Alright. Not too much of a networking guy, aside from home networking, router configuring, Nas use, etc.
I'm trying to offload my plethora of mechanical hard drives from my main PC to a secondary system. ATM I have 8 hard drives in an acryllic mounting system with a psu on top of it, running to sata to esata backplates in my tower, then sata to sata to my board. Safe to say not the most pleasant looking.
Here comes the questions. What would the performance comparison be between having a secondary pc setup, with network mapped drives to my main pc, against something in a Truenas or alternative setup? I currently have a Qnap TS-851, and although it does the job for what it does. I absolutely HATE being tethered to proprietary file systems, or being forced to format a NTFS drive with tons of data on it, just to accommodate the NAS. Also get these random weird quirks from time to time on initializing the drives, takes forever, or even has these weird spurts of slowdowns switching between folders, on drives that have already been woken. Is there any open source DIY nas system out there that can use NTFS formatted drives with data on them already? I literally have nearly 70tb of drives (spanned across 8 drives, and just bought two new 14tb easystores to shuck), mostly full, and do not want to have to migratae data off and on to any nas or DIY nas system. Plus the thought of having a nas die (my qnap), or a proprietary DIY nas system die, and leave me with data that is unrecoverable with ease unless rebuilt, or have to go through many hoops to get my data back is unappealing, and not worth my time.
Here's my plan....
Build a secondary system to accommodate my drives. Small form factor with hot swap storage bays, or just lots of bays that aren't hot swap is fine as well. Got a ryzen 5 1600 mATX setup laying around, as well as an i3 8300, i5 6500, etc. I got parts to build MITX or MATX. Load it up with all my drives. Buy some cheap 10gb rj45 networking cards, one for my main rig, and one for the storage server, along with a 10gb switch. Map the drives, and use it as my personal drive storage. I would literally be the only one using it, and that is fine to me. Don't have experience with linux, so hoping to either just do it with windows, or a DIY Nas OS that lets me keep NTFS. How feasible would the performance in this type of route be? Anyone have any experience in terms of speed with this type of system? I've shared folders over networks to other windows pc's before, and mapped them, but mostly over wireless for these devices, so can't really get a good emphasis on how wired speeds would be. Curious how file interaction for MANY small files would be over the network, compared to current sata connections. I know large files will be no problem, as I've done that currently to mapped drives, but curious how this will affect tiny files performance wise.
Which also leads to another question if I'm on the right path. Advice on two 10gb Network cards, and a 10gb switch? Looking to get them cheap, so don't mind fleabaying used hardware from data center pulls...I just don't have ANY experience in the brands and their reliabilities, so any advice on this would be grand.
I'm trying to offload my plethora of mechanical hard drives from my main PC to a secondary system. ATM I have 8 hard drives in an acryllic mounting system with a psu on top of it, running to sata to esata backplates in my tower, then sata to sata to my board. Safe to say not the most pleasant looking.
Here comes the questions. What would the performance comparison be between having a secondary pc setup, with network mapped drives to my main pc, against something in a Truenas or alternative setup? I currently have a Qnap TS-851, and although it does the job for what it does. I absolutely HATE being tethered to proprietary file systems, or being forced to format a NTFS drive with tons of data on it, just to accommodate the NAS. Also get these random weird quirks from time to time on initializing the drives, takes forever, or even has these weird spurts of slowdowns switching between folders, on drives that have already been woken. Is there any open source DIY nas system out there that can use NTFS formatted drives with data on them already? I literally have nearly 70tb of drives (spanned across 8 drives, and just bought two new 14tb easystores to shuck), mostly full, and do not want to have to migratae data off and on to any nas or DIY nas system. Plus the thought of having a nas die (my qnap), or a proprietary DIY nas system die, and leave me with data that is unrecoverable with ease unless rebuilt, or have to go through many hoops to get my data back is unappealing, and not worth my time.
Here's my plan....
Build a secondary system to accommodate my drives. Small form factor with hot swap storage bays, or just lots of bays that aren't hot swap is fine as well. Got a ryzen 5 1600 mATX setup laying around, as well as an i3 8300, i5 6500, etc. I got parts to build MITX or MATX. Load it up with all my drives. Buy some cheap 10gb rj45 networking cards, one for my main rig, and one for the storage server, along with a 10gb switch. Map the drives, and use it as my personal drive storage. I would literally be the only one using it, and that is fine to me. Don't have experience with linux, so hoping to either just do it with windows, or a DIY Nas OS that lets me keep NTFS. How feasible would the performance in this type of route be? Anyone have any experience in terms of speed with this type of system? I've shared folders over networks to other windows pc's before, and mapped them, but mostly over wireless for these devices, so can't really get a good emphasis on how wired speeds would be. Curious how file interaction for MANY small files would be over the network, compared to current sata connections. I know large files will be no problem, as I've done that currently to mapped drives, but curious how this will affect tiny files performance wise.
Which also leads to another question if I'm on the right path. Advice on two 10gb Network cards, and a 10gb switch? Looking to get them cheap, so don't mind fleabaying used hardware from data center pulls...I just don't have ANY experience in the brands and their reliabilities, so any advice on this would be grand.
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