Computer as a Plex Server, is Raid necessary?

[sailboatking]

Hi everyone,

 

I have a computer that I built awhile ago, that I wanted to use for a Plex Server and a Minecraft Server. I currently have an SSD and two 2TB Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives in my computer. I wanted to set them up for storage of my photos and videos and view them through Plex Server. Originally I had plans to put them in Raid 1 as 2 TB is enough storage and the drives would be redundant. But it's been over a year since I started this project and after reading about things online I have my doubts.

 

My first question is what is the best option for storing photos and videos with the current system I have?

 

My second question is if using Raid 1 is the best option, do I just setup the drives as Raid 1 in the BIOS or do I need a software or some kind of caching system using the SSD? Currently the drives are in the computer but haven't been setup. 

 

Any help is great, I think I'm confused with what to do now.

 

Thanks in advance!

[GhostRoadieBL]

Raid1 works well if you only need 2TB of space total. Software vs hardware bios Raid doesn't make a huge difference for a file storage array and hardware raid is going to have less problems if you are running windows. Running linux it's less prone to crashes or OS issues with updates so software vs hardware raid there is no difference. 

 

I wouldn't bother with a caching system unless you are going to actually need the extra speed and will be accessing the same few files all the time. 

[Dedayog]

No, RAID Is not necessary.  

[sailboatking]

1 hour ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

Raid1 works well if you only need 2TB of space total. Software vs hardware bios Raid doesn't make a huge difference for a file storage array and hardware raid is going to have less problems if you are running windows. Running linux it's less prone to crashes or OS issues with updates so software vs hardware raid there is no difference. 

 

I wouldn't bother with a caching system unless you are going to actually need the extra speed and will be accessing the same few files all the time. 

So what kind of software would I use to run software raid? And I am using Windows at the moment.

[sailboatking]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

No, RAID Is not necessary.  

So what do you recommend the best option if not raid? 

[Jarsky]

1 hour ago, sailboatking said:

So what do you recommend the best option if not raid? 

 

RAID1 is just fine. It provides you protection against losing a disk.

 

If you arent making a "RAID" (that is to say an array of disks as a single logical volume), then your other options is to just use the drives individually. E.g you might have 1 disk dedicated to Movies, the other dedicated to TV Shows and Music. Just keep in mind theres no redundancy, so if you lose a disk, you lose all the data on that drive (unless you have backups). 

 

If you have 3 disks, then a "RAID5" is a more balanced approach between the 2 when it comes to space efficiency and data integrity.

So with 3 x 2TB disks, you'd have 4TB of space, and 1 drive can fail and you still have all your data, and it's still available. Its a good solution for larger media servers where re-aquiring a few TB's of media can be a big hassle. 

 

Keep in mind this statement that is made in this subforum all the time. RAID/Parity is not a replacement for backups of any important files. 

It is only a protection measure against a drive failure. It does not protect against physical threats, cryptolocker, viruses, accidental deletion, major corruption, etc...

In most cases its more than enough for just a Plex Server as you can redownload most media, but any other files like important documents, family photos, personal projects, etc you might start to decide to store there, should be backed up elsewhere (cloud, USB dongle, external hdd, another pc, etc...). 

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, sailboatking said:

My first question is what is the best option for storing photos and videos with the current system I have?

RAID is not a backup. Personally I think its more trouble than its worth. Id use the SSD for the OS drive. Use the two hard disks for bulk storage. Maybe put Pictures on one drive and Videos on the other. Plex is very forgiving on where it can pull data from. Hell my Plex server doesn't have bulk storage, I just created my Plex Library on my NAS, my server essentially is used for transcoding. If you want to add redundancy you may want to look in to ZFS. Raid has kinda fallen out of favor and ZFS is taking over. Hopefully someone more knowledgable in ZFS will contribute to this thread as Im not an expert at all. 

