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[chumpalumpa]

Hi---I'm new to NAS and I want to get this device to archive all of my media in a 4x2 TB configuration using RAID5;  one concern I have---say I own this device for 7 years or so and then the device (not the drives) fail....and say by that time this model cannot be replaced and/or is no longer supported.  If I did a RAID5 set up for those 4 drives...could those 4 drives be removed and placed into a similar 4 drive RAID device...say even one by a completely different manufacturer, and the data would still be usable?

[JavaLawyer]

Here's a thread describing a software application, "R-Studio", used by a DNS-343 owner to virtually mount a DNS-343 RAID 5 array on a PC: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=6144.msg61493#msg61493.

Even through there seems to be a workable solution to recover data in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure, a RAID 5 array is not a replacement for a separate physical backup. RAID 5 provides redundancy, but is not a backup solution.

[chumpalumpa]

So as a home user...say I have 3-6 TB of data (pictures/music/video files) scattered on my main pc's multiple drives;  I then want to send all of this to the dlink device as a raid5 array backup.  What would you do then as an additional backup to that for that amount of data?

[JavaLawyer]

As a home user myself, I have two DNS-343s: one for primary storage, and the second as a backup of the primary. Additionally, I have a third (smaller) storage device for a 2nd level backup of critical data.

Again, RAID is not a backup. If the RAID array itself fails from data corruption, virus, accidentally deletion/formatting, etc., there are no easy data recovery options. RAID 5 only provides redundancy to protect against the physical/logical failure of a single drive.