Looking for a drive enclosure for DIY Nas?

[paddy-stone]

17 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

How likely is the raid to fail? Is there a higher risk of failure than a normal drive?

That's something I can't answer, there's no knowing.. the point is to make backups of anything you can't stand losing/that's irreplaceable. Better to be safe, than sorry IMO. a 4TB disk costs approx £100 or less if you get a desktop drive, so that will suffice for a fair amount of data. You only have to replace the drives if they fail completely, but a RAID array can fail for other reasons than the disk dying.. it might be possible to fix the problems and just re-do the array (from backups), but if not, you'll have to replace the drive(s). If the drives are still in warranty, then you might be able to RMA it/them. I have kept backups for a large number of years now, they are crucial for me, so the expense is worth it... and it's not like I have had to buy that many disks to do it really, often I have drives left over from some project, or from a system I upgraded. They are fine for storing the occasional backup, just regularly check them and ensure they aren't failing. It would be quite rare for the raid array to fail, and my backups to fail simultaneously. Here;s a little info about raid arrays reasons for failing.

 

https://www.interdatarecovery.com/blog/the-5-most-common-causes-of-raid-system-failures-and-what-to-do-about-them

[Gershy13]

On 2/8/2019 at 4:34 PM, paddy-stone said:

That's something I can't answer, there's no knowing.. the point is to make backups of anything you can't stand losing/that's irreplaceable. Better to be safe, than sorry IMO. a 4TB disk costs approx £100 or less if you get a desktop drive, so that will suffice for a fair amount of data. You only have to replace the drives if they fail completely, but a RAID array can fail for other reasons than the disk dying.. it might be possible to fix the problems and just re-do the array (from backups), but if not, you'll have to replace the drive(s). If the drives are still in warranty, then you might be able to RMA it/them. I have kept backups for a large number of years now, they are crucial for me, so the expense is worth it... and it's not like I have had to buy that many disks to do it really, often I have drives left over from some project, or from a system I upgraded. They are fine for storing the occasional backup, just regularly check them and ensure they aren't failing. It would be quite rare for the raid array to fail, and my backups to fail simultaneously. Here;s a little info about raid arrays reasons for failing.

 

https://www.interdatarecovery.com/blog/the-5-most-common-causes-of-raid-system-failures-and-what-to-do-about-them

Yeah haha I think I need to just use parity probably end up getting around 8-12tb of useable storage, and then a parity drive... Not sure how big my parity drive should be, as I've heard that it depends on the size of the parity drive if you wanted to add another big drive to the pool later... So would I be better off getting an 8tb parity drive now for upgrade ability in the future?

[paddy-stone]

7 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Yeah haha I think I need to just use parity probably end up getting around 8-12tb of useable storage, and then a parity drive... Not sure how big my parity drive should be, as I've heard that it depends on the size of the parity drive if you wanted to add another big drive to the pool later... So would I be better off getting an 8tb parity drive now for upgrade ability in the future?

No, the parity drive is fine being the same size, and any drive can be the parity drive, so in the future if you want larger disks, you just buy an extra for the parity drive. If you got one now, it'd be wasted really as it'd still only use 4TB of it's 8TB size. By the time you need to expand your storage, drives might have dropped in price as drives are getting larger too, eg 8TB drives can be had for around £180+  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=8000000000000,15360000000000&sort=price&page=1

And just 2 years ago, they were near enough £300. I have 16TB usable right now on my main pc/server, and have about half of that free right now, I overestimated the growth of my library/storage, it'll be years before this gets anywhere near full, and by that time I will most likely want to change them to 6-8TB drives, which should be cheaper barring any mishaps with production/factories. And I will then filter down the drives to my second server if they are still healthy enough. It seems like a LOT of money for HDDs, but in reality think about how much storage you get for that amount, and the longevity... these drives could last a LOT of years. Hell, I still have a 200GB maxtor drive from 2004 IIRC, that I gave to my nephew for him to use for his media, and a 1TB samsung drive from around 2008. They weren't used by a server, so probably didn't get that many writes all-in-all, but it's still nice knowing that a drive that seemed expensive when I bought it lasted so long, and is still going. I just wouldn't use them for anything critical at that age, media is replaceable, so doesn't matter to much if they fail.

