Cheap NAS?

[FlyingXylophone]

File storage I can access from University making travelling down lighter, and keep my PC storage cleaner, also with storage being cheaper to build as oppose to upgrade on Google Drive etc,

Would this setup be suitable for a NAS? I understand the parts are very dated however its sole purpose is a NAS and isn't going to be used for anything else

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/WK9nVY

[Electronics Wizardy]

Use the stock cooler if you have one.

 

Id get a bigger hdd, 160gb will fill up fast.

[FlyingXylophone]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Use the stock cooler if you have one.

 

Id get a bigger hdd, 160gb will fill up fast.

HDD is purely to get things setup and started then gonna buy cheap storage drives to expand it. although the parts are old and poor would they impact the performance of the NAS?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, FlyingXylophone said:

HDD is purely to get things setup and started then gonna buy cheap storage drives to expand it. although the parts are old and poor would they impact the performance of the NAS?

If this is over wan, then no, you probably don't have a network connection that fast, if its over lan, it will be a bit slow. That drive is about 50-60 mb/s sequentical. 

 

What os do you plan on running?

[FlyingXylophone]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

If this is over wan, then no, you probably don't have a network connection that fast, if its over lan, it will be a bit slow. That drive is about 50-60 mb/s sequentical. 

 

What os do you plan on running?

I haven't decided but some Open-source linux distro I think

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, FlyingXylophone said:

I haven't decided but some Open-source linux distro I think

Id personally run something like fedora server or debian, then use btrfs for storage. That way you can easily add and remove drives of any size, with redunancy and check summing and compression.

[Doramius]

2 minutes ago, FlyingXylophone said:

HDD is purely to get things setup and started then gonna buy cheap storage drives to expand it. although the parts are old and poor would they impact the performance of the NAS?

I wouldn't use that HDD.  Even for a cheap home built NAS, you want an ACTUAL NAS drive.  Those desktop drives will fail quite quickly running as a NAS.  You don't have to spend a LOT of money, but you will definitely want NAS grade drives.  I'd also recommend doing a striped RAID.  If not initially, sometime down the road.  But most importantly, don't use Desktop drives in a NAS environment.  You will not be happy.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Doramius said:

I wouldn't use that HDD.  Even for a cheap home built NAS, you want an ACTUAL NAS drive.  Those desktop drives will fail quite quickly running as a NAS.  You don't have to spend a LOT of money, but you will definitely want NAS grade drives.  I'd also recommend doing a striped RAID.  If not initially, sometime down the road.  But most importantly, don't use Desktop drives in a NAS environment.  You will not be happy.

desktop drives will last many years in a nas, ive done this. The nas drives are the same drives, just with different firmware, they aren't magic. 

 

With btrfs you can change the raid level on the fly and upgrade from a single drive. You also got errorchecking in the filesystem so bad drives can't hurt your data.

[FlyingXylophone]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id personally run something like fedora server or debian, then use btrfs for storage. That way you can easily add and remove drives of any size, with redunancy and check summing and compression.

The system is alike the one posted but it's a prebuilt Dell system which is very dated which I'll gradually improve (with the pennies I have spare) and I want to be able to throw any drives I have at it, this is an entirely new project for me so I'll use Debian and is btrfs similar to raid 0 in redundancy ? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, FlyingXylophone said:

The system is alike the one posted but it's a prebuilt Dell system which is very dated which I'll gradually improve (with the pennies I have spare) and I want to be able to throw any drives I have at it, this is an entirely new project for me so I'll use Debian and is btrfs similar to raid 0 in redundancy ? 

btrfs can use any common raid level(raid 5/6 is still beta and I wouldn't use it). Stick with raid 1 here.

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, Doramius said:

I wouldn't use that HDD.  Even for a cheap home built NAS, you want an ACTUAL NAS drive.  Those desktop drives will fail quite quickly running as a NAS.  You don't have to spend a LOT of money, but you will definitely want NAS grade drives.  I'd also recommend doing a striped RAID.  If not initially, sometime down the road.  But most importantly, don't use Desktop drives in a NAS environment.  You will not be happy.

This would depend on the amount of redundancy and the level of backups taken. If the NAS is the sole backup of your data or mission critical, then yes an enterprise drive is your best bet. But if it's just a place to store your Steam library then getting the cheapest drives you can find (desktop refurbs are fine) is your best bet. For my NASes and storage servers I only buy the cheapest (per GB) drives I can find, I've never had a drive failure in the past 10+ years I've been running 24x7 servers.

 

As for striped RAID, mirrored or parity based RAID is significantly better for storage but striped is fine for non-critical data.

[KuJoe]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

desktop drives will last many years in a nas, ive done this. The nas drives are the same drives, just with different firmware, they aren't magic. 

