Network Drive

[maverick786us]

I am looking for a network drive, which I can use with my Asus router for storage and P2P.

Now I came across WD My Cloud 4TB Personal Cloud Storage. Since it has its inbuilt WiFi, therefore, doesn't need to be connected with the USB port of the router. I have few doubts.

1) Since this is a user level HDD, not a SCSI drive that is used in servers. Therefore, will it be this much reliable, that we can keep it on 24X7?

2) Is it worth to spend extra on this drive, when I can get a network drive of same capacilty for almost half the price, and can be connected using USB3.

3) I am using Asus AC1900 RT AC68U Dual-Band Wireless Gigabit Router which is extreme fast. Therefore, will data transfer be faster using WiFi or USB3?

 

[SomeGuy133]

my cloud or cloud mirror? My cloud is no different then throwing files into a single drive with 0 back up. my cloud mirror does RAID 1 which is questionable with drives of high capacity because of UREs.

The advantage of my cloud is simplicity. Does the device and its package software meet your needs or is it useless? If it is the latter then dont get it and stick to a hard drive in the USB port. If data redundancy is important that is an entirely different question and whoa-fully more expensive especially if you have a lot of data (and complex).

if any type of data redundancy is important do not use My cloud or a single hard drive. If you only have a couple or few TB of data use a 4 bay or 6 bay RAID enclosure and run RAID 6 and no less.

I am sure someone with better knowledge on this and writing abilities will be on here soon filling in any details I have missed and probably giving you better solutions then what i know. (I am still new to this)

The last thing you need to consider is if bit rot is an issue to you. If that is an issue then it gets more of a pain in the butt.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

A direct USB3 or ethernet connection will be faster than WiFi.

Running consumer drives 24/7 isn't an issue as long as you don't stick them in a hot/enclosed space. Enterprise drives have the same reliability issues; sometimes drives just die. If you are at all concerned about this data it needs to be backed up to at least one other drive.

 

[maverick786us]

my cloud or cloud mirror? My cloud is no different then throwing files into a single drive with 0 back up. my cloud mirror does RAID 1 which is questionable with drives of high capacity because of UREs.

The advantage of my cloud is simplicity. Does the device and its package software meet your needs or is it useless? If it is the latter then dont get it and stick to a hard drive in the USB port. If data redundancy is important that is an entirely different question and whoa-fully more expensive especially if you have a lot of data (and complex).

if any type of data redundancy is important do not use My cloud or a single hard drive. If you only have a couple or few TB of data use a 4 bay or 6 bay RAID enclosure and run RAID 6 and no less.

I am sure someone with better knowledge on this and writing abilities will be on here soon filling in any details I have missed and probably giving you better solutions then what i know. (I am still new to this)

The last thing you need to consider is if bit rot is an issue to you. If that is an issue then it gets more of a pain in the butt.

Data is important. I want to make these drives as the primary source of back ups. PCs keep on upgrading every 2-3 years, so does the HDD. Moving data from old PCs to new upgraded one is a mess. So putting it in a network drive will be the best option. Data redundancy isn't important, I am using it for home purpose, not commercial

 

[SomeGuy133]

Data is important. I want to make these drives as the primary source of back ups. PCs keep on upgrading every 2-3 years, so does the HDD. Moving data from old PCs to new upgraded one is a mess. So putting it in a network drive will be the best option. Data redundancy isn't important, I am using it for home purpose, not commercial

My stuff is home purposes too but i loathe the thought of loosing any data personally.

Either system with just using a single drive will end up being the same in general in regards to performance and reliability. No redundancy is just playing with fire personally.

 

[maverick786us]

My stuff is home purposes too but i loathe the thought of loosing any data personally.

Either system with just using a single drive will end up being the same in general in regards to performance and reliability. No redundancy is just playing with fire personally.

How? As far as I know, data redundancy will just occupy more space on the drive?

 

[SomeGuy133]

How? As far as I know, data redundancy will just occupy more space on the drive?

huh? if your drive dies....you loose your data. How is that not playing with fire.

 

[maverick786us]

huh? if your drive dies....you loose your data. How is that not playing with fire.

I think the way I put up the question was wrong. Sorry about that.

We are talking about 2 things.

1) Data Security: Yes your data, my data is crucial, and needs to be secure. If the hard disk dies, it wll be next to impossile to get it retrive it.

2) Data Redundancy: is a condition created within a database or data storage technology in which the same piece of data is held in two separate places. This can mean two different fields within a single database, or two different spots in multiple software environments or platforms.

My primary concern will always be data security, because I will always keep that data, no matter how many times I upgrade my PC or internal HDD. Data redundancy is hardly a concern, for me. Don't want to play with the fire.

How much is the lifespan for these hard drives? lets say I invested heavily on an 8TB WD Cloud Mirror drive and I want it to hold my data for atleast 10 years. Can I rely on it? If necessary, I will not keep it switched on 24X7. Only while using P2P and accessing iCloud of my mobile devices, I will keep it on.

 

[maverick786us]

A direct USB3 or ethernet connection will be faster than WiFi.

Running consumer drives 24/7 isn't an issue as long as you don't stick them in a hot/enclosed space. Enterprise drives have the same reliability issues; sometimes drives just die. If you are at all concerned about this data it needs to be backed up to at least one other drive.

Thanks SomeGuy133 and DeathFromBelow for the help. I will connect my drive to the to the router. So whether its connected using USB3 or ethernet, when I will access data, in my PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones, it will always be through Wifi.

So does it still makes a difference, whther your drive is connected to your router through USB3 or ethernet or WiFi?

 

[HammerSandwich]

How much is the lifespan for these hard drives? lets say I invested heavily on an 8TB WD Cloud Mirror drive and I want it to hold my data for atleast 10 years. Can I rely on it? If necessary, I will not keep it switched on 24X7. Only while using P2P and accessing iCloud of my mobile devices, I will keep it on.

The reason for backups is that you CANNOT trust ANY given device.

It is a man-made object. We know the odds of failure are 100%. We do not know when that will happen.

 

[drescherjm]

How much is the lifespan for these hard drives? lets say I invested heavily on an 8TB WD Cloud Mirror drive and I want it to hold my data for atleast 10 years. Can I rely on it? If necessary, I will not keep it switched on 24X7.

I would say it's unlikely to last 10 years without at least 1 drive failure and possibly a powersupply failure.

 

[SomeGuy133]

I would say it's unlikely to last 10 years without at least 1 drive failure and possibly a powersupply failure.

problem with 8TB is UREs if I remember the general figure correctly. You basically have a 100% chance that a URE will happen and the RAID rebuild will fail which is why in todays world a simple mirror is a no go and RAID6 is a minimum. You might be better off turning one of your desktops into a file server and just leave it on 24/7 and use like SnapRAID. That was what I was going to do until I decided to build a NAS.

 

[drescherjm]

problem with 8TB is UREs if I remember the general figure correctly. You basically have a 100% chance that a URE

I say in practice (where I do 70TB+ of scrubs every single week for many years) the URE rates are 2 orders of magnitude lower than the published numbers for tested working drives and much greater for drives that are going bad. I typically see 1 corrupt sector per several hundred TB of data read / written. Not 1 bad sector per 12 TB. However when a drive is about to die I have seen a corrupt sector per several GB of data written.

 

[SomeGuy133]

I say in practice (where I do 70TB+ of scrubs every single week for many years) the URE rates are 2 orders of magnitude lower than the published numbers for tested working drives and much greater for drives that are going bad. I typically see 1 corrupt sector per several hundred TB of data read / written. Not 1 bad sector per 12 TB. However when a drive is about to die I have seen a corrupt sector per several GB of data written.

and when your using 2 drives of the same age and one is going bad are you going to trust that the other one that is already 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or whatever years old is not going to spit out UREs?

 

[drescherjm]

and when your using 2 drives of the same age and one is going bad are you going to trust that the other one that is already 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or whatever years old is not going to spit out UREs?

That is why you scrub weekly and have backups. Although at work I also tend to swap out drives (demote them to lesser important systems and increase the redundancy) when they are in service for over 5 years.

 

[SomeGuy133]

That is why you scrub weekly and have backups. Although at work I also tend to swap out drives (demote them to lesser important systems and increase the redundancy) when they are in service for over 5 years.

this is his back up from what I gather.....

 

[HammerSandwich]

problem with 8TB is UREs if I remember the general figure correctly. You basically have a 100% chance that a URE will happen and the RAID rebuild will fail which is why in todays world a simple mirror is a no go and RAID6 is a minimum. You might be better off turning one of your desktops into a file server and just leave it on 24/7 and use like SnapRAID.

Please explain how SnapRAID helps here. It requires the parity disk(s) to be the largest ones in the pool, right? So your reasoning implies that parity drives are the ones most likely to suffer a URE. What happens then?

Having never used SnapRAID, I'll say that the only feature I find compelling is that each data disk is its own entity & can be recovered independently.

 

[zaniix]

This all becomes to complicated, I keep my files on my PC and a backup on an unRaid box that also serves as a plex server to stream files. MY PC also has a backup to crashplan for disasters. The odds that my unraid box will lose data is slim, the odds that both my unraid server and my PC will lose data at the same time is VERY slim and if all goes to shit I have crashplan.

 

[drescherjm]

So your reasoning implies that parity drives are the ones most likely to suffer a URE. What happens then?

1. With SnapRAID you normally have 2 or more parity disks
2. SnapRAID checksums each block on each device and stores the checksums in a file that is saved on more than 1 drive. I put this file on every disk.

From the checksums SnapRAID is able to figure out what data disks and what parity disks are have good data for the block needed. If you have enough parity the data can be recovered for the files in the block.

 

[SomeGuy133]

@hammersandwich. With a RAID 1 you only have 1 drive as back up. With RAID 6 or other software RAIDs you have several parities, which makes it almost impossible for UREs to be an issue. RAID 1 is fine with small drives but not with 3-8TB drives. 8TB drives is really asking for trouble.

 

[maverick786us]

So overall a WD 4TB Mirror which has RAID 1 should be the best bet for me?

 

[SomeGuy133]

So overall a WD 4TB Mirror which has RAID 1 should be the best bet for me?

there are better options like getting something a little more robust. It depends on how much you want to spend and what you want to do.

That WD is cheap and simple and is better then a single drive in terms of data security but still lacking if you really wanna be safe.

Syncology has some good products. They are expensive but user friendly.

There are other routes like making your own NAS or you could simply run a NAS inside your desktop.

Running SnapRAID or ZFS in your main computer (depends what OS you run) would allow you to skimp out of all the extra hardware needed for a dedicated box as long as your desktop stays on 24/7 and is stable. That could get you started towards a good set up and whenever you get the money/time/upgrade your PC you could convert to a dedicated box.

Those are some of many options you have. It just depends on how much you want to spend and what your data is worth to you. I have family photos, medical records, taxes, movies, music, and tons of other stuff that I really don't want to loose so a dedicated box for me was the only route.


EDIT: on a side note remember the more you move data around (rewriting) the more chances you run across bit rot. I already have lost files and stuff because of that and thats a major reason why I am switching to SnapRAID. Some really important photos have been lost because of bit rot. So even if you luck out and never loose a hard drive over the last 5 years and continue to luck out over the next 5 years there is a good chance that some files will get corrupted over that time period because of data movement.. This is where newer file systems come into play like ZFS and SnapRAID.