What now? *Advice Plz*

[Flashie]

Hi; We've got 4 main computers in the house and a pretty regular-consumer-grade network.

Of the 4 computers in our house 2 are gaming PC's (one being mine) and 2 light-load machines (Web browsing, emails, etc.)

Each Gaming tower had roughly 10TB of mechanical storage available in itself, coupled with a boot SSD.
Here comes the problem

Lately we've had drives failing shortly after each other (None from my PC though; but we'd like to minimize the risk of mass data-loss in the case it does).

The one gaming PC (Which was re-done half a year back with an i7-6700k; Z170A MSI Carbon Mobo and 16GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM) - had two of its drives fail within this last quarter.

That's a total of 6TB that has been lost in data as well as storage capacity for that computer.

 

We'd like to consider more options rather than just replacing the failed drives and re-assembling all the data by redownloading it.

Not sure about the US, but where I live; hard drives are costly - we cant afford to keep dishing out cash on new drives.

 

What would be the best option here for a possible RAID-solution where there wont be data loss in case a drive or two fail?
I'm considering a form of a server to assume the responsibility for such a solution; and then just have all the computers on the network read and write to and from that.

 

I'd like to hear you guys' opinion on the best option plz 

In b4 i need to buy 5x4TB HDD's 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Your options for RAID with regards to data loss prevention is basically between RAID1 and RAID5.

 

RAID1 is fairly straight forward, but your total storage capacity is only equal to one drive. RAID5 gives better storage usage, but requires three drives minimum and if one of the drives fails, it can be tricky to rebuild your data. But you can rebuild it.

[Flashie]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

Your options for RAID with regards to data loss prevention is basically between RAID1 and RAID5.

 

RAID1 is fairly straight forward, but your total storage capacity is only equal to one drive. RAID5 gives better storage usage, but requires three drives minimum and if one of the drives fails, it can be tricky to rebuild your data. But you can rebuild it.

Thanks for the reply

I've got a couple of questions doe. For the sake of discussion; lets assume we use the RAID 5 array with 5x4TB drives:
 

1. What kind of hardware would be required for a system to run such an array for the network?
2. If the RAID 5 is in a separate computer connected to the network; Would the 2 Gaming PC's and the 2 Regular desktops be able to do game and work to and from this RAID 5 PC across the network? (Our current network runs over CAT5e cabling.
3. What sort of OS would be needed to run this PC?
4. If we start off with only Three 4TB HDD's to begin with; are we able to just add in the other 2 over time as we acquire them or would the array need to be re-setup?

[Mira Yurizaki]

22 minutes ago, Flashie said:

Thanks for the reply

I've got a couple of questions doe. For the sake of discussion; lets assume we use the RAID 5 array with 5x4TB drives:
 

1. What kind of hardware would be required for a system to run such an array for the network?
2. If the RAID 5 is in a separate computer connected to the network; Would the 2 Gaming PC's and the 2 Regular desktops be able to do game and work to and from this RAID 5 PC across the network? (Our current network runs over CAT5e cabling.
3. What sort of OS would be needed to run this PC?
4. If we start off with only Three 4TB HDD's to begin with; are we able to just add in the other 2 over time as we acquire them or would the array need to be re-setup?

1. Something with a RAID controller in it. Most NAS boxes you can buy online (like from Synology or QNAP) can already do this.
2. It depends on how much data the computers are pulling at once. If all of them max out 1Gb (which is give or take 100-110MB/sec after overhead), then you'll be running into issues.
3. Theoretically any modern OS. Though there are ones built specifically for NASes like FreeNAS.
4. You should be able to add drives to the existing array. How to do it on the RAID configuration itself I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's straightforward.

[Flashie]

9 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

1. Something with a RAID controller in it. Most NAS boxes you can buy online (like from Synology or QNAP) can already do this.
2. It depends on how much data the computers are pulling at once. If all of them max out 1Gb (which is give or take 100-110MB/sec after overhead), then you'll be running into issues.
3. Theoretically any modern OS. Though there are ones built specifically for NASes like FreeNAS.
4. You should be able to add drives to the existing array. How to do it on the RAID configuration itself I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's straightforward.

Thanks for the help

[Flashie]

57 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

1. Something with a RAID controller in it. Most NAS boxes you can buy online (like from Synology or QNAP) can already do this.
2. It depends on how much data the computers are pulling at once. If all of them max out 1Gb (which is give or take 100-110MB/sec after overhead), then you'll be running into issues.
3. Theoretically any modern OS. Though there are ones built specifically for NASes like FreeNAS.
4. You should be able to add drives to the existing array. How to do it on the RAID configuration itself I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's straightforward.

Sorry, Im not finish with you yet 

I came across this deal: http://www.wootware.co.za/qnap-ts431p-4-bay-sata3-6gbps-1-7ghz-dual-core-1gb-ddr3-nas-enclosure.html
Its price is actually really amazingly excellent for where i live; and the specs just look amazing.
Would this be able to do all that we discussed earlier? 

A side note/question: How do you set it up? Just pop in the 4TB drive; throw on an ethernet cable; and the computers on the network can detect it? Or does it require prior setup through software? (Or maybe evens work like a firmware page of a router where you physically have to go to 192.168.1.1?)

