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We're about to buy our first NAS and I have some questions about how to make it suit our needs. Let me describe our current setup, what's wrong with it, and how we'd like to move to the future.

My wife and and I are avid photographers. We both have well over 500GB of photos. Most of which are, of course, junk, and should be deleted, but that takes time. And of course there are family memories in there that are precious.

We both have MacBook Pro's with 500GB SSD and 1TB hard drives in them. These machines are 5-6 years old and really starting to show their age. Replacing them is on the horizon but we can't, getting that kind of disk space into a MacBook Pro, especially for things you don't need, is prohibitively expensive.

We have a very good back up system at home and don't want to compromise data reliability. We have 2 airport express base stations, one with a 5 TB drive that runs a time machine backup for both our laptops, and one with two 3TB drives, one for my laptop, one for hers. These 3TB drives rotate out approximately monthly to a safe deposit box. So we have hit the trifecta of data back. 1) a copy on our machine, 2) a copy backed up locally (actually 2 copies but that's ok), and 3) an off site copy.

If we do some data management we should be able to take our personal data and divide it up into "stuff we need on our laptop" and stuff that can live on the Synology. Assume that that is done.

So the question is, how do we keep the backup trifecta in place? Here's what I'm thinking:

A NAS running Raid 5 with 3 drives, single time machine running the 5TB drive.

The single time machine backs up our laptops, preserving our "in use" data. So that covers #1 and #2 for in use data.

We also use Time Machine to backup our laptops to the Synology.

And then here's the part I don't truly understand. Approximately monthly, we pull a single drive out of the synology and take it to the safe deposit box. We bring last month's drive back. Format it, and install it in the NAS.

The NAS realizes that one of its RAID drives has failed and starts doing its recovery, using the new, blank drive. Once it is done we are back to our normal level of performance.

And of course if the house burns down, we still have the single drive from the RAID5 in the bank safe deposit box.

(Note, I barely understand the RAID5 vs 6 and perhaps 6 is what I need here, and I bring 2 drives to the bank for off site storage.)

It's a long opening but yes, there is a question in here. Will a RAID 5 let me pull a disk, or a RAID 6, or reading the comments, a RAID 10? From reading the comments a RAID5 will not work, but it sounds like a RAID 10.

This also sounds like I'm "abusing" the RAID system to get a local backup and an off-site backup. What's a better solution? (And please don't say cloud...)

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    I would use a RAID10 personally. You could rotate the drives as you stated as well, but of course that is up to you. Either way, what help do you need though? Sounds like you have it figured out to me. Is there an area specifically you are getting stuck on?
    – Eric F
    Nov 2, 2016 at 23:07
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    Just.. a caution note.. a single drive from a 3-disk RAID5 is not enough to rebuild the RAID set. So if your RAID box died, that single drive offsite does nothing for you.
    – Darius
    Nov 3, 2016 at 1:11
  • Darius, is right! A RAID uses all of your drives and each has an index. That single drive in your safe is useless.The protection IS THE RAID. If a drive fails, you replace one.People will warn you,"What if two drives fail?!". Then you are hosed. What to do? One RAID system is your working RAID system, the next is to have another RAID system as your backup. I read about RAID too for a long time, it's a deal to get it all. I'd have to go back again to remember, but RAID 5 maxes your TB's. But what I'm saying is the crux of your logic. Now go back and read about RAIDS and ways to backup.
    – ejbytes
    Nov 3, 2016 at 3:53
  • I use RAID 5 to max my TB storage. I use a 4-disc, 6TB ea (WD Red) RAID5, which is 24TB but I get 16TB with R5. How do I use it? I have a working number of folders on my PC that get backed up hourly as I set it. I also backup my system, so if my PC dies, it's there in the RAID. That's my safety net. You could do the same for your two PC's. How to protect the RAID in a fire? Well now it's money isn't it. Pay to backup to Cloud, then you are g2g. PC is work, NAS is protection, Cloud is backup. Or you could Use a few external TB drives to backup your NAS. Or another NAS. See how it works now?
    – ejbytes
    Nov 3, 2016 at 4:09

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