Raid server considerations

[stevemenendez]

Lost one of my drives last night that wasn't backed up so I decided it's time to actually back up some data. 

 

My first though is to use an ancient computer I have (i7-4790, GTX 760 ti, 16gb ram) and adapt that to be a server and also hopefully host plex. I also have my current computer (i7-7700k, GTX 1080, 32gb ram) which I would consider using which would give me an excuse to build a new computer for myself. I understand it's not that simple unfortunately, I understand there is software and hardware raid (not positive which is more advantageous) and if there any considerations for running plex alongside it. Also which os I would use, it's unfortunately been a while since I have been this deeply involved with computers. 

 

If anyone would help and offer some insight I would greatly appreciate it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

How much storage do you need?

 

Plex should run fine at the same time.

 

OS kinda depends on the drive setup you want, but Windows, TrueNAS, Unraid and others shoudl work fine.

[stevemenendez]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much storage do you need?

 

Plex should run fine at the same time.

 

OS kinda depends on the drive setup you want, but Windows, TrueNAS, Unraid and others shoudl work fine.

I feel like 15TB would be good for now and I imagine i'd have the option to expand and rebuild the array in the future if needed? and I think raid 5 or 6 would probably be what i'm currently drawn to.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, stevemenendez said:

I feel like 15TB would be good for now and I imagine i'd have the option to expand and rebuild the array in the future if needed? and I think raid 5 or 6 would probably be what i'm currently drawn to.

Maybe unraid then?

 

Get a pair of big like 20TB HDDs, and add more if needed later on.

 

Make sure to backup the NAS, as the whole RAID can fail in some cases.

[johnt]

100% recommend Unraid if you really want a hardware solution. Traditional RAID solutions are so limited for normal users - like upgrading or replacing drives, power consumption. Unraid has its own issues, but it's an easier solution for every day users. It costs $59 to get it going after the trial period and it's totally worth it.

 

You can also consider free options, like freefilesync, which you can use to mirror the drives and use task scheduler to automate the process. I donated money to them and got the donation version which lets you monitor the drive for changes and make mirror/update back ups automatically. Honestly it's just faster for me. I have a back up server and I copy everything over. If a drive fails in my main server, I just swap the drive and make sure it is assigned the same drive letter and I am 100% back in business in minutes. Both Unraid and RAID are going to take hours or days to rebuild. It's not a super popular option, but you could use Windows on the "server" to house your back up drives. You don't even need to activate it. Or of course you can consider any Linux distro. The downside of this method is that every drive I have is basically a separate mirrored array, so I need two disks for each "drive" set. It's more expensive, but man losing a drive in RAID costs you a lot of time.

[LIGISTX]

I second unraid for your use case. It’s much more amenable to slow rolling upgrades. 
 

Truenas and its ZFS file system is “better” in many regards, but that it is not is friendly to adding more drives over time. Unraid you can just throw more drives in whenever you want, ZFS you can’t (technically now you can with the latest versions, but it doesn’t work quite the same). 
 

That i7 4790 will be overkill for a NAS. Just use that machine, it’ll be great.