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[Garawa]

I have had my NAS drive with 2 x 3Tb drives for 5 months now and haven't set it up because all I hear is "you  should do this" only to hear "no, you should do this"!  The internet is no help at all!  Perhaps it is easier to say what I hope to do and get your advice that way - I have never had one of these before so please be basic in your comments!!

1)  Initially I was told to mirror the discs but afterwards it was mentioned to me "what if you make a mistake or a problem happens then it happens on both drives".  I would rather schedule a regular drive back-up onto the 2nd disc and I assume the Total Recovery Pro software that came with it would do this.  Can this happen without my intervention ie every week/month etc?  Which RAID setting would this be?

2)  Can this also schedule file back-ups ie back-up documents & settings to the NAS?

3)  I want the disc to primarily store and serve media to the wireless devices in the household instead of having old photos solely on CDs for example.  These photos/music/movies etc would be accessible to all in the house but my wife and I would also need a section for our own private files.  Would I need to create 2 partitions for us to have a private partition each as well as the open media partition or could I use the un-partitioned drive as it is but with passwords on the user folders?

3)  If the password route is an option, how do you do this?  When trying before, I believe I could only protect the whole drive not individual files which causes problems for some devices trying to view the media.  Our own private folders would need to be password protected so that we can access them remotely via AjaxExplorer.

Any help or advice you can give would be greatly received.

[ivan]

The first thing you have to consider is how much storage capacity you need and do you need access all the time.

At the start you have three choices:
JBOD - that will give you the full 6TB capacity BUT, If there is a disk problem and you don't have a full backup you loose the lot.
RAID 1 - this will give 3TB capacity and you won't loose your data if one disk goes bad but you should still have a backup for safety.
STANDARD - this again gives the 6TB capacity but again if a disk goes bad you loose everything not backed up on that disk.

From this you should see that no matter what you decide you also need to arrange a backup strategy.  This could be using the second disk in the STANDARD setup as the backup but this reduces the storage capacity to 3TB.

When we show a new client any NAS we use a set of data (photos, manuals etc) loaded from an 8GB USB stick that they can setup how they want.  We then use this setup as a template for their requirements.  You can do the same in conjunction with reading the manual - particularly the Advanced Section of the web user interface section.  It gives details of setting up users and access permissions.  By using a small amount of data you should have no worries if things don't work as expected and you have to delete everything and start again.  That way you will end up with what works for YOU.

As an example, it would be no good me describing how our DNS-320s are on 24/7 and backup to our storage array and another set of DNS-320s off site because it would be overkill for you.

Once you have decided what you want go for it and ask more questions here as necessary.

[Garawa]

Ok, so I have changed my set-up to now be 2 "Standard" discs that I can schedule an over-night back-up to the 2nd disc.  I still cannot see in the instructions or any settings within the interface as to how alter the partitions.  Even when reformatting this never, as I expected, came up as an option.

And I still cannot fathom out what I should have.  Do I have one unprotected one with all our media that all the devices can access and 2 for the private user documents or just one for those private files that the folder can be password protected?  As each user can enter with their own details that seems like over-kill.

[ivan]

Folders are created from a computer connected to the NAs in the same way you create folders on the computer.

Access rights are set from the NAS web interface and I would recommend that you read the 'web user interface -> advanced section' of the manual to get an understanding of users and groups and how to set them up.  As you want a private section don't share the root directory (Volume_1).

[Garawa]

Thanks, kind of going round in circles with the manual and using half the 320 and half the 320L manuals show the various bits I need!  I think one big confusion was that I was seeing the Volume on its own and then trying to work out what to with it.  I didn't realise I needed to delete that and then treat each folder differently.  Job done.......sort of!

I have the users and permissions now set to each user and when I click into the NAS on the PC, I can see these folders and access mine with a password being required for the others.  I set them up with the admin account in the main control panel but in there I cannot see ANY folders or the volume itself for each of the users.  Is this correct?

Also, with UPnP set-up and the media files given "public" permissions, the Xbox and Blu-ray player cannot see the folders I created but can see the NAS itself.  I can't see any settings I might have missed here.

[ivan]

OK you are getting near to what you want which is good.  If the permissions work on your computer to your satisfaction then that part of the job is done.

I will try and do a comparison of the manuals to find the differences that have been incorporated onto the 'L'.  We tend to work with the general idea that 'if it works use it, fine tuning may come later' and we get very few requests for change from our clients. 

I am sorry I can't help with media streaming because we don't use it here and have never set it up.  Likewise we don't have a DNS-320L to play with and won't until a client gets one and asks us to set it up, so again I can't talk about the differences between it and the DNS-320.