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2 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

You did not read wrongly. RAID 10 is fast and secure. However, it is expensive, since you are essentially running a hot back-up of your striped drives. The question to ask is if you need such performance/security?

It seems to me (but I don't know what I'm talking about in this topic! ) that if RAID 1 also yields you only half of your drive space but is slower and less secure than RAID 10, that you should either do RAID 10 OR JBOD with active weekly cold backups? Does that seem like a good conclusion? So which should I do?  

Is RAID 1 or RAID 10 more trouble and expense than necessary for Media only drives stored on a NAS (although, since I'll have a NAS, I may as well also store an active backup of my computers, documents, and photos too, but all of that combined is probably less than 1TB (about 750 GB or so I think)

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@agladstone remember that most RAID discussions focus on performance and high availability.  A business can't afford to have an outage while they restore a backup.  You can.

 

Like everything in IT, it makes sense to match the sophistication and power of the system to the application requirements.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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9 minutes ago, rickca said:

@agladstone remember that most RAID discussions focus on performance and high availability.  A business can't afford to have an outage while they restore a backup.  You can.

 

Like everything in IT, it makes sense to match the sophistication and power of the system to the application requirements.

Thanks, so in your personal opinion, you would recommend that I do RAID 1 and sacrifice 50% of my storage capacity (but always have a mirrored image in case of drive failure) and maybe only try to use a cloud backup of the NAS in addition to the RAID 1 and skip the weekly cold backups to HDD's? 

Another thing is that for all these years and up to now, I just have a bunch of external hard drives (some are even 4 years old!) that I store all my music to and I manually always do a "copy and paste" if anything I add or edit to it's "sister drive" (I have 4 - 4TB drives and 4 3TB drives that act as 4 mirrored  pairs (each one has another drive that is a mirror copy of itself)

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@agladstone The question to ask yourself is the scenario of what happens when your NAS fails for whatever reason. You could segment that scenario to the failure of a single HDD, and if the entire unit goes down.

 

In either scenario, you would go about restoring your NAS. No "business" is lost, and being a single-person-household, you will not be receiving complaints/nags during the period when the NAS is down. You will go to your local IT shop, buy HDDs or a new NAS, and move on.

 

The question is how convenient is your rebuilding of your NAS. If you are on a RAID 5, and a single HDD has failed, you basically replace the damaged HDD, and rebuild. The NAS does this automatically, albeit at reduced performance during the rebuild. If you are running a RAID 0/JBOD, a single drive failure would warrant you to bring out the cold back-up to restore your NAS.

 

The question now is considering the expense and hassle, which you prefer...

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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12 minutes ago, agladstone said:

Is RAID 1 or RAID 10 more trouble and expense than necessary

With either RAID 1 or RAID 10, the mirror takes over for a time while you replace the failed disk and rebuild the copy.  So you never really have an outage in the sense of needing to restore a backup copy.  Is that worth enough to you to warrant having twice the storage capacity?  That's the question for you.

 

Also remember, you still absolutely need a backup copy.  If your data gets corrupted, your RAID 1 or RAID 10 array now has two identical copies of that corrupted data.  You can fix this only by restoring from an uncorrupted backup.  

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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@agladstone I think what rickca and I are asking you, is how much a hassle is rebuilding a NAS to you? If you want to avoid it like the plague, then greater parity/mirroring should be considered. With the cold back-ups, it still means hooking them up to your computer, and then transferring the data back into the NAS for rebuilding. Is that a great hassle? Is it worth extra expense to avoid doing so? Only you have these answers.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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3 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

@agladstone I think what rickca and I are asking you, is how much a hassle is rebuilding a NAS to you? If you want to avoid it like the plague, then greater parity/mirroring should be considered. With the cold back-ups, it still means hooking them up to your computer, and then transferring the data back into the NAS for rebuilding. Is that a great hassle? Is it worth extra expense to avoid doing so? Only you have these answers.

Thanks! That question (which I need to answer for myself), makes it clear to me (it also makes me realize that before researching and considering buying a NAS vs just using a bunch of external hard drives, that a NAS in a RAID configuration is not this "magical

and amazing storage with automatic built in realtime back up at all times" as I had thought!). 