 

With btrfs you can change the raid level on the fly and upgrade from a single drive. You also got errorchecking in the filesystem so bad drives can't hurt your data.

Agreed, the only difference I've seen between enterprise drives and consumer drivers is how they act in a RAID. In some RAID configurations if a consumer drive has errors/bad sectors it will be removed from the array, the enterprise drive in the same situation can recover and continue working.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, KuJoe said:

Agreed, the only difference I've seen between enterprise drives and consumer drivers is how they act in a RAID. In some RAID configurations if a consumer drive has errors/bad sectors it will be removed from the array, the enterprise drive in the same situation can recover and continue working.

good old tler, this won't really help here anyways as you don't have hardware raid where the controller likes to drop out hdds if there taking a while to get data from bad sectors.

[FlyingXylophone]

Would refurb desktop HDDs be suitable without running RAID? if I was to move to that further down the line when I have some money to spend on motherboards, CPU, etc?

 

Especially with my motherboard not being made for it

[KuJoe]

2 minutes ago, FlyingXylophone said:

Would refurb desktop HDDs be suitable without running RAID? if I was to move to that further down the line when I have some money to spend on motherboards, CPU, etc?

 

Especially with my motherboard not being made for it

It all depends. How important is the data? How many backups of the data will you have? For me, running refurb desktop drives is just fine because I have 11 levels of data backups so even if all of my hard drives die at once I still have a few backups to recover from. If your NAS is your only backup, then focus on something known for reliability until you can purchase another form of backup (like an external drive or cloud storage).

[KuJoe]

Also don't use motherboard RAID... EVER. Use either software RAID or get a RAID card, FakeRAID (motherboard RAID) is the absolute worse. Every 5 or so years I try to use motherboard RAID and it always results in me having to restore from backups every single time.

[FlyingXylophone]

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

It all depends. How important is the data? How many backups of the data will you have? For me, running refurb desktop drives is just fine because I have 11 levels of data backups so even if all of my hard drives die at once I still have a few backups to recover from. If your NAS is your only backup, then focus on something known for reliability until you can purchase another form of backup (like an external drive or cloud storage).

Data would be images and videos mostly rather than storing them on dropbox/google drive etc, what I would like atleast 2 layes of data back up 

[KuJoe]

Just now, FlyingXylophone said:

Data would be images and videos mostly rather than storing them on dropbox/google drive etc, what I would like atleast 2 layes of data back up 

If you have two layers of backups and don't have specific technical requirements, then the cheapest drives you can find should be good enough. Drives will die, there's no guarantee when or how. A $10,000 hard drive can last 5 years or 5 minutes, a $20 hard drive has the same risk. The only other reason I can think of for going with a NAS drive is if you get one of the higher end ones that comes with data recovery in the event of a failure, but unless you're running mission critical services it's not really worth it when having a 2nd layer of backups is more convenient.

[FlyingXylophone]

Just now, KuJoe said:

If you have two layers of backups and don't have specific technical requirements, then the cheapest drives you can find should be good enough. Drives will die, there's no guarantee when or how. A $10,000 hard drive can last 5 years or 5 minutes, a $20 hard drive has the same risk. The only other reason I can think of for going with a NAS drive is if you get one of the higher end ones that comes with data recovery in the event of a failure, but unless you're running mission critical services it's not really worth it when having a 2nd layer of backups is more convenient.

that sounds great, and would be the best way of achieving that? say 4x500GB HDDs + 160gb(boot), would I be able to run redundancy without RAID? Using Debian

[KuJoe]

Just now, FlyingXylophone said:

that sounds great, and would be the best way of achieving that? say 4x500GB HDDs + 160gb(boot), would I be able to run redundancy without RAID? Using Debian

I've read a lot of recommendations for btrfs but I've never used any filesystem based redundancy before so hopefully somebody else can chime in to assist you here. As for the drive configuration, 4x500GB with a 160GB boot looks good to me but if you want to save a few bucks you can install Debian on a USB flash drive easily so instead of getting the 160GB drive (if you don't already have it) a USB drive under $10 would accomplish the same thing.

[FlyingXylophone]

1 minute ago, KuJoe said:

I've read a lot of recommendations for btrfs but I've never used any filesystem based redundancy before so hopefully somebody else can chime in to assist you here. As for the drive configuration, 4x500GB with a 160GB boot looks good to me but if you want to save a few bucks you can install Debian on a USB flash drive easily so instead of getting the 160GB drive (if you don't already have it) a USB drive under $10 would accomplish the same thing.

already got the 160GB HDD ready to go, so btrfs running redundancy across 4 drives, would this allow me to throw more drives at it too whenever I wanted(being different drives)?