[NZLaurence]

If your drives are all dying in the same PC I would check you power. Bad power/power supply will kill drives quickly. Maybe consider a UPS, look for second hand server ones that you can just replace the batterys on. They all use standard batterys inside if you take them apart.that should be easy to source.

 

All your data in a NAS is still a single point of failure. Maybe consider keeping the drives separate but scripting a back up between each computer?

[Pixel5]

since your main concern here is that you can't afford to get new drives all the time the first thing is to find out why the drives fail, especially check the power supplies.

 

Beside this you said you could just redownload the data, do you have external backups or is this just data that is easily replaceable?

 

If cost is of concern for you you should consider if you really need 10TB of storage in each PC, we store many games, movies and pictures but we dont exceed 10TB in the entire household.

 

The easiest way to save money on storage is to clean up and stop storing useless data, anything you could just redownload and dont need regularly doesnt need to be there all the time.

Any movie or TV series you can watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime doesnt need to be there and last but not least you dont need every single game of your steam library installed, you are not playing more than 10 of them anyways.

[ChalkChalkson]

Since I assume you sometimes play some games together, you sure have a lot of duplicate data. You might want to consider trading loading time for less redundant data, by storing data you don't need to be accessible fast, on a NAS.

Note however, that each failed drive needs to be replaced regardless of  your system, you can just prevent to lose the data ...

But the rate drives failed in your case is pretty uncommon, so either there is something wrong systematically with the way the drives are treated, you bought really shitt quality drives, or you just won in 3 lotteries on the same day.

[Flashie]

33 minutes ago, ChalkChalkson said:

Since I assume you sometimes play some games together, you sure have a lot of duplicate data. You might want to consider trading loading time for less redundant data, by storing data you don't need to be accessible fast, on a NAS.

Note however, that each failed drive needs to be replaced regardless of  your system, you can just prevent to lose the data ...

But the rate drives failed in your case is pretty uncommon, so either there is something wrong systematically with the way the drives are treated, you bought really shitt quality drives, or you just won in 3 lotteries on the same day.

Being in IT myself and having worked a year in a store i know that it isnt regular (but it does happen) that drives just up and die; especially externals.
After working on the drives physically and examining the enclosures internally it was evident that the drives experienced a drop or two in its lifetime. This is why i convert all the externals (Buy them cheaper than internals at 7200RPM; pop em out of the enclosure and now you have an internal) that I own to internals rather than leaving on the desk and neatly cable managing them as part of the setup. 
Personally - I've had 3 hard drives die on me. One slightly before the 4 year mark and 2 after the 1 week marks (Really beyond pathetic Dell Refurbished drives that Dell Warranty Services give in place of replacing it with a new one)

 

4 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

since your main concern here is that you can't afford to get new drives all the time the first thing is to find out why the drives fail, especially check the power supplies.

 

Beside this you said you could just redownload the data, do you have external backups or is this just data that is easily replaceable?

 

If cost is of concern for you you should consider if you really need 10TB of storage in each PC, we store many games, movies and pictures but we dont exceed 10TB in the entire household.

 

The easiest way to save money on storage is to clean up and stop storing useless data, anything you could just redownload and dont need regularly doesnt need to be there all the time.

Any movie or TV series you can watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime doesnt need to be there and last but not least you dont need every single game of your steam library installed, you are not playing more than 10 of them anyways.

I apologize for not having mentioned this before in the original post; The drives that did die were both externals (Which for the life of me i dont understand why my brother didnt want them converted to internals rather). Both of which I can safely assume took a knock, beating or drop (Maybe even all 3). 

Most of the data that was lost could easily be replaced - Majority being games; movies; series; anime; music; pictures and screenshots. My brother hasn't any backups of a good deal of that data that cant be replicated such as the screenshots and pictures, but as for the games; movies and music - they're all regularly available online and can easily be re-downloaded.

 

I personally keep backups of my larger games on a separate internal drive; with ALL my 'precious family photos'; documents and files uploaded to either Dropbox; Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive.

At this stage; I feel a NAS would be a worthy investment due to the redundancy over the data stored on it. Having all the data in a centralized location would of course prevent unnecessary duplicates being locally stored on our computers; Rather just have 1 copy that both of us can access to from the NAS. The NAS would also provide the necessary backup-facilities for our one mission-critical computer (containing irreplaceable documents) to do so without the use of regular backups to physical external drives which are stored where the NAS would go anyway. 

The point made about the TV series and movies that should not be stored locally (with access to sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime); I'd agree to - but only up till a point. We living where we do (South Africa) only have access to a (VERY) limited library of these movies and series available on Netflix and Amazon Prime compared to the library's available to American and European users. Our ISP's do not provide speeds of greater than 10mbps down (0.8 up) in most areas of the country (If only fibre was a thing to us smaller cities ); So we don't really have the kind of access to just load up a video and stream it - thats why most resort to downloading. We however are fortunate enough to be able to afford an 8Mbps down ADSL line; and therefore I do prefer to stream than download myself - Thats where i share your sentiment.