Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
No, what he said is that a RAID arrangement belongs in an editing studio, but not quite so on a private server like the one I intend to assemble.
Things get quite expensive if you have to proceed as you recommend.
Heck, I was GIVEN an old Dell PowerEdge R515, and I upgraded the RAID controller in it to an PERC H700 (supporting RAID 6) for $25 from eBay and the Opteron CPUs (it has 2) to the low power, 6 core variants for... $11 from eBay. I replaced the DVD-ROM drive with a small SATA SSD I had sitting around, installed Windows Server 2012 (I had this sitting around as well), plugged both Broadcom NetXtreme NICs up to the switch and away I went, complete with automatic network load balancing.
I'm currently using an external 16TB (5x4TB RAID 5) eSATA array with it on a RocketRAID 644L card while I am saving up to populate the 8 bays connected to the H700 with 8 or 10 TB drives and configure them as a RAID 6. Then I will relegate the external array to backup duty. In the interim, the contents of the array is backed up to an external 8TB USB drive and a few older HDDs that I have attached to different PCs... Not optimal, but it gets the job done until I can get the main array online.
This does NOT have to be terribly expensive at all.
Edit: The point is that you can get server grade hardware that is a little older (but still great for your needs) for not a lot of money. Here is a Dell PowerEdge R515 (the 2 NICS are built-in) with 2 CPUs, 16G RAM, the H700 RAID card, and even 6 HDDs (2x500 GB and 4x2 TB) for $300 with free shipping. Just add your FreeNAS to it, and swap out the drives for whatever you want.
Definitely agree. Just be careful when it comes to those 2U storage servers. They need to force a lot of air through a very small space and as a result tend to be VERY loud. Much louder than you'd want in any home setting. If you do go with a used enterprise rack mount server, try to find a 4U or larger unit. They tend to have better airflow and be quieter.
Back when I was testing a HP DL180 G6 I got a great deal on, it had 8x 18k rpm fans in it, and when they spun up it would literally sound like a taxiing jumbo jet. I had it in the basement, but it was annoying to me two stories up in the second floor bedroom at night.
Here is an example (someone else's video)
It's only loud when it powers up, but once it is in Windows, it settles down a lot. It sits about 10 feet away from my workstation, and I can still hear it faintly, but it is not really very noticeable. Can't hear it at all if I am playing anything. YMMV, of course That power up fan noise, though..... boy howdy is that impressive!
Edit: Just watched your attached video clip - My Dell sounds about the same at initial power up, but even the fan down noise on that HP is ridiculous! My Dell runs a helluva lot quieter in actual use.
I SERIOUSLY doubt everybody is using a redundant array for their home server.
If you're only using 3 or 4 drives, use RAID 5 and lose only the capacity of 1 of them (a 33% and 25% loss, respectively) .
You could also consider a cloud storage backup such as Amazon S3 Glacier (about $12/mo for 30TB ~ $0.004/Gb) or Backblaze($6/mo ~ Unlimited) which would give you not only overall backup but an offsite one, it would be a recurring cost though.It's also important to note that redundancy is not the same as a backup. For a true backup you would need another device with 30tb minimum of storage to back the raid 5 up to. It's important to differentiate redundancy and backups because in events like cryptolocker, file deletion, misedits, etc. drive redundancy won't save you. You would need a real backup solution in one of those cases to recover your data.
OK, buying four to use three, using one for a RAID 5 and be protected, that would be similar to what I was proposing. Having an extra HDD for backup.
Is that what you mean?
The question is I would need to have at least 30TB of files, all different, split in three different HDDs.
How is the info organized with RAID 5 using 4 x 10TB HDDs? How am I protected?
OK, buying four to use three, using one for a RAID 5 and be protected, that would be similar to what I was proposing. Having an extra HDD for backup.
Is that what you mean?
First of all I do not want to invest on ready made server. They are all quite expensive.
After my friend gave me the idea of using a computer and FreeNas, that got me interested.
From what I know using the system it's quite straightforward, but I was never considering using RAID.
Having all drives in active use, as apparently seems to be for a RAID system, doesn't sound to me like a very good idea. I would prefer them not run when they are not in use.
And I am not convinced yet that the RAID idea is better than the one I had, having a fourth HDD to move things to when one of the HDD shows signs of imminent failure. You just have to be aware of the signs.
Yet you don't want to pay for redundancy.During the past years I have lost more files due to defective HDDs than to defective DVD media.
Yet you don't like the nearly unanimous advice that experienced users offer, because it increases the cost of your project.As I am not experienced enough myself I can't say what it is, but something doesn't add up as it should.
And that's far too late to start making your backups.Now, if you tell me I should have an additional HDD, same size as the others, so at any sign of a possible problem I can backup that HDD, that is something reasonable.
I kinda feel like you are just trolling at this pointWhat was just suggested to me with FreeNAS was one disk per pool and have multiple pools.
I don't know what you mean by trolling. What I'm doing is learning.
Sorry, but as you see, I am not still convinced of the RAID arrangement being what I need or want.
From what I have read, the RAID brings another big problem: that if any HDD fails, it has to be replaced with the same brand and model.
Then you're not convinced that your data is of any importance.
For hardware RAID controllers, this can be true- for software RAID, it isn't at all true. The biggest issue is that mixing and matching drives results in capacity that is used neither by data nor by providing redundancy. Otherwise, use whatever; the quality of the drives and level of redundancy will reflect your priorities.
Your option of cutting costs by buying used HDDs is out of the question. HDDs is the only thing I would never buy refurbished or used.
If you use an early warning system like CrystalDiskInfo and check your disks every week, you can backup the one showing any signs of potential problems in advance.
No, my data is very important. But I don't think you have to go to that level of expense to take care of it.
If you use an early warning system like CrystalDiskInfo and check your disks every week, you can backup the one showing any signs of potential problems in advance.
I did find having just one extra HDD an acceptable expense, if that was better than my proposal of watching the HDDs to have an advance warning, and did say so here.
But then the additional info was that the extra HDD, not the one I first assembled the array with, but the ones that came after, had to be same brand and model. Which I think would be impossible to sustain along the years.
OTOS, after I started watching my HDDs, I always had a warning signal from all of them. On only one case I did think I still had a few days and I did not. That will never happen again. But I did have the warning.
But when disks are on a RAID array it seems the catastrophe can be even larger, not smaller. That's what scared me.