-
(Remember my claxon earlier)
1) is what your describing restore or rebuild in terms of what atk asked?
2) cool, this is useful thanks. Where can I reliably better learn about these? Googling the DS420j suggests this'd be huge overkill here. When you say you have 3 drives, is that 3 of the DS420j's - my budget wouldn't cover that kind of spend. I appreciate I'll get what I pay for / buy cheap buy twice etc.
rhb-
1) I think what atk and I are suggesting is plan to rebuild if a Pi fails. Just back up your data (whatever that is).
You don't need a local copy of your word processor, you do need a copy of the novel you are working on.
2) I have one DS420j with 3 drives in it. The drives are the expensive part IIRC.
The 'calculator' is worth a play with to get an idea of options for number of drives and data redundancy in any NAS. https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator
The RAID options are standard, SHR1/2 are Synology specific.
You can get 1 and 2 bay NAS systems. which are cheaper but might not have enough slots for your desired data redundancy.
jellybaby
1) Copying a live filesystem isn't a very good way of running a backup. You can end up with corrupt files because the OS/app had them open at the time, missing boot partitions etc. Hence I don't think it is a good idea to try and clone the running system.
2) The trouble with a Pi based thing for storage is by the time you connect a couple of drives you end up with a mess of cables and power supplies. Much easier to buy an appliance. I've got a Synology (DS420j) which just works. I have 3 drives and a RAID config (actually SHR) so if one fails I can replace one and not loose data.