New media storage setup, thoughts

General Discussions
1

Thoughts on Online Storage Service/Cloud, StableBit, JBOD, or More RAID.

My current setup is a combination of RAID1/RAID5 boxes with a few backups. I have been very unimpressed with my current RAID setup and the extremely long rebuild times.

With my recent RAID failure/rebuild I’ve decided to take a new route with my media storage, or at least strongly entertain other possible setups.

Okay, let me start off by saying that I have about a dozen NAS boxes(2 & 4 bays) and about a total of 50-60 used/unused hard drives.

So here are my thoughts.

  • Config#1: Create an google drive unlimited account. If I’m reading it right this should cost me about $50.00/month for business class(5 users at $10per/user). In fact this all depends on the unlimited factor. My initial upload will probably be in the range of 30-40TB and will expand over time so I don’t want to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars per month. Now I have an 8-port PCIx SATA card and thinking of using StableBit DrivePool. I may pool all 8 drives or make 2 separate pools.
    But to be honest, I don’t want to waste my NAS boxes so I may end up setting all my NAS as JBOD and simply create network shares. Sucks that DrivePool doesn’t support network shares… There’s no redundancy with JBOD but I can always sync from gDrive backup.

  • Config#2: Just bite the bullet and create 2, 8-bay RAID60 setups and a few more local backups. I know the rebuild times are going to be painfully slow but it will have much more redundancy than my current setup.

But my goals are ultimately

  1. Have maximum redundancy/backup solution. As close to 100% as possible.
  2. Minimum downtime.
  3. Storage space is nothing to me if that means I have to sacrifice item#1

Local backups have been unreliable(1 failure is enough!!) and 2 & 3 backups can get very expensive. RAID has been my friend for quite some time. I may end up getting gDrive if it is unlimited for around 50/month. That can at least eliminate crappy local backups. But it’s still a toss-up.

Anyone have thoughts on this. Or even better ideas. I would really like to hear them.

Thanks.

2

FYI, Google is not enforcing the five user minimum on G-Suite accounts. They could do so at any time, but right now you’ll only need one account (i.e. $10 USD/mo + cost of domain name).

3

That’s cool I guess.

Yep. I would think that everyday, lol.

4

For online backup I am using BackBlaze, unlimited storage for $6/month per PC/Device you wish to backup. I have 72TB locally (PCI-E 8-Port SAS/SATA RAID Card, and Motherboard SATA setup for RAID) on my PC and have run into no issues using them. They allow you to encrypt on their end so they cannot view the content, though this also makes it impossible for them to help you recover if you forget your encryption password. I shall be upgrading to have 130TB locally soon and forsee no problems.

If you wanna give them a go: https://secure.backblaze.com/r/025aji

Full Disclosure, I will get a free month if you sign up using that link

5

To elaborate more on the google 5 users question.
Beyond that page where you sign up, you will never see it mentioned again anywhere in any Google docs or TOS.
The doom-mongers have been waiting for 3 years for that particular bubble to burst.

With regards to your planned set up, I’m in the DrivePool camp. But then I have been using it for a couple of years before I had even heard of Plex.
DrivePool and SnapRaid works for me.
Though I will add that apart from a initial “test” of SnapRaid to see if it did it’s job, I haven’t had to use it in a real life situation.

6

As has already been stated, they arent enforcing the 5 user minimum, and when setup gdrive with Plex is buttery smooth.

PBs and counting

7

Nice!
I thought I was living on the edge having just recently breached 100TB. :grinning:

8

Well well… Let’s see…Where to start…
I replaced a failed drive and my RAID5 rebuild failed after 70 hours. The replacement drive was defective. So I ordered another one. Was able to rebuild, ya!! Then decided to create my RAID6 box. I was 95% done when I had a power failure. A tree fell on the transformer!!! 5 minutes later my UPS powered off, the battery died!!!. Then everything powered off! All NAS, modem, router, computer!!! Called the electric company at 1am. The electricity company replaced the charred transformer and got power restored by 7am, ya!!. Turned everything back on to find my system will not POST!! Tested power supply(not a likely solution, but I have seen it happen). Same. Ordered a mainboard, replaced, same. Ordered a CPU, replaced, same. Ordered a mainboard & CPU, replaced, it POST!! I boot to find the OS is corrupt!! I did not want to reinstall Windows so spend some time fixing the OS. Done!! Then when all said and done, I had to create the RAID6 box again. Another 130hours!!!