 

 

[sailboatking]

26 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

RAID is not a backup. Personally I think its more trouble than its worth. Id use the SSD for the OS drive. Use the two hard disks for bulk storage. Maybe put Pictures on one drive and Videos on the other. Plex is very forgiving on where it can pull data from. Hell my Plex server doesn't have bulk storage, I just created my Plex Library on my NAS, my server essentially is used for transcoding. If you want to add redundancy you may want to look in to ZFS. Raid has kinda fallen out of favor and ZFS is taking over. Hopefully someone more knowledgable in ZFS will contribute to this thread as Im not an expert at all. 

 

 

Interesting! thank you for your help, I will look into ZFS!

[sailboatking]

29 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

 

RAID1 is just fine. It provides you protection against losing a disk.

 

If you arent making a "RAID" (that is to say an array of disks as a single logical volume), then your other options is to just use the drives individually. E.g you might have 1 disk dedicated to Movies, the other dedicated to TV Shows and Music. Just keep in mind theres no redundancy, so if you lose a disk, you lose all the data on that drive (unless you have backups). 

 

If you have 3 disks, then a "RAID5" is a more balanced approach between the 2 when it comes to space efficiency and data integrity.

So with 3 x 2TB disks, you'd have 4TB of space, and 1 drive can fail and you still have all your data, and it's still available. Its a good solution for larger media servers where re-aquiring a few TB's of media can be a big hassle. 

 

Keep in mind this statement that is made in this subforum all the time. RAID/Parity is not a replacement for backups of any important files. 

It is only a protection measure against a drive failure. It does not protect against physical threats, cryptolocker, viruses, accidental deletion, major corruption, etc...

In most cases its more than enough for just a Plex Server as you can redownload most media, but any other files like important documents, family photos, personal projects, etc you might start to decide to store there, should be backed up elsewhere (cloud, USB dongle, external hdd, another pc, etc...). 

Thank you so much for your help! I will look into doing a RAID1 setup or ZFS, as for RAID1 will I need a software to set it up or can I just set it up through the motherboard's bios?

[GhostRoadieBL]

2 hours ago, sailboatking said:

So what kind of software would I use to run software raid? And I am using Windows at the moment.

Windows has built in raid software as part of it's "storage pools" settings 

As many people on here I'm in the 'don't bother with raid' mentality and backups are far more useful. 

Dimio's Dsyncronize program can even automate this by duplicating folders so you don't even have to think about backing up. 

[Loki0111]

23 hours ago, sailboatking said:

Hi everyone,

 

I have a computer that I built awhile ago, that I wanted to use for a Plex Server and a Minecraft Server. I currently have an SSD and two 2TB Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives in my computer. I wanted to set them up for storage of my photos and videos and view them through Plex Server. Originally I had plans to put them in Raid 1 as 2 TB is enough storage and the drives would be redundant. But it's been over a year since I started this project and after reading about things online I have my doubts.

 

My first question is what is the best option for storing photos and videos with the current system I have?

 

My second question is if using Raid 1 is the best option, do I just setup the drives as Raid 1 in the BIOS or do I need a software or some kind of caching system using the SSD? Currently the drives are in the computer but haven't been setup. 

 

Any help is great, I think I'm confused with what to do now.

 

Thanks in advance!

In short, no you don't need RAID to run Plex.

 

But in reality there is no simple answer to that. 

 

RAID can give you two things, redundancy and increased access speed. Redundancy will help protect you against a single drive failure and the increased access speed is more of an issue when you have a Plex server with a lot of clients feeding off it.

 

At a minimum I'd recommend a dual drive RAID 1 though as it will give you some protection against a single drive failure wiping out your library.

 

The caching issue can be address in a number of ways. An SSD or NVMe, or by adding additional RAM and using a RAMdisk (this is my recommended way of handling transcoding cache). The advantage of using a RAMdisk is it will have as good or more likely better performance and it won't wear out your SSD or NVMe over time. Once its setup it basically becomes maintenance free and you can just forget about it.