As for backup of the NAS, is using a backup software better than just copying and pasting any new additions or changes manually as I do now (like a time machine like SW program)? 

 

Rebuilding the entire NAS from scratch via cold backup HDD's seems like a hassle, yet it's no different than what I would have to do now (with my desk full of external drives!) and it would be a cost savings of about $500+ dollars VS a Raid 1 or 10 whereas the rebuilding would not be as difficult or inconvenient, yet that means that with 4 8TB WD RED drives (about $1,000 cost just for the drives) I would only yield 16TB in storage space, that does seem "expensive" to me, cost vs value for the convenience?

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4 minutes ago, agladstone said:

As for backup of the NAS, is using a backup software better than just copying and pasting any new additions or changes manually as I do now (like a time machine like SW program)?

This is a personal choice. However, an automated software would make it less likely for you to miss out on some files.

 

6 minutes ago, agladstone said:

Rebuilding the entire NAS from scratch via cold backup HDD's seems like a hassle, yet it's no different than what I would have to do now (with my desk full of external drives!) and it would be a cost savings of about $500+ dollars VS a Raid 1 or 10 whereas the rebuilding would not be as difficult or inconvenient, yet that means that with 4 8TB WD RED drives (about $1,000 cost just for the drives) I would only yield 16TB in storage space, that does seem "expensive" to me, cost vs value for the convenience?

You can draw a cost-benefit plot for various implementations of RAID on your NAS, and see where the lines intersect! :)

 

You needn't go all the way to RAID 1 or RAID 10, and still consider RAID 5 (for a small array) or RAID 6 (for a larger array), and then it would only mean the cost of a single HDD (or 2 in the case of RAID 6) for some convenience of restoring the array.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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Thanks, now im just plain confused! 

I'm starting to think maybe just buying 4 or 6 8TB WD Easystore Hard drives may be the cheaper and easier solution (having a mirrored pair of hot and cold back up for each) so if I buy 4 (on sale today at Best Buy for $159 each!) I would have 16 TB of hot drives and 16TB of cold backup for a total cost of only $640 ? I wonder if that is just the cheapest and easiest solution?? Since I use an Aurender for my playback and it has 5TB of internal storage, the streaming ability of a NAS is if less importance to me (but it would still be a very convenient and fun thing to have), but it seems like I would still need to buy at least 2 if these 8TB drives for cold backup in addition to buying a NAS and the 4 8TB drives for it. 

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The real advantage of a NAS, is that it is available 24/7, and you needn't switch on a computer/notebook just because the data you want to access is on that HDD. Back-up can be done automatically from your desktop computer to the NAS, for example.

 

With external HDDs, you would have to keep the computer that hosts the HDDs on when you need access to it (short of lugging them around from room to room). In a sense then, that computer becomes the NAS of sorts.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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Don't know about @gladstone, but in my case, I have not found an appealing cloud solution to backing up 40-50TBs from my NAS via a typical home broadband connection.

 

Really, the best solution, a fantasy, is to have a super duper cloud streaming service that had every release in all desirable formats - Mch hi Rez in my case.  All that perfectly metadadata tagged for selection.  Make that classical for me.  With all that, I could forego a NAS, all the ripping and tagging I do plus backup worries.  That would be worth a king's ransom to me.

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I agree with @Fitzcaraldo215 with his comments on cloud back-up. Unless your entire back-up is, say, 1 TB, otherwise the back-up process would turn out to be a real chore. Rebuilding your array will not be fun either. It will probably take months for your array to be rebuilt.

 

This is with regards to the usual consumer-targeted cloud back-up solutions. If you are ever inclined to use the enterprise-level solutions, however, I am sure that throughput would be heaps better, but the cost would be astronomically higher.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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Yes, The backup process depend on the speed your ISP is offering.

 

It will take time first time. After that it's an automatic process. 

I suggest you test Jottacloud.  I have 12 TB myself stored. 

 

You can choose between synchronize or pure backup. 

I suggest backup pr. existing HD. Actually Jottacloud does not allow you to use the sync folder with a NAS. (I use HW RAID 6 on a PC, so I don't have that issue). 

 

Make a top level pr. HD if you start with backing up your single disks. 

