NASLite Network Attached Storage

Right now I have 3 500g hds in my Naslite box. I would like to add a 4th. Then basically disk0 will backup to 1 and disk2 to 3. What is the best option for this if I don't want to go with a raid card?

You could use the inbuilt functionality of the daily mirror function to mirror drive 0 to 1 and 2 to 3. I would suggest staggering the mirror timing such that they don't try to mirror at the same time.

[edit] Corrected incorrect drive numbering...... [/edit]

Hi Chip33,

I use mirroring drives built in NL and works great. I have 3 drives. Initially, they were planned for RAID5 but as NL didn't like RAID (software so no good), now 0 is the master, 1 is the mirror of 0 at noon and 2 is the mirror of 0 at 9PM. A bit overkill but I have my half day backups. One day, I may buy a RAID card if I need more space on the drives.

N.B. Don't forget that the mirror times are GMT / CET (Greenwich Meridian Time / Central European Time) and not your local time.

Regards.

So say on drive 0 you have 10 files and 2 are new. Does the other drive(1) get all files copied over again or just the new ones?

From memory it's an incremental update - if only 2 files are new then they are the only ones copied across. Bear in mind that it's a full synchronisation - if you delete something on the master drive it will be deleted from the mirrored drive at the next sync. Oh, and even if you just move files about, it will delete from the old folder and copy across again to the new folder.

Is the master drive still fully accessible during mirroring?

And in relation to setting the time, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, not Meridian Time by the way) is not the same as CET which is one hour ahead of GMT. Out of curiosity why can the time not be set to local time in the main options menu? It's fine for those of us in Europe but must be a nuisance for much of the rest of the world.

You can access the source drive during mirror. The mirror event may generate some errors but there will be no harm done to any files other than the inconsistency of the ones that were changed or locked during the mirror event. Next event cycle will correct those as necessary.

GMT is significant since the client machines will adjust against that. If your client is set to GMT+5 in your localization settings, the problem becomes obvious.

Thanks for the clarification re accessing the source disk during mirroring, Tony. Very clear and helpful.



Er..not to me I'm afraid Can you, or someone, explain in a bit more detail?

The client machine, running Windows let's say, can be set to local time, however that will have to be identified by the "Timezone" settings tab in the "Date/Time Properties" dialog. The timezone provides a +/- correction with respect to GMT. That way when you send email cross-timezone, the correct chronology is kept by adjusting the time differences with respect to GMT. Without observing a timezone with respect to GMT there will be no point of reference so system time becomes arbitrary.

NASLite does not support a timezone offset so setting time to GMT will allow the client to apply timezone offset and report the result in the correct local time.

Thanks for taking to trouble to explain this, Tony. I think I understand but I suspect it's not of any great relevance to me living as I do in the GMT time zone (except during British Summer Time of course!)