4 x 6TB = about 16-17TB useable in Raid 5
4 x 10TB = about 25-28TB useable in RAID 5
You have 8TB Now. How much are you expanding that over time? That will define whether to buy 3 or 4 drives now and of what size. Remember you can always expand a 3 disk array by another disk without formatting.
And Remember - how are you going to back this up?
nokdim did mention building your own RAID box. This will give you even more options.
But you would need a PC - Case, M/B, memory, PSU, CPU (not expensive) etc and disk controllers if the M/B doesn’t have enough. I have done this a few years ago - but dismantled it later on to use the bought units
Its cheaper to buy a NAS at the lower end although the Unrar / FreeNAS will be more flexible and have a much steeper learning curve
This is my setup, and it works for me. I will illustrate why it works for me, and attempt to provide the cons it presents.
My Server sits on my PC. I don’t have a dedicated server, haven’t felt the need for one yet but it may be in the cards at some point.
I have my AMD 2700x on an MSI Gaming Pro Motherboard w/ 64GB RAM and a 1070Ti video card that I’ve unlocked for unlimited Hardware Transcodes
(Note: I do more than just Plex on this PC)
The motherboard has 6 SATA ports which hold 1x BluRay Burner and 4x10TB Hard Drives in RAID 0. I also have a SATA/SAS RAID Card with 8 more SAS/SATA ports that hold a littany of different sized drives. These will be changed out in Spring for 8x10TB, and 1 more 10TB will be purchased which will get plugged into the last slot on my motherboard, giving me a total of 130TB.
The case I have is the Cooler Master Cosmos II 25th Anniversary Edition. It holds 13 drives natively, and I converted 2 of the 5.25" bays to 3x3.5", giving me the capacity for 16 drives. All running on an 1100 watt power supply.
The reason I did it this way was because I didn’t want an extra device plugged into a power outlet. I didn’t want an extra device taking up even more space somewhere. I didn’t want an extra device generating more heat and more noise. I didn’t feel the need for a NAS or a DAS, when everything can be contained in a single machine that does what I want. It’s powerful enough to do the transcoding on the fly, it’s one less Operating system I have to worry about. It’s one less piece of electronic equipment I need to worry about. It’s one less thing to maintain overall. It’s just way more beneficial doing things this way for me personally.
I use backblaze as my online backup solution. It’s only $4.99/month which gives me unlimited storage for 1 device (My PC), and retains my information for 30 days after failure (or a year if I pay an extra $2/month) so if I do happen to have a drive failure killing my RAID(s), I can buy a replacement drive, and just re-download it. It’s a 1:1 backup which you can encrypt from your side if you’re not interested in Backblaze seeing what’s on there…
The only real con from my perspective is that it’s my main PC, which at the moment isn’t hindering me. Though I may need to switch out later if necessary.
That’s what works for me, you may find something different works for you… But I couldn’t justify a NAS or a DAS device when I had a perfectly capable PC sitting here…
What are my options for back up?
Are you saying I can buy 3 x 10TB or 3 x 12TB and expand to a fourth later without re formatting?
Perfectly valid way of doing it. Not one I use, but horses for courses and all that.
To all intents and purpose you are using DAS (Your SATA/SAS RAID Card connected to drives is essentially a DAS device) - just in the same box rather than an external box. Its a perfectly valid way of doing things though.
The RAID 0 makes me cringe a bit - but you backup (so not a major issue - although the thought of having to download that lot in the event of a major failure is painful though I guess that depends on your internet connection)
Put 10 experts in a room and ask a question - likely you get ten different answers. Nine of which will probably be correct (there is always one idiot)
It mostly depends on what the individual wants / needs / can afford and can operate easily
Oh yeah, for sure… that’s why I posed it the way I did… What works for me may not work for someone else. I just didn’t want/need the headache of a separate device. As for the backup, I am on a Gigabit connection (up and down) from Google Fiber, and they will (supposedly) be rolling out 10Gbit in the “near” future… (have a 10Gbit Switch and an Aquantia 10Gbit NIC, plus the house has now been re-wired with CAT-7). So downloading of my lost data is not terrible… Uploading it was horrid, cause I think backblaze limits their input data (can only ever seem to upload at 1-5MB/s) but when I tested a couple of files for download, they nearly maxed me out @ 100-120MB/s, so… nbd
Yes
Backup - well JasonNalley uses Backblaze for $4.99 a month (although the current price seems to be $6). The only issue would be copying the 8TB of existing data up to the cloud in the first place. Further deltas would be less of a problem. What sort of internet connection do you have and how many people share it as you would probably cause a lot of congestion for quite a few days initially.
If you have 8TB of data then generally you need 8TB of storage, 12TB if you are keeping multi generational backups - or use the unlimited cloud.
Warning, products like Backblaze, in their cheaper form allow backing up the machine and DAS. they do not allow backing up NAS as its a separate machine
Nice. That just makes me green with envy. And makes backblaze very useable
Thanks all for the info! In looking at the NAS unit itself, any preference on brand or unit? I have both Synology DS418 or QNAP TS-431X2-2G as options. I don;t see much difference - besides price, but maybe I am missing something?
I have a HP SFF PC (Elitedesk 800) i7 4790 (3.6Ghz), 20GB ram, only really need 8GB
its cheaper than a nas and faster, can trans-code 4k if needed to 1080p.
the problem with a NAS is the drives can get hot and if the NAS itself dies its hard to get your data off.
no issues with head of my PC in the garage at 40degC
Also veeam for backup allows you to dismount a USB device after the backup to protect against cryptolocker.
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