Queries on NAS and RAID configuration

• 

  CyberMurning on 07/12/2018 - 14:24

  point 1 and 2:

  i have syno and with synology (not sure about other brand):

  yes possible to mix and match different sizes of disks and not losing space. here is the calculator: https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator

  if you have total 4 disks in the NAS, you can create a group of 2 disks only and make them raid, the other 2 are individual 2 single drives (for example).

  • 

    0FoxGiven on 07/12/2018 - 15:48

    Thanks ChiMot.. will go ahead with that config then. Hope it goes well (fingers crossed)

• 

  gautamp on 07/12/2018 - 14:27

  +2

  Get UNRAID and you will be happy. https://unraid.net/ i am using the basic for years and quite happy

  • 

    dan0909 on 07/12/2018 - 14:48

    -1

    Synology offers much more compared to unraid + not much tech knowledge is required. Buy the NAS, hard drives & you are almost ready to go.

    • 

      samtrois on 07/12/2018 - 16:35

      I give you that it would require less knowledge. but the dude seems to know enough about hard drives and RAID to Figure it out.. for effectively a file server its not really that hard.

      but I question what MORE exactly a Synology can do that even a cheap unraid box cant?

    • 

      konradp on 18/12/2018 - 13:14

      would strongly disagree

      https://unraid.net/product

  • 

    konradp on 18/12/2018 - 13:13

    Get unraid, its felxible and expandable and you can use exsiting hardware. Been using unraid for 8 years now and I scaled my setup many times. With a branded nas its limited in terms of bays and sometimes disk sizes based on raid configurations.

• 

  geech on 07/12/2018 - 15:09

  In answer to your questions:

  1. No, you shouldn't have any issues mixing drives. Keeping your RAID1 mirror using the same would be ideal (Which you're planning to do) and then having the other two as single drives is fine.

  2. Yes. You will be able to choose which drives to use in your RAID set. You would then create 3 separate volumes on top of the disks (1 each on each of the single drives, and a 3rd on the mirror).

  3. I'm not too sure on this one. I've never used anything lower than 7200 enterprise grade NAS drives personally, but I work in the storage industry, so have never needed to buy any drives. 5400's would be quieter and draw less power, and so long as you get NAS specific ones (Like the ones you mentioned) should suit your use case quite well.

  4. No, I don't think you'd get any significant benefit of configuring SSD cache. Your plex library metadata may have benefited from this, but you're already placing it on an SSD anyway. The rest of your workloads sound like they'll generally be sequential, which will not benefit overly from cache.

  • 

    0FoxGiven on 07/12/2018 - 15:34

    Thanks geech!

    Work in the storage industry eh? Any chance you can get a fellow ozbargainer a kickass discount on a few drives? ;)

    • 

      geech on 07/12/2018 - 15:44

      haha I wish. I had plenty of 4TB drives around, but they're drying up.

      Unfortunately most of the drives I'd have access to would be SAS based, so not suitable for a (SATA-based) NAS, or even usable in a home PC without a SAS controller.

      I've been having a really hard time trying to justify paying for storage lately, but with the price of the Samsung Evo's at the moment, I think I'll actually bite the bullet and buy a few.

      • 

        0FoxGiven on 07/12/2018 - 15:46

        Ye the prices on SSDs seem to be dropping hard. Reckon it may fall even further?

• 

  Untameable on 07/12/2018 - 15:12

  Synology are great. You've picked a 4 bay one.

  You can split up your libraries the way you're suggesting but I having done home RAID in a few different ways over the past decade I'd suggest you not do this. I know you "don't need a backup" but…

  If possible just standardise on the one size of the largest disk you can, and create a single SHR-II volume.

  Why? For one, a single disk sounds like a good enough RAID solution but my very first Synology failure was two BAYS at the same time (due to some mixup in the Synology it had to rebuild the two drives to get running again!)

  But secondly once you have storage your needs will rapidly grow to fill it, and once you begin having to shuffle files around to different drives to fit in, it's a huge pain as opposed to having the one volume and everything going to it. That volume can still have seperate shared folders and permissions but at least it's all safe, and all the storage contributes to your data safety (spreading the risk).

  I also wouldn't bother with the SSD at least initially.

  • 

    0FoxGiven on 07/12/2018 - 15:44

    Aw man.. 2 bay failures at the same time eh. I might have to resort to keeping the most most most important data on the cloud somewhere then.

    Most of the storage space will be taken up by movies and tv shows and stuff. And while always having access to the data is good, I dont really want to use up precious drives on having backups for all of that as I can easily download the same again. I only really need backups for my documents and photos.

    I already got a Synology recommended SDD from this deal.

    • 

      samtrois on 07/12/2018 - 17:13

      Not sure exactly of all the different types of RAID, or what Synology box your thinking of getting, but in unRaid, 1 disk provides redundancy for all the other smaller/mismatched disks, meaning, you can add more drives later, and they're all backed up, no need to constantly 'double" your drives like RAID1

      That's also a HUGE SSD for just storing plex metadata on, you mentioned games, but surely you don't mean playing them off a NAS? In unRaid you could use that as a write cache, meaning every transfer you do the NAS is at full gigabit speeds, and not slowed down by slower HDD or RAID operations. Then things you want to be kept on the array can be moved nightly, or how I prefer, when the ssd is getting full, that way recently downloaded TV & movies stay accessible nice n quickly from my SSD.

      Also, if you were to lose more than one drive at once, unRaid uses JBOD type 'raid', so you wouldn't lose the data from other drives like might happen on some kinds of RAID.

• 

  shiftyphil on 07/12/2018 - 16:08

  One important rule to remember: RAID is not a complete substitute for backups.

  A basic mirror (RAID-1) will protect you against a single drive failure, and allow you to carry on without interruption - a big advantage over backups.

  But it won't protect against corruption, accidental deletion, multiple failures, controller failure….

  Snapshots can protect against accidental deletion, higher RAID levels can handle multiple failures, and advanced file systems can handle corruption; but the only thing that can protect against everything* is actual backups.

  *Not guaranteed in case of meteor strike or zombie apocalypse.