On Fri, 02 Nov 2018 21:31:27 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Serious question: how often would you expect to have to replace (i.e.
refresh) a NAS?

replace/refresh what? also, replace & refresh mean different things, so
what exactly are you asking?

keep in mind that a nas can be a computer with file sharing enabled
(along with whatever else) and one or more drives. it doesn't have to
be a nas box such as synology or qnap. there are advantages to each.

I didn't ask you for a definition of 'NAS', a term which you
introduced to this discussion. I was wanting to know "how often would
you expect to have to replace (i.e. refresh) a NAS?"

a question which is unclear and doesn't make much sense.

To explain the term 'refresh' to you, it comes from Alan Browne's use
of the word in:

-----------------------------------
tl;dr discs are *not* archival.

That's why I refresh them every 5 - 6 years.
------------------------------------

... which I took to mean he replaced them because they had come to the
end of their reliable life.

optical discs degrade and will eventually become unreadable much faster
than hard drives, while sitting unused on a shelf.

The same problem, although from different causes, must occur with NAS
storage.

of course. nothing lasts forever.

Software may become obsolete or hardware become old and
unreliable: there must come a time when it is best to replace the NAS
with a new one. Hence my serious question: how often would you expect
to have to replace (i.e. refresh) a NAS?

again, replace & refresh mean different things.

in any event, how often do you replace/refresh hard drives in your
laptop or desktop computer? how often do you replace/refresh the
computer itself? how heavily do you use the computer? how much down
time can you tolerate if there's a problem?

nas hardware is mostly the same (sometimes exactly the same) as a
desktop computer, just optimized for a different use case.

tl;dr there is no single answer.

Now in previous discussions you have told us the economic life of a PC
is about 3 years and of Apple about 5 years. That means the life
expectancy of a NAS will be about the same as that of a CD disc or
similar. At that time you will be looking to either replace it or, at
the least, install new drives. You may prolong its life by fitting new
drives but I doubt if you would do that a second time.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens