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Post by qdtjni on Jan 10, 2018 13:56:56 GMT -5
RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 & 1o in Synology is based on bog standard Linux software RAID. So what do you mean with your statement above? NAS drives are usually a small, single-function LINUX boxes dedicated to getting and sending files. If the drive is used as a RAID device, it usually has a piece of hardware called a RAID Controller. RAID controllers often use use a proprietary filesystem and the drives are formatted accordingly. If the RAID fails or the RAID controller dies, you may be left with all of your data on a working disk drive but no ready way to access the contents. OTOH, if there is no RAID, the LINUX OS will likely have formatted the drive using one of several common and well known filesystems. Your disk drive can be pulled from the Linux drive box and installed into another computer for the data to be read. But if there is a RAID Controller and a proprietary RAID filesystem, you will need a working RAID controller replacement (of the same make, and sometimes the same model) to read the data. It is difficult, though not impossible, to obtain special software ($$$) that will read the proprietary filesystem used on some NAS drives. So I advocate using a RAID box that uses a non-proprietary format. Synology fails. For RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 & 10 as well as for SHR, Synology uses md and lvm with the option of file systems being ext4 or btrfs. All is standard open source software. So in what sense is RAID implemented in Synology NAS appliances with proprietary technology? |
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Post by creimes on Jan 10, 2018 13:57:23 GMT -5
I'm a total noob to all this stuff haha Which is exactly why you should use a Synology!  lol I'm still thinking a NAS would be the easiest just set it and forget it, I have a spare almost new 1tb external drive and a 120gb SSD external drive sitting around though. |
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Post by creimes on Jan 10, 2018 14:03:18 GMT -5
I'm a total noob to all this stuff haha Which is exactly why you should use a Synology! One question, why Synology and not QNAP, if I'm using strictly for storage the QNAP is cheaper |
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Post by LuisV on Jan 10, 2018 14:19:39 GMT -5
I'm a total noob to all this stuff haha Which is exactly why you should use a Synology! Agreed... Synology is a simple, set it and forget it type of device. Nothing wrong going down that path as long as that fits your use case. I just didn't fit into my use case. You said you have a Mac Mini with Photos, if not already enabled, use iCloud to store your images and there is your redundancy. If you are an Amazon Prime member, they provide unlimited photo storage, so redundancy. Content for Plex... to me, less need for redundancy. I think you said you already have another PC, besides the Mac Mini, so if your current computer case and motherboard support it, install a couple of drives and use Windows storage spaces until you can afford a Synology and or have time to research and a better understanding of unRAID or FreeeNAS. They are very different than Windows or macOS as well as different than a Synology. If you want to get your feet wet with FreeNAS, you can follow this simple tutorial to setup a free virtual instance: Hardware wise... don't skimp today as you'll need to upgrade later as your needs might change; therefore, spending twice as much in the long run. I was in the same position as you were back in August 2017. I researched for weeks and actually decided on FreeNAS until I tried unRAID... ran both as VMs on my iMac. For my needs I ultimately selected unRAID. |
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Post by LuisV on Jan 10, 2018 14:20:45 GMT -5
Which is exactly why you should use a Synology! One question, why Synology and not QNAP, if I'm using strictly for storage the QNAP is cheaper Both will serve you well... for me, I used a Synology for 4+ years, so I'm biased towards Synology. |
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 10, 2018 14:21:59 GMT -5
Which is exactly why you should use a Synology! One question, why Synology and not QNAP, if I'm using strictly for storage the QNAP is cheaper Personally, I have long and good experience of Synonology and have no reason to change. However, I don't think it matters much if you choose QNAP or Synology, both make good products. |
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Post by kybourbon on Jan 10, 2018 14:22:59 GMT -5
Which is exactly why you should use a Synology! One question, why Synology and not QNAP, if I'm using strictly for storage the QNAP is cheaper I don't have experience with QNAP but when I was researching and reading reviews most favored Synology and many strongly favored Synology. Again, you are largely paying for the software and the (easy) user experience. Having done the whole DIY server/NAS thing in the past I can tell you that the Synology is a piece of cake in comparison and is truly set it and forget it. Other than opening a window in Google Chrome to access the interface maybe once a month to update the plug-ins it does everything else on its own. And it is easy for something like the Nvidia Shield to see the Synology on your network should you go that route. My wife previously dropped her phone and the screen died. There was no way to get her pictures off of her phone without a costly screen replacement. She was pissed. Now I have the Synology set to automatically download her pictures right into the NAS as soon as one is taken. She also has a Google Pixel so they are also stored on Google Photos. I also used a Synology plug-in to backup my Google Drive data to my Synology. It was as easy as using an app on your phone. Plenty of videos on YouTube and elsewhere for you to view how to use the Synology and I am sure also the QNAP. |
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mikes
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Post by mikes on Jan 10, 2018 14:27:40 GMT -5
After a lot of research I found the best NAS solution for me was to take an old Q6600 based machine that I was not using and install the freenas OS. Because it has more processing power than typical stand alone NAS unit, it runs my plex server and has no problem handling the transcoding requirements when streaming to my different media players, or recording over the air broadcasts. I have a small ssd for the OS and three 4 TB Western Digital Red drives running in a RAID 5 (freeNAS calls it RAID-Z) configuration. Even though the motherboard I was using has RAID capabilities, FreeNAS recommends you use its software raid that way there is no reliance on specific hardware. I typically backup pictures and home movies that are stored on the NAS to another hard drive or optical media. Don't forget, backups are not simple for when drives fail but more often when files are accidentally deleted and can not be recovered. This solution worked well for me because I had all the hardware not being used and just had to purchase the drives. This solution is also nice in that if any hardware fails I simply install the OS to another computer, reload the config files (which i've saved from my initial setup) and plug the drives back in and i'm back up and running. There's nothing worse than being tied to hardware as it will inevitably fail. The only piece of hardware