS would have been ready after 10 minutes if I didn't agree to make the very thorough disk check, which takes an eternity, but once done, it has been completely tested.

I can use the NAS, but I don't want to copy stuff to it yet whilst the disk check is running, I prefer to wait until it's finished. I'm not in a hurry, my Qnap still does the job, but you boys know how it is when you have a new toy.

[Harrison]

So very true. You need to tinker with it. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

Copying stuff at the moment, will take very long. Disk check took around 96 hours.

[Harrison]

Ouch! At least you now know all the disks are ok.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[Demon Cleaner]

Ouch! At least you now know all the disks are ok.
Exactly, and that was the reason I did the disk check, I prefer to do it now, and be sure the disks are fine, than regretting it later when one fails. It's still no 100% guarantee that they will work correctly for the next coming years, but at least it's a relief to know that at the moment everything's fine.

[Kin Hell]

Four Days! - Four whole days!! :huh: :blink: