Home storage suggestion?

[Vigilante505]

Well, where to begin? I'm moving into a new house and had the idea of a dedicated media server/backup server. I was debating using my old PC and renovating it to meet these needs. I was also thinking of using my old laptop because it's an i7 with 16gb of ram getting dusty in the closet but couldn't think of a solution to add the hard drive space. 

 

Basically I'm wanting a dedicated machine to backup all my devices to, share all my media, and stream from. What I've come down to is likely adding a few terabytes of hdd space in my main rig and doing it that way. If the LTT group can run a virtual machine NAS off the gaming PC without hiccups I'm thinking my system can serve my purpose while also playing games and general use. Any ideas? 

[2FA]

If it runs off of your main rig, it's not a backup.

[Vigilante505]

1 hour ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

If it runs off of your main rig, it's not a backup.

So having dedicated backup drives inside my current machine don't qualify as backup for my data? If it's not a worry of surge damage and just hardware failure, dedicated drives with redundancies don't qualify? 

[2FA]

20 minutes ago, Vigilante505 said:

So having dedicated backup drives inside my current machine don't qualify as backup for my data? If it's not a worry of surge damage and just hardware failure, dedicated drives with redundancies don't qualify? 

Redundancy is not the same thing as a backup. Backups of data are held on drives outside of the devices being backup'd. 

[Vigilante505]

5 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

Redundancy is not the same thing as a backup. Backups of data are held on drives outside of the devices being backup'd. 

There seems to be a misunderstanding. I have drives in my computer now. If I add drives to it, set it up in a raid for redundancy in case of failure, and then back up my data onto those drives it's not a backup? If my main hard drive fails I will have the data on the raid drives. If a raid drive fails I have a backup on the mirrored drive. While I backup all my devices onto these mirrored drives for backup and set up those drives as shared across a network. Why does it have to be outside of the case in order to be considered a backup

[2FA]

4 minutes ago, Vigilante505 said:

There seems to be a misunderstanding. I have drives in my computer now. If I add drives to it, set it up in a raid for redundancy in case of failure, and then back up my data onto those drives it's not a backup? If my main hard drive fails I will have the data on the raid drives. If a raid drive fails I have a backup on the mirrored drive. While I backup all my devices onto these mirrored drives for backup and set up those drives as shared across a network. Why does it have to be outside of the case in order to be considered a backup

No there is not a misunderstanding. I know what you mean and I'm quite sincere in saying that it is not a backup solution.

 

http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/

http://blog.open-e.com/why-raid-is-not-a-backup/

[Vigilante505]

49 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

No there is not a misunderstanding. I know what you mean and I'm quite sincere in saying that it is not a backup solution.

 

http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/

http://blog.open-e.com/why-raid-is-not-a-backup/

Your opinion is noted. So in case of fire I'd lose the data whether it's on a different pc or not. In case of a virus, power surge, or file corruption the backup could fail regardless of where I keep it.

 

The reason Im backing up is to have a copy of non essential files in case I lose the main drive. The argument that something physical can lose my data or a software virus or bug can cause loss can be used for anything we use. This isn't valuable data, however. I'm backing up music, pictures, and home movies. Anything I wouldn't want to lose and can't get back is backed up on Google right now. I'm looking for drives to back up my personal files that I would like to keep as a spare because it would be a pain in the ass to gather again. Non essential files since I don't rely on computers for my job or anything important. If I backup on a separate NAS or build my own custom server I could still have problems of the house burning down, a surge, hardware failure, or aliens taking it

 

So making a secondary save location on drives inside the case is not a fort Knox in case of catastrophe or Armageddon but I was looking if it was a valuable alternative to not having a backup. The backup is more of a perk. the main use would be streaming off of and sharing on the network.

 

But all of that aside, those articles you posted are referring to raid 1 as a poor backup to the original copy drive. Your misunderstanding was that I am making a raid 1 of the backup. So not only is the main drive a backup it has the mirrored drive of itself as one as well.

[Mikensan]

@DeadEyePsycho

Simple definition of a backup is having your data in two places regardless of how you achieve it. OP will have his data in two places, thus it is backed up. Are there inherent risks with having the disks in the same system albeit separate volumes? Yes, but it is still a backup. Can you get fancier? Sure, anything is possible when you start throwing money at it. There are various types of backups, and different purposes for backups (disaster recovery for example) that have different requirements - OP meets the basic definition of a backup.

 

This is how I essentially achieve it on my FreeNAS system. I have two separate arrays, one I work off of, and another that has backups/snapshots rsync'd from the primary array. So my data is in two places + versioning, all housed on a single system.

 

@Vigilante505

Does your laptop have USB 3.0? Does it have an expansion slot like pcmcia? You could use a USB 3.0 hub and a few disks and use your laptop. It's not ideal but it'd work if you're tight on a budget.  Hell people are using Raspberry Pi's + USB 2.0.

 

LTT used unRaid to both game and use their system as a NAS. However this scenario without SSDs is going to be pretty slow. So if you don't have some SSDs you'll need to invest in one or two to run your VMs. Whichever avenue you go down, the VMs should be on a separate volume than your NAS.

 

[Vigilante505]

4 hours ago, Mikensan said:

@DeadEyePsycho

Simple definition of a backup is having your data in two places regardless of how you achieve it. OP will have his data in two places, thus it is backed up. Are there inherent risks with having the disks in the same system albeit separate volumes? Yes, but it is still a backup. Can you get fancier? Sure, anything is possible when you start throwing money at it. There are various types of backups, and different purposes for backups (disaster recovery for example) that have different requirements - OP meets the basic definition of a backup.

 

This is how I essentially achieve it on my FreeNAS system. I have two separate arrays, one I work off of, and another that has backups/snapshots rsync'd from the primary array. So my data is in two places + versioning, all housed on a single system.

 

@Vigilante505

Does your laptop have USB 3.0? Does it have an expansion slot like pcmcia? You could use a USB 3.0 hub and a few disks and use your laptop. It's not ideal but it'd work if you're tight on a budget.  Hell people are using Raspberry Pi's + USB 2.0.

 

LTT used unRaid to both game and use their system as a NAS. However this scenario without SSDs is going to be pretty slow. So if you don't have some SSDs you'll need to invest in one or two to run your VMs. Whichever avenue you go down, the VMs should be on a separate volume than your NAS.

 

Wow really? a Pi? That would be neat.

 

Yeah I watched the video on it before I made this thread but I dont think that solution is right for me. my laptop is USB 2.0 without any expansion slots. Its an Asus G73jh. I'm really leaning towards the more storage in my main rig and keeping copies. Thanks for the help I need it.

[b1uew01f]

For the small cost of buying or putting together a dedicated backup server, above the price of the hard drives which youre already getting it only makes sense to go that way IMO.

 

Also it is very convenient to have the server available 24/7 fully independant of your main rig, for reasons such as reduced noise, lower continous power draw, accessibility, the fairly limited resources that are needed but wont impact gaming or other at all, etc...

 

Pi or similar are a great base level option though somewhat limited in transfer speeds over Ethernet in particular. And if  you can push a little higher you can put something together very strong for around 5x the cost of a pi.

[Scheer]

Personally for your situation I would buy a hard drive dock, and weekly backup your data to one drive, then monthly/bi-monthly to a second drive.

 

Keep the weekly drive at your house, and the monthly one at work, friends, or parents house, basically anywhere you regularly go anyways who wouldn't mind having it sitting there.

 

Then you'd spend the same money as raiding two drives, but should there be a natural disaster, surge taking out the computer, or virus you don't notice for a few weeks you'll have the majority of your data saved away.

 

 

I'm sure for technical reasons I'm wrong, but I've never considered multiples in one device to be a backup, its a copy or redundant storage in that case (IMO). A backup is separated from the system.

[Vigilante505]

1 minute ago, b1uew01f said:

For the small cost of buying or putting together a dedicated backup server, above the price of the hard drives which youre already getting it only makes sense to go that way IMO.

 

Also it is very convenient to have the server available 24/7 fully independant of your main rig, for reasons such as reduced noise, lower continous power draw, accessibility, the fairly limited resources that are needed but wont impact gaming or other at all, etc...

 

Pi or similar are a great base level option though somewhat limited in transfer speeds over Ethernet in particular. And if  you can push a little higher you can put something together very strong for around 5x the cost of a pi.

Thats my ideal situation. I have an AMD 64 machine sitting around that I was considering adding some RAM and HDDs to but I'm fairly sure that system is garbage as far as performance goes.

[Shura]

You really don't need much to run a basic NAS/Media server. If you go with something like FreeNAS then ya you would need good hardware but there are other options. If you are looking to do a basic media server/backup solution then I would recommend you look into OpenMediaVault. The developer behind it was part of the original FreeNAS team so it has many of the same features but doesn't require expensive hardware to run. It has things like addons for Plex, Emby, OwnCloud and an even ZFS support.

 

I have my server running on a AM1 platform with a Athlon 5350 but many people use much lower hardware like Odroid C+ or Odroid C2. (Odroid is a rasberry alternative for the same price but with gigabit network card, better usb speed, more ram and better cpu) if you are considering using an old machine, I would definitely recommend looking into it; I initially did my tests on my old Pentium 4 PC and it worked just fine, only reason I went AM1 is because I needed more sata ports.

 

http://www.openmediavault.org/

[Vigilante505]

1 minute ago, Shura said:

You really don't need much to run a basic NAS/Media server. If you go with something like FreeNAS then ya you would need good hardware but there are other options. If you are looking to do a basic media server/backup solution then I would recommend you look into OpenMediaVault. The developer behind it was part of the original FreeNAS team so it has many of the same features but doesn't require expensive hardware to run.

 

I have my server running on a AM1 platform with a Athlon 5350 but many people use much lower hardware like Odroid C+ or Odroid C2. (Odroid is a rasberry alternative for the same price but with gigabit network card, better usb speed, more ram and better cpu) if you are considering using an old machine, I would definitely recommend looking into it; I initially did my tests on my old Pentium 4 PC and it worked just fine, only reason I went AM1 is because I needed more sata ports.

 

http://www.openmediavault.org/

Thank you. Thats probably the info I needed to get this started.

[samiscool51]

maybe buy a old server or computer on eBay or craigslist (maybe not that one but check it anyway) and see what comes up, you can find great deals on powerful systems for a low price

also check for parts as well, if the system you see doesn't have the right parts for you

i would recermend a core 2 quad, still powerful CPU's for their age, pair it with 8GB RAM and you have a good server on the cheep!