Building a NAS - OS?

[HoughMade]

More power to all of you building your own. I generally endorse DIY for about anything.

As for NAS...I had to google it.

 

[Hop]

Just for the other geeks on here...
I was going to build from scratch then ran across a box made by Intel, a SS4200E. You might find a couple of these on the used market. Fantastic setup that boots from on-board DOM (all kinds of built in features like EMC Retrospect backup, Bluetooth, FTP, NFS, SNMP & Windows CIFS). I'm running 4 1T drive in RAID5 configuration for a total of 2.7 TB of storage. I have seen people use 4 x 2T though for twice the storage.

All 4 of my original Seagate 1T drives eventually crapped out on my so I dumped them for WD Blacks & it's been running unattended for years (knock on wood).

It lives inside of my gun safe providing warmth and lowering humidity in the safe. It doesn't seem to mind the elevated temperature at all.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

As a person who used to work for emc supporting g retrospect. Please please please please do not rely on that huge steaming pile of crap software.

 

[Hop]

As a person who used to work for emc supporting g retrospect. Please please please please do not rely on that huge steaming pile of crap software.

It seemed to work backing up my old computers. I no longer use that feature.

 

[Pyro]

I like Synology appliances but not the cost. You can run their code using XPEnology based on the open source release. Works well and the Synology tools, Shared Raid, etc work. The hardware requirements aren't much and it should run nicely from that 32g SSD.

 

[rkwhyte2]

Never used retrospect but did run Networker. I liked it, it just worked.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

It seemed to work backing up my old computers. I no longer use that feature.

When I supported that crap software. The moment I say down at my desk and turned on my phone. It would have back to back calls until it was time to leave for the day. And that was the same for the others on the project. We had to beg for breaks to go tinkle and if you asked for your lunch around 12 you would be lucky to get it around 2.


That software was so unstable and would often crash for no reason . Or it would just stop working etc so you could go months with no backup. Such junk.

 

[Caleb]

Bumping this thread back up...working on my kinda poor man's makeshift NAS using a RPi4 and OMV. It currently has one 4Tb WD red pro in it and I have another 4tb HGST hdd. Are you guys still recommending redundancy over capacity? The WB Red Pros aren't exactly cheap hdd and will be a bit before I can add a few more. In addition to this, I'm also looking for recommendations for off site storage as well.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

 

[Cameramonkey]

Yes. Redundancy is key. Literally a case of two is one and one is none. If you lose half a RAID1 you still have your data. You lose your single drive, you have no data. just use your best judgement; is the cost of a second drive worth more than what you are putting on the single drive? If not, suck it up.

And technically you can build it out with cheap disks if you are RAIDing it. Who cares if a cheap drive fails if you are built with redundancy.

If I'm rolling my own I use FreeNAS.

 

[JettaKnight]

I'm a nerd, but yeah, I only got half of that.

I've got 4 1TB reds, RAID 5.

EDIT: I actualy have four 2TB drives.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

3,2,1

Three copies of your data
Two onsite
One off site.

 

[Caleb]

Yes. Redundancy is key. Literally a case of two is one and one is none. If you lose half a RAID1 you still have your data. You lose your single drive, you have no data. just use your best judgement; is the cost of a second drive worth more than what you are putting on the single drive? If not, suck it up.

And technically you can build it out with cheap disks if you are RAIDing it. Who cares if a cheap drive fails if you are built with redundancy.

If I'm rolling my own I use FreeNAS.

I don't think I have a spare pc powerful enough to run FreeNAS...all my extra pc are garbage/old

 

[Caleb]

3,2,1

Three copies of your data
Two onsite
One off site.

Recommendation for off site backup storage?

 

[Cameramonkey]

I don't think I have a spare pc powerful enough to run FreeNAS...all my extra pc are garbage/old

You would be surprised how little horsepower it takes if all you want it for is sharing files. It does require more HP for things like Docker apps.

Recommendation for off site backup storage?

I have customers running Carbonite Pro. Gotta spend the money for the highest tier because the cheaper versions dont save multimedia files. So they'll only upload documents and maybe pictures and music. But definitely not videos.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

Recommendation for off site backup storage?

I'm sorry but I don't.

I use my Google drive for something's.
And I back up to a server at a buddies house for other stuffs.

 

[Cameramonkey]

I'm sorry but I don't.

I use my Google drive for something's.
And I back up to a server at a buddies house for other stuffs.

There was a backup software that I have intentionally forotten their name. They used to have a free version that would allow you to create a private cloud. You could backup between computers, even remote ones. Apparently they had too many people using it for the private option and wouldnt pay them for cloud space.

So they didnt just stop updating the software and make freeloaders miss out on updates and new features, they crippled the existing software forcing you to start paying them or quit using it.

 

[fullmetaljesus]

I've considered standing up a server at linode.com and then just write custom scripts to handle my backups.


But I'm cheap, so there that.

 

[Caleb]

Thoughts on these hard drives?

 

[fullmetaljesus]

Several years ago seagate let a huge batch of flawed drives out that caused a lot of problems for me
But on a personal level Seagate has a been a solid work horse for me for years. Weatern digital onced burned me hard on a warranty issue which caused me to lose nearly 300G worth of media.

Professionally in recent years I've seen the typical 5years worth of solid performance from Seagate.

So aside from their oopsie several years ago. My money goes to them first and wd can eat a bag of ..youknowwhat