BTW, at the moment there are only one OS (that I know of) that allow you to expand a raid array and keep the data already written IIRC, which is unraid. All others at the moment has to have the raid array re-done if adding to it... freenas has said that we should get that ability some time, but no further details of when yet AFAIK. BTW the parity drive has to be the same size, or bigger than the other disks in the array, so in some cases you're better off getting the same drives exactly IMO.

[Gershy13]

25 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

No, the parity drive is fine being the same size, and any drive can be the parity drive, so in the future if you want larger disks, you just buy an extra for the parity drive. If you got one now, it'd be wasted really as it'd still only use 4TB of it's 8TB size. By the time you need to expand your storage, drives might have dropped in price as drives are getting larger too, eg 8TB drives can be had for around £180+  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=8000000000000,15360000000000&sort=price&page=1

And just 2 years ago, they were near enough £300. I have 16TB usable right now on my main pc/server, and have about half of that free right now, I overestimated the growth of my library/storage, it'll be years before this gets anywhere near full, and by that time I will most likely want to change them to 6-8TB drives, which should be cheaper barring any mishaps with production/factories. And I will then filter down the drives to my second server if they are still healthy enough. It seems like a LOT of money for HDDs, but in reality think about how much storage you get for that amount, and the longevity... these drives could last a LOT of years. Hell, I still have a 200GB maxtor drive from 2004 IIRC, that I gave to my nephew for him to use for his media, and a 1TB samsung drive from around 2008. They weren't used by a server, so probably didn't get that many writes all-in-all, but it's still nice knowing that a drive that seemed expensive when I bought it lasted so long, and is still going. I just wouldn't use them for anything critical at that age, media is replaceable, so doesn't matter to much if they fail.

BTW, at the moment there are only one OS (that I know of) that allow you to expand a raid array and keep the data already written IIRC, which is unraid. All others at the moment has to have the raid array re-done if adding to it... freenas has said that we should get that ability some time, but no further details of when yet AFAIK. BTW the parity drive has to be the same size, or bigger than the other disks in the array, so in some cases you're better off getting the same drives exactly IMO.

AHH ok thanks yeah that's a very good point... I didn't think about prices dropping when I need to expand... So I'll probably end up getting maybe 4 4tb drives and have 12tb usable... 

 

Yeah unraid was the only one I knew of that could do that, what about openmediavalut? I thought it could do it too...

[paddy-stone]

1 minute ago, Gershy13 said:

AHH ok thanks yeah that's a very good point... I didn't think about prices dropping when I need to expand... So I'll probably end up getting maybe 4 4tb drives and have 12tb usable... 

 

Yeah unraid was the only one I knew of that could do that, what about openmediavalut? I thought it could do it too...

Not sure about OMV, haven't used it myself, but from a very quick google, it does seem like it will also do this. I personally would stick with an OS that you like, and has great features, ease of use etc.. of course if you were to give them a try in a VM with some virtual disks, then you can find out if you like them. Or use the spare system you have to try some out before deciding.

[Gershy13]

45 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Not sure about OMV, haven't used it myself, but from a very quick google, it does seem like it will also do this. I personally would stick with an OS that you like, and has great features, ease of use etc.. of course if you were to give them a try in a VM with some virtual disks, then you can find out if you like them. Or use the spare system you have to try some out before deciding.

thanks... yeah thats a great idea, i just downloaded virtualbox and the OMV iso, and am trying it in a VM. Im not sure what other OS's there are that would compete with OMV and unRAID. 

[paddy-stone]

23 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

thanks... yeah thats a great idea, i just downloaded virtualbox and the OMV iso, and am trying it in a VM. Im not sure what other OS's there are that would compete with OMV and unRAID. 

Yeah, not sure there. I went with freenas, tried a few others and went back to freenas. I guess mostly because of the amount of information/resources for it, where as some others just didn't.. like they had outdated guides or something that I didn't like. Let me know how you get on with OMV, might be tempted myself even if just for a pet project.

[Gershy13]

On 2/12/2019 at 11:09 PM, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, not sure there. I went with freenas, tried a few others and went back to freenas. I guess mostly because of the amount of information/resources for it, where as some others just didn't.. like they had outdated guides or something that I didn't like. Let me know how you get on with OMV, might be tempted myself even if just for a pet project.

Yeah sure will do!