 

If you use RAID 6, you won't have any (almost) downtime as you will with RAID 5, and you eliminate the risk of loosing ing data if  a second failure occurs during rebuilding. I recommend you use RAID 6 if you have the available space. The cost is only the extra HD. 

Rebulding take also very long time. Anything between 24 hours and a week.

 

You may think about if you like to use a single SSD for OS on your NAS ?

Maybe not a good idea?? Anyone have an option about that ?

 

Finally I suggest you have a look into building your own RAID with your present PC, and not using a NAS. The cost may not be higher, depending what raid card you chooses. 

You get a lot of things you really don't need with a NAS and they are slow. 

 

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/tower-raid-storage-enclosure.htm

 

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/cs-product_SATA6.htm

 

Several other manufacturers is available. And you should find reasonable priced RAID PCI-cards on eBay. 

I use Highpoint. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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All, remember that in a Raid configuration all it takes is one logical failure to lose all data. So if you have a raid 1 and press 'delete volume' you lose the data from both drives (just an example, but shit happens). Therefore separate backup is a must to keep your valuable data, no matter which Raid you use.

Still for the 50Tb of @Fitzcaraldo215 what makes most sense for a cold backup is tape. For this data size it is cheap and fast - you could have multiple copies of your data for less than 2000 dollars and with ultrium 6 tapes (cheaper ones) you can backup 0.5 Tb per hour. That would take 5 days to transfer at 10mbps speeds. Ultrium 7 are even faster than small Raids, but they aren't that cheap.

 

 

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@agladstone

If you look into HW raid like LSI or Highpoint. You may select a 12 or 16 port version. 

(Or 2 reasonable 8 ports). I see prices has dropped a lot since last time I looked into this. I have 12 ports myself. I also have a Qnap NAS. 

 

Then you can build several raid solutions. And after you build your main raid, you can reuse your other disks to make new raid setups. 

 

The other raids can serve as cold backups if you like. 

 

Building your own is the most reasonable and best solution in my opinion. 

 

You don't have to place the disks inside a PC. You can use cheap rack like this

Which you may like to use in any case for your present HD's ?

 

This is very easy to do, and you manage "everything" from your filemanager.

 

The other option that is even cheaper is Linux raid, which I don't expect you to start with. 

 

In addition you could considder a reasonable UPS, so if a power loss will shut down your system the correct way.

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On 8/17/2017 at 3:30 PM, foodfiend said:

@unbalanced output: I am wondering why you think the cloud solution is in anyway better than a second NAS? Cloud storage also fails (though their large amounts of data stored probably means that the probability hitting your data is slim). Just as recently as February 2017, Amazon Cloud experienced a major outage.

 

Data loss with them, while not impossible is highly improbable

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2 hours ago, plissken said:

Data loss with them, while not impossible is highly improbable

If a second off-site NAS is used as a back-up of the primary NAS, I would think that the probability of both NASes going belly-up simultaneously is also pretty slim.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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10 hours ago, foodfiend said:

If a second off-site NAS is used as a back-up of the primary NAS, I would think that the probability of both NASes going belly-up simultaneously is also pretty slim.

 

If you make images, probably yes. If in the other hand you just have a mirror drive, not necessarily - if the primary gets lost there is quite a chance of losing the image as well before you realise. The idea would be to only back it up when you're confident your data has not been corrupted or compromised (e.g. a cyber attack).

 

I still think a backup Nas is a poor idea...

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Thanks for all of these great opinions and suggestions! It's becoming more and more clear to me that at this point in time, there seems to be no perfect all in one solution to have safe and secure backup for a music collection of 20TB to 50TB range! 

So far from this thread and all of your valuable input, I've learned that ideally to protect your music collection to ensure the best probability of keeping it "forever" you need to have a NAS in some version of RAID, a cold backup, and a cloud backup / sync and do as much as possible to try and keep all of them free from any type of corruption. Seems like all of this combined and within a reasonable price range is not at all easy to do :( 

From my shopping around in the web for solutions, I am starting to realize that the larger 8 bay NAS systems may be a better value in the long run vs the 4 bay and 5 bay ones, since the 5 bay add on units cost as much as the initial 4 bay unit, while the 8 bays seem to be only about $300 more (so the 8 bays cost more up front, but if you end up needing more bays later, the cost of the 4/5 bay plus add on unit ends up costing much more). 

Also, it seems like the newest top of line consumer grade QNAP units (while more expensive), seem to offer some very fast speeds and a lot of power and features not available on the Synology units). 

This is not an easy decision for me to make!! 

When I think of all of the time and money I've spent gathering around 15TB's of music so far, I really want to be able to protect it and preserve it, attempting to recreate it all over again seems almost impossible! 

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On 8/21/2017 at 7:05 AM, R1200CL said:

@agladstone

If you look into HW raid like LSI or Highpoint. You may select a 12 or 16 port version. 

(Or 2 reasonable 8 ports). I see prices has dropped a lot since last time I looked into this. I have 12 ports myself. I also have a Qnap NAS. 

 

Then you can build several raid solutions. And after you build your main raid, you can reuse your other disks to make new raid setups. 

 

The other raids can serve as cold backups if you like. 

 

Building your own is the most reasonable and best solution in my opinion. 

 

You don't have to place the disks inside a PC. You can use cheap rack like this

Which you may like to use in any case for your present HD's ?

 

This is very easy to do, and you manage "everything" from your filemanager.

 

The other option that is even cheaper is Linux raid, which I don't expect you to start with. 

 

In addition you could considder a reasonable UPS, so if a power loss will shut down your system the correct way.

I'm going to do a little research on the Highpoint stuff, seems like an alternative to the Synology and QNAP products, thank you! 

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7 hours ago, agladstone said:

When I think of all of the time and money I've spent gathering around 15TB's of music so far, I really want to be able to protect it and preserve it, attempting to recreate it all over again seems almost impossible! 

Yes, what you do need to answer in your mind, is what you are willing to pay for saving yourself the hassle of doing a recreation of your digital music collection from scratch. I am sure ripping the CDs is no fun, but you also might find some CDs unreadable (due to CD rot or other reasons). Plus, you would have to track down all your downloaded music purchases. The thought of that sends shivers down my own spine.

 

However, find solace in the fact that running a NAS (other than the costs involved) is really not that complicated, especially if you have all the networking needs sorted out already.

 

One thing I have not clarified. Do you have Ethernet cabling in your home to cover all those locations you mention?

 

 

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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7 hours ago, agladstone said:

I'm going to do a little research on the Highpoint stuff, seems like an alternative to the Synology and QNAP products, thank you! 

I would say that only look into LSI and Highpoint if you are comfortable with computers. The reason why many choose the Synology/QNAP route is because of the software that comes with it.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

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41 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

I would say that only look into LSI and Highpoint if you are comfortable with computers. The reason why many choose the Synology/QNAP route is because of the software that comes with it.

Another reason is support post purchase from an established manufacturer.  

 

I have got to say that in getting another PC up and running, reinventing the wheel and learning all kinds of detailed trivia in setting up a DIY NAS configuration, frankly for me, the thrill is gone.  Life is short.  I could do it if I wanted to.  I have the skills, but I would rather spend my time listening to music, romancing the old lady or watching football, not necessarily in that order.  And, the $ savings from the DIY route are trivial.  My time is way more valuable.

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2 hours ago, foodfiend said:

Yes, what you do need to answer in your mind, is what you are willing to pay for saving yourself the hassle of doing a recreation of your digital music collection from scratch. I am sure ripping the CDs is no fun, but you also might find some CDs unreadable (due to CD rot or other reasons). Plus, you would have to track down all your downloaded music purchases. The thought of that sends shivers down my own spine.

 

However, find solace in the fact that running a NAS (other than the costs involved) is really not that complicated, especially if you have all the networking needs sorted out already.

 

One thing I have not clarified. Do you have Ethernet cabling in your home to cover all those locations you mention?

 

 

Yes! I have Bluejeans Cable Cat 6a run throughout my entire place in wall and with plugs at each location. I have 500mbps internet speed right now (I will upgrade to 1Gbps as soon as it is available (soon I think). 

I also have a Netgear Nighthawk R9 router/switch with built in Port Aggregation, so I can run 2 Ethernet cables between NAS and Router/switch and I will have 2GBps LAN speed and I have a brand new 10Gbps modem , however 10Gbps internet speed is not available as of now (and prob not for years ), but I'm ready:) 

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