Internal RAID, NAS or 1 large external drive?

I have a basic understanding of each one but was wondering if I could get some input on which is best for me.

Currently I have in my system a 128 gig Crucial m4 as my boot drive and a 1.5T Western Digital as a collection drive. Pretty much everything on this collection drive I would like to keep and have a functioning backup of.

At one time I had an external drive that held my FLAC collection. This drive died, I had no backup and have since used the Zune service in the meantime. The thought of re-ripping an tagging my files has seemed like too much of a chore until now. I'd like to do this again and have the files available when my PC is off so I can stream them to my Oppo BDP-93.

This point makes me think the only options then are an external drive or NAS. Problem is with 1 external drive there is no backup. NAS seems like it's very similar to having more than one external drive with the benefit of having it wired into your router but also seems to be the most expensive.

I'm thinking of having about 3T of storage for the time being. I guess I could get by with having the computer on during streaming if necessary and if the cost is significantly lower. Basically I'm looking for ease of use, lots of storage and the lowest price possible. I'm also going to have more than music on this drive. I will be putting sensitive documents as well and scanning most of my personal paperwork I have on hand.

Ideas?

Sounds like what you need is two external drives. One to extend the physical drive, and one to back up both. The best way to extend a small internal drive is with symlinks.

Instead of storing media locally, you just put a symlink in the local directory to the external drive. All applications will "see" the file as being local. When you unplug the external drive, the links will break, but as soon as you plug it back in again everything will be good to go.

When you do a full backup, just make sure there are no exclusions for external drives. The backup should create an archive of BOTH the local hard drive and the media drive.

FWIW, there are bandwidth considerations with consumer networks. I'd definitely run CAT6 with gigabit switches. Most NAS solutions run at around 36MB/s under load with the more expensive drives getting upwards of 70-80. Just something to think about depending on the use. SATA/USB3 attached storage will be much faster on the local computer.

Any reason if I would decide to dump two drives in an external enclosure (for RAID) to pick USB 3.0 over e-SATA or vice versa? Are there any enclosures that power down when the machine shuts down or would I be better suited to just put them in some of the many empty drive bays I have in the case?

I think the best set up on a budget for redundancy is to use an external enclosure without RAID. Instead of RAID, swap out the drives on a daily/weekly basis and store one away from the computer/enclosure and hopefully in a fire proof safe of some sort. Then you have daily/weekly redundancy and you are safe from electrical, fire, or weather events.

So you have |Computer|--USB-->Enclosure + HDD#1. HDD#2 would be in the fire safe. Daily/weekly, you would swap HDD#1 with HDD#2 and put HDD#1 in the safe. They even sale HDD docks which make the swap very easy.

Don't know if it helps, but here's what I did when I ran into this problem:

I have three drives, all USB (2.0 or 3.0). They are all 5400 RPM external drives. I like these because you don't need external power.

The first drive is just a media drive. It's basically just an extension of the iTunes Media folder for TV and Movies. I usually plug this guy in whenever my computer is at home. The drive is asleep most of the time. It only wakes up when I want to watch something, and it wakes up pretty damn fast. Usually I actually request the file from my iPad, and it just streams over the wifi. There's no special set up here at all.

The second drive is my "regular backup" drive. It backs up everything on the internal SSD AND the external media drive. The only folder that is excluded is Steam. No real point in backing up Steam.

The third drive is my archival backup. I do this about once a month. It's the same as the regular backup, only I do it less frequently and keep it in a safe deposit box.

There is actually a 4th drive, which is just a backup of the media drive, but I haven't touched that in months.

Might seem like a lot, but I got caught with my pants down once and realized I never wanted to go through that again. Took weeks to reconstruct my system, re-download everything, repurchase any lost media, etc. HDDs are so inexpensive now it's just worth it to me. A good USB 3.0 1TB 5400 RPM drive is like $100.

Thanks for the info guys. Any particular enclosures you would recommend? The last one I had killed my drive (and my mp3 collection). I think it was a powered Rosewill.

I actually started looking at the Thermaltake docks (I'm assuming this is what you meant Timman).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153071

This one in overview says, supports any 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive up to 2 TB. But then in details it says up to 3 TB per bay, even though it seems to be a single bay unit.

For stuff I just can't afford to lose (eg. home movies and audio of kids when they were small and pictures), I have RAID 1 NAS AND an external USB HDD to match it.