Best Raid option for NAS starting out with 2 drives but wanting to expand?

[Gershy13]

 

Hi, So im looking to build a home server/nas soon, and im planning on using OMV.
But im not sure what type of raid i should use... I want to have some sort of redundancy, but im only going to be starting out with 2 drives, and then slowly expanding as my storage needs increase...
Whats a good solution for me? Im planning on building a system with a i5 4590, 8gb ddr3, q87 motherboard, 2x 4 or 6TB Segate Barracuda drives.

Tips?

Thanks
Gershy13

[Electronics Wizardy]

Why seagate barracuda drives, really not great for a nas.

 

If you want good nas drive, get a ironwolf or red. If you want cheap, get some external drives and remove the drives. Get soemthing like this https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Drive-STGY8000400/dp/B07CQJBSQL/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=8tb+external+hdd&qid=1557103959&s=gateway&sr=8-4

 

Id personally use zfs, and mirrors, so just add more mirrors later on. Btrfs also allows very easy expansion. You can also go the snapraid + mergerfs path.

[Razor Blade]

It's been a while since I've messed with OMV... I believe if you're using the mdadm filesystem you can add disks and "grow" an array right from the web UI under the RAID management tab.

[Firewrath9]

Id reccomemd Ironwolfs, or seagate exos,

raid 0 to start, then perhaps 10, or 5

[Gershy13]

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why seagate barracuda drives, really not great for a nas.

 

If you want good nas drive, get a ironwolf or red. If you want cheap, get some external drives and remove the drives. Get soemthing like this https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Drive-STGY8000400/dp/B07CQJBSQL/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=8tb+external+hdd&qid=1557103959&s=gateway&sr=8-4

 

Id personally use zfs, and mirrors, so just add more mirrors later on. Btrfs also allows very easy expansion. You can also go the snapraid + mergerfs path.

I was planning to shuck some Seagate expansion drives, and they give barracuda disks...

Doesn't zfs need 1gb ram per tb? And I thought it wasn't expandable... Also I would like to not have to have double the storage capacity and have only half of it usable with mirroring. That's why I was thinking raid 5, but it needs 3 drives?

I've heard good things about snapraid, but it needs 3 disks aswell....

9 hours ago, Razor Blade said:

It's been a while since I've messed with OMV... I believe if you're using the mdadm filesystem you can add disks and "grow" an array right from the web UI under the RAID management tab.

Thanks, I was wondering what type of raid to use...

9 hours ago, Firewrath9 said:

Id reccomemd Ironwolfs, or seagate exos,

raid 0 to start, then perhaps 10, or 5

Is it possible to change your raid mode without losing data? So if I started with raid 1, and then when I got another drive I changed it to raid 5, would that work?

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

was planning to shuck some Seagate expansion drives, and they give barracuda disks...

Yea will work in a nas, just be sure to get them cheap.

 

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Doesn't zfs need 1gb ram per tb?

complete bs, doesn't need any more ram than any other filesystem. Ram is just used as a disk cache, for a home server, not much at all is needed.

 

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

And I thought it wasn't expandable... Also I would like to not have to have double the storage capacity and have only half of it usable with mirroring. That's why I was thinking raid 5, but it needs 3 drives?

You can add a mirror to a single drive and keep adding mirrors.

 

if you want easily expansion btrfs might be your friend here.

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

I've heard good things about snapraid, but it needs 3 disks aswell.... 

You can start off with one drive in snap raid if you want. Then add a parity, then add more data drives.

 

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

s it possible to change your raid mode without losing data? So if I started with raid 1, and then when I got another drive I changed it to raid 5, would that work?

Most raid systems don't support this. Btrfs does, but md doesn't

 

s it possible to change your raid mode without losing data? So if I started with raid 1, and then when I got another drive I changed it to raid 5, would that work? s it possible to change your raid mode without losing data? So if I started with raid 1, and then when I got another drive I changed it to raid 5, would that work?

 

 

Why not just use unraid? Seems perfect for your use here and easy to expand.

[Gershy13]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea will work in a nas, just be sure to get them cheap.

 

complete bs, doesn't need any more ram than any other filesystem. Ram is just used as a disk cache, for a home server, not much at all is needed.

 

You can add a mirror to a single drive and keep adding mirrors.

 

if you want easily expansion btrfs might be your friend here.

You can start off with one drive in snap raid if you want. Then add a parity, then add more data drives.

 

Most raid systems don't support this. Btrfs does, but md doesn't

 

s it possible to change your raid mode without losing data? So if I started with raid 1, and then when I got another drive I changed it to raid 5, would that work? s it possible to change your raid mode without losing data? So if I started with raid 1, and then when I got another drive I changed it to raid 5, would that work?

 

 

Why not just use unraid? Seems perfect for your use here and easy to expand.

thanks, i checked the snapraid website, and it says you need a minimum of 3 drives... so thats why i was confused? I was considering unraid, but i wanted something free, however if it is a much better solution, then im willing to pay... So zfs or btrfs, and snapraid with OMV or unraid?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

thanks, i checked the snapraid website, and it says you need a minimum of 3 drives... so thats why i was confused? I was considering unraid, but i wanted something free, however if it is a much better solution, then im willing to pay... So zfs or btrfs, and snapraid with OMV or unraid?

really unraid seems to be the best options here. Give it a trial.

[Gershy13]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

really unraid seems to be the best options here. Give it a trial.

I havent actually got the machine built... but i will give it a try thanks... 

[Razor Blade]

Being a FreeNAS user myself, for this use case I would have to concur that Unraid (or even Xpenology) might be a better option for what you're wanting to do. As stated above, it seems you're looking more for a hybrid array rather than a more traditional RAID setup. ZFS is incredible but comes at a cost. Expanding a ZFS array you would need to do in clusters of hard drives instead of just adding onesie twosies.

[Gershy13]

13 hours ago, Razor Blade said:

Being a FreeNAS user myself, for this use case I would have to concur that Unraid (or even Xpenology) might be a better option for what you're wanting to do. As stated above, it seems you're looking more for a hybrid array rather than a more traditional RAID setup. ZFS is incredible but comes at a cost. Expanding a ZFS array you would need to do in clusters of hard drives instead of just adding onesie twosies.

Yeah i think i decided against using freenas, i was considering OMV or unraid, and now i might check out xpenology, i hadnt really considered it before... Thoughts on OMV?

[Razor Blade]

On 5/7/2019 at 9:42 AM, Gershy13 said:

Yeah i think i decided against using freenas, i was considering OMV or unraid, and now i might check out xpenology, i hadnt really considered it before... Thoughts on OMV?

I tend to be biased toward Debian distros because that is what I'm...err...most?...familiar with...however I haven't heard a whole lot going on at OMV... for example, the last announcement thread on their forum was way back in September 2018... not saying it's bad or anything, just that if you're wanting an OS with constant updates and the latest features, might want to look around a bit more...

 

I'd say give Unraid a shot. If it's worth the money, hopefully you can decide in the 30 day trial. If not, I've heard that Xpenology is good too (just keep in mind it is essentially a hacked version of the synology OS)

[Gershy13]

On 5/9/2019 at 1:33 AM, Razor Blade said:

I tend to be biased toward Debian distros because that is what I'm...err...most?...familiar with...however I haven't heard a whole lot going on at OMV... for example, the last announcement thread on their forum was way back in September 2018... not saying it's bad or anything, just that if you're wanting an OS with constant updates and the latest features, might want to look around a bit more...

 

I'd say give Unraid a shot. If it's worth the money, hopefully you can decide in the 30 day trial. If not, I've heard that Xpenology is good too (just keep in mind it is essentially a hacked version of the synology OS)

Yeah, I think unraid is my only good option to be fair... It's probably worth paying for it, as long as I can get all the software I wanted to run on that nas/server working in unraid...