[Doramius]

On 6/27/2017 at 4:58 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

desktop drives will last many years in a nas, ive done this. The nas drives are the same drives, just with different firmware, they aren't magic. 

That's not true.  There's no magic, but the drive components are meant to handle the 24/7 operation of constant running, reading & writing better than the desktop drives.  You can use Desktop drives, but they will fail much sooner or are just unable to handle the volume or data loads, constantly.  Saying NAS drives are the same drives is like saying dump trucks use the same engine as a Honda Civic.  The firmware is setup to utilize the component structure of the drive to its specific use.  Someone could reflash it and use the drive for another purpose, but using a standard desktop drive in an environment it was not built for will reduce reliability and life.  This is a topic that is regularly discussed, and a common issue comes up with people using Desktop drives in environments like home surveillance, and home streaming services where people constantly have their desktop drives failing. 

23 hours ago, KuJoe said:

This would depend on the amount of redundancy and the level of backups taken. If the NAS is the sole backup of your data or mission critical, then yes an enterprise drive is your best bet. But if it's just a place to store your Steam library then getting the cheapest drives you can find (desktop refurbs are fine) is your best bet. For my NASes and storage servers I only buy the cheapest (per GB) drives I can find, I've never had a drive failure in the past 10+ years I've been running 24x7 servers.

 

As for striped RAID, mirrored or parity based RAID is significantly better for storage but striped is fine for non-critical data.

Don't confuse NAS with NAS Enterprise.  They are different.  While similar, the grade of components is higher in enterprise drives.  Enterprise actuators and motors are able to handle higher RPM speeds, reading & writing, etc.  While both have vibration reduction, Enterprise tend to be to a much higher level and sometimes incorporate gases like helium.  You can store more drives in a single stack, as they won't vibrate as much.  Regular NAS drives, you really don't want to go more than 8 drives in a stack.  Most of the time, you'll see stacks of 5.  Firmwares may be similar, but that's about it.  A regular NAS drive is less expensive.  And if you run a striped RAID, you'll have your redundancy for data.  

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Doramius said:

That's not true.  There's no magic, but the drive components are meant to handle the 24/7 operation of constant running, reading & writing better than the desktop drives.  You can use Desktop drives, but they will fail much sooner or are just unable to handle the volume or data loads, constantly.  Saying NAS drives are the same drives is like saying dump trucks use the same engine as a Honda Civic.  The firmware is setup to utilize the component structure of the drive to its specific use.  Someone could reflash it and use the drive for another purpose, but using a standard desktop drive in an environment it was not built for will reduce reliability and life.  This is a topic that is regularly discussed, and a common issue comes up with people using Desktop drives in environments like home surveillance, and home streaming services where people constantly have their desktop drives failing. 

Show me some data to support that thats not from the manafacture.

 

The only big firmware features is tler, which doesn't even help with most nas's that use software raid.

 

Desktop drives will last many years, look at backblaze data, those are destkop drives used in big enclosures with 24/7 uptime and heavy workloads and those drives last about 6 years before decommissioned.

[Doramius]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Show me some data to support that thats not from the manafacture.

 

The only big firmware features is tler, which doesn't even help with most nas's that use software raid.

 

Desktop drives will last many years, look at backblaze data, those are destkop drives used in big enclosures with 24/7 uptime and heavy workloads and those drives last about 6 years before decommissioned.

Actually, show me BOTH in manufacturer specs AND 'reliable' outside sources that say that a Desktop drive is the exact same as an Enterprise drive.

Backblaze is NOT a reliable source.  Not only that, they've barely used Enterprise drives for any lengthy period of time.  I even looked back at Backblaze and they even say the same thing all over their reviews.  I'd even trust Pure Storage over backblaze.  Exponentially longer and more reliable data.

Manufacturer specs ARE going to tell you the 'specs of a drive'.  Many times they'll even tell you the components used as well as all the testing data.  If you don't want to believe manufacturer data, here are some links that have explained this: (even used an in house thread for one)

http://www.storagereview.com/pick_the_right_drive_for_the_job_24_7_nas_hdds_vs_desktop_hdds
 

My work is HEAVILY with Enterprise data storage, and we constantly have execs wanting us to reduce cost by putting in "cheap ass" desktop drives.  We actually ran a live test and every NEW desktop drive failed within the first year.  In my home NAS, I started out with Desktop drives, because that was what I had on hand when I first built mine.  After 2 years, all desktop drives failed.  I'll use a desktop drive in a basic computer at home, but never in my home NAS.  

[KuJoe]

7 hours ago, Doramius said:

Don't confuse NAS with NAS Enterprise.

I didn't.

 

7 hours ago, Doramius said:

And if you run a striped RAID, you'll have your redundancy for data.  

How does RAID0 offer redundancy?