NAS Build

[PositiveRaisin2]

I am repurposing an old pc to be a nas/ftp file server/ media server. Are two WD 4tb reds in raid 1 good for this?

[Stu_Bear]

Yes.

[SupaKomputa]

Yeah, RAID 1 or JBOD is good.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Are drives like ironwolfs cheaper?

 

Do you plan to need to upgrade soon?

 

Do you really need raid 1? HDD failure is pretty uncommon, and backups will get your data back if something happends to the drive.

[PositiveRaisin2]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Are drives like ironwolfs cheaper?

 

Do you plan to need to upgrade soon?

 

Do you really need raid 1? HDD failure is pretty uncommon, and backups will get your data back if something happends to the drive.

I'll probably use ironwolfs 

I don't think ill need to upgrade soon, i have about 750 gig of photos and i plan to use it to store tv shows

 

I don't know if i need raid one

[Stu_Bear]

5 minutes ago, PositiveRaisin2 said:

I'll probably use ironwolfs 

I don't think ill need to upgrade soon, i have about 750 gig of photos and i plan to use it to store tv shows

 

I don't know if i need raid one

If you really want to keep your photos...I'd certainly use raid1.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Stu_Bear said:

If you really want to keep your photos...I'd certainly use raid1.

backups are normally much better at keeping data safe than raid. Backups can keep data safe from a fire, bad psu, user error and others cases, where raid will have lost all the data. Both is better, but for home use Id focus much more on backups than raid.

[PositiveRaisin2]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

backups are normally much better at keeping data safe than raid. Backups can keep data safe from a fire, bad psu, user error and others cases, where raid will have lost all the data. Both is better, but for home use Id focus much more on backups than raid.

what would be a better solution? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, PositiveRaisin2 said:

what would be a better solution? 

have good backups to something like a external drive, offsite nas, or a cloud backup service?

[PositiveRaisin2]

15 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

have good backups to something like a external drive, offsite nas, or a cloud backup service?

This would his would be a backup to my laptop that already has the photos on it. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

58 minutes ago, PositiveRaisin2 said:

This would his would be a backup to my laptop that already has the photos on it. 

If its only a backup, I wouldn't be too worried about redundancy, as you can alwasy run the backup again, and the chance of both your laptop and nas failing at the same time is low, but it all depends on how much you want to reduce risk.

[PositiveRaisin2]

12 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If its only a backup, I wouldn't be too worried about redundancy, as you can alwasy run the backup again, and the chance of both your laptop and nas failing at the same time is low, but it all depends on how much you want to reduce risk.

Don’t hard drives only last 3 years on average?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, PositiveRaisin2 said:

Don’t hard drives only last 3 years on average?

Id say a lot more than that on average. I have over 100 hard drives, most with 30K+ hours. I normally estimate 5-10 years usable lifespan. I have remove more hdds from service due to being too small or slow rather than failure.

[PositiveRaisin2]

13 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id say a lot more than that on average. I have over 100 hard drives, most with 30K+ hours. I normally estimate 5-10 years usable lifespan. I have remove more hdds from service due to being too small or slow rather than failure.

Is there an option in a 200 dollar budget that is a better solution that the one I suggested 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, PositiveRaisin2 said:

Is there an option in a 200 dollar budget that is a better solution that the one I suggested 

Where are you? Are you in the us?

 

Id probably go single 4tb drive here. Get the ironwolf or toshiba if its cheaper, Desktop drives aren't that much cheaper, so Id just get one of the nas 4tb drives. If you want more space Id go 8tb externals.

 

I don't think raid is super usefull, if you want to keep data safe, get a external hdd, and store it offsite, and sync it every month or so.

[PositiveRaisin2]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Where are you? Are you in the us?

 

Id probably go single 4tb drive here. Get the ironwolf or toshiba if its cheaper, Desktop drives aren't that much cheaper, so Id just get one of the nas 4tb drives. If you want more space Id go 8tb externals.

 

I don't think raid is super usefull, if you want to keep data safe, get a external hdd, and store it offsite, and sync it every month or so.

I am in the US. How good are harddrives in cold storage and what is the best option for expansion in the future? jabod?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, PositiveRaisin2 said:

I am in the US. How good are harddrives in cold storage and what is the best option for expansion in the future? jabod?

Hard drives are pretty good, depends on period of time, but Id check them every year or so.

 

Depends on how you set your system up software wise, sometimes you can just add a drive and get more space with seomthing like btrfs, zfs, or storage spaces.

[PositiveRaisin2]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Hard drives are pretty good, depends on period of time, but Id check them every year or so.

 

Depends on how you set your system up software wise, sometimes you can just add a drive and get more space with seomthing like btrfs, zfs, or storage spaces.

So do you think raid one is necessary? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, PositiveRaisin2 said:

So do you think raid one is necessary? 

I don't think so for a small home backup server, but its all about how much you want to pay vs redundancy.

[PositiveRaisin2]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

I don't think so for a small home backup server, but its all about how much you want to pay vs redundancy.

Ok I think I will get the 4tb iron wolf

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, PositiveRaisin2 said:

Ok I think I will get the 4tb iron wolf

what software do you plan to use?

 

And for a single drive setup, the nas drives don't really help, tler won't be needed, and the drive will probably be asleep most of the time, so the 24/7 rating won't be used.

[PositiveRaisin2]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

what software do you plan to use?

 

And for a single drive setup, the nas drives don't really help, tler won't be needed, and the drive will probably be asleep most of the time, so the 24/7 rating won't be used.

Probably just windows. I have used network drives before and I have made an ftp server.

[Alex Atkin UK]

12 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what software do you plan to use?

 

And for a single drive setup, the nas drives don't really help, tler won't be needed, and the drive will probably be asleep most of the time, so the 24/7 rating won't be used.

I don't think you should assume the drives will be asleep most of the time, none of my Ironwolf drives spin down, they just enter into low-power mode.  You don't really want drives constantly spinning up and down as that puts more wear on them.

I used to always use standard drives, the Ironwolf are much much faster, about double the speed of the WD Red even.

[Ziggidy]

Personally, I will never use RAID 1 again. I used it thinking it was a means of backup, but it is only data redundancy. If you have a user error like I did, and you delete a file or folder from the drive, that is replicated to the other drive and the data is lost. I was fortunate and was able to recover most of my data the next morning. Then I changed my NAS setupt to JBOD at that point with an offline backup. 

 

Now I use RaidZ2 with 6 drives in a vdev for ~14TB usable (6x 4TB WD reds), and tossed two x WD Red white labels in as JBOD for extra space for the moment. I also still have a bunch of 5TB external drives offline backing that all up. 

[PositiveRaisin2]

58 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I don't think you should assume the drives will be asleep most of the time, none of my Ironwolf drives spin down, they just enter into low-power mode.  You don't really want drives constantly spinning up and down as that puts more wear on them.

I used to always use standard drives, the Ironwolf are much much faster, about double the speed of the WD Red even.

Doesn’t windows power down drives?