Looking for a home storage solution

M

Mekanic01

Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2002
Messages
925
I'm starting to get to the point where I need a new solution for my home storage needs. I'm a racing photographer, and I save all of my RAW files. I currently have about 3TB in need of backing up, and I will probably be adding at least another TB by the end of the summer.

Cloud services, to me, are a pain in the ass. The trickle out effect to keep updated takes forever, and starting in April I think I'll be adding data at a rate that will take until December to get caught up on.

At the moment, everything is stored on one pc with multiple drives. I have another older pc that I could probably use, but I need to know what is going to be a somewhat reliable storage solution to put into it where it's not likley that I'll lose any of my backups.

Thank you.
 
Not sure of budget but depending on current price (changes daily) 4TB or 5TB is the sweet spot.

I would go with RAID6 / RaidZ2 -- so you can handle more than 1 drive failure. But, remember RAID in-itself is not backup if something gets corrupted, or virus it's not going to 'save' your data.

6x 4TB = 24TB RAW
-2x 4TB = 8TB Lost
= 16TB Usable Space from 6 Hard Drives in RAIDZ2/RAID6 configuration

You can use your backup computer + M1015 HBA and run FreeNAS or Napp-IT which is ZFS based file system and run RaidZ2 or you can run your old computer + Linux and run software RAID or you can just get a plug-and-play device like a Synology and run RAID6 on there too. Depending onyour system you might not need the HBA.

I would do one of the above combo with 6 drives, and then get a 5TB external Toshiba for "backup" from your file server. So you have data not 'online' that is your 'backup archive'.
 
Mekanic01 said:
Thanks.

Any thoughts on the NAS personal/home cloud storage servers?
Click to expand...

I really like my Synology 5 Bay, I use 5x2TB in there with Raid6. FOr what it cost new (~$900) a couple years ago, I now know I could have built something MUCH MUCH more powerful to do a lot more (Virtual Machines, Etc...)

I'm now finishing up my "DIY NAS / STREAMING / VM" BEAST BOX :)

I will be running Napp-IT (ZFS) as a VM in Free ESXi (vmware hypervisor), as well as using it for Blue iris in windows7 VM, and much more!

FWIW I run FreeNAS on a 8-Bay Mini-ITX NAS case with 3TBx8 in RaidZ3 as my "backup" storage :) It's where I move my data for archive, a couple times a month.
 
I would suggest you look into UnRaid their current solution supports single drive parity but they are beta testing a version that will support dual drive parity. Its a great solution for people like you that just want to have reliable storage, you can use an old pc and different drive sizes. Their support community is very active and helpful.
 
Mekanic01 said:
I'm starting to get to the point where I need a new solution for my home storage needs. I'm a racing photographer, and I save all of my RAW files. I currently have about 3TB in need of backing up, and I will probably be adding at least another TB by the end of the summer.

Cloud services, to me, are a pain in the ass. The trickle out effect to keep updated takes forever, and starting in April I think I'll be adding data at a rate that will take until December to get caught up on.

At the moment, everything is stored on one pc with multiple drives. I have another older pc that I could probably use, but I need to know what is going to be a somewhat reliable storage solution to put into it where it's not likley that I'll lose any of my backups.

Thank you.
Click to expand...

If you are a photographer (and this is your job) I would recommend a Synology with disks in RAID1 and an external backup to a LARGE drive (grab an 8TB). This gets you nearly everything you need with MINIMAL STRESS and support.
 
Backblaze for backup?

You need to state your price range. Furthermore, a couple of TB of data is nothing these days, if you're talking 15TB+ now we're talking. A measly few TB that a single HDD can hold, pshhh...
 
I have close to 120TBs of storage in my storage server and I need more space again. Things just exploded when I started having kids and all the home videos, but I've been a data hoarder since the days when 200GB PATA drvies in raid 5 cost almost US$2k. You seem to be at the very beginning of your data hoarding journey. What you chose now, you will most likely be stuck with. This is because you will get to a point where you have so much stored data that it is difficult (or even impossible) to move your data onto a new system. So pick wisely!

My advice is forget hardware raid right off the bat. Having to maintain the same sized drives across the array is a huge PIA for a home user. Especially as storage sizes continue to grow by 2TBs every year, so you will want to upgrade to higher capacity drives at some point. Every data hoarder reaches a point where its just money to add more SATA ports and hard drives but you physically just run out of drive bays. That's when you go back and, for example, upgrade your 4TB drives to 6TBs (I've reached the end of that phase now). All these problems will be exacerbated with any kind of hardware raid as you are just stuck with whatever drive size/type you started with.

If you can do linux ZFS is really good and you can just add more drives to the array or swap out existing drives. For Windows you can use Windows Storage, Division M's Drive Bender (which is donationware/semi free now but partially dead), Flexraid or Stablebit's Drive Pool. People here have suggested linux OS specifically made for NAS and that's ok too. My problem with any NAS besides Synology is, unless you are using really low grade hardware, you are wasting potential usage. Besides Synology, which has a limited number of apps you can install, other NAS OS just run the storage and that's it, but with any modern hardware that machine could be used as a host OS or just used for so many other things.
 
I really like my 24 bay Supermicro chassis. I think the biggest challenge is having enough sata ports when it comes to building a NAS. I ended up buying 3 IBM cards off Ebay which gave me enough ports and then use mobo one for internal OS drive (used a SSD, less chance of failure), but had to flash the firmare to get rid of raid (I prefer doing raid in software so I'm not depending on a specific piece of hardware) and that required a floppy. There are cheaper 24 bay chassis by Norco as well but they seem to have more issues like DOA backplanes etc but maybe they're better now been a while since I read on them. There's a thread here.

As far as software I personally use Linux mdraid and NFS but ZFS is a great option too, I just never looked at it myself. Also you absolutely want a good UPS. You'll find yourself relying more and more on your storage as you expand.
 
Ive been using Freenas with ZFS RaidZ2 with 6x2tb for some time. Now with it filling up and disk getting cheaper, Im finding myself buying 4tb disk and replacing the current 2tb 1 by 1. Those 2 tb will become another RaidZ2 in another computer for another backup or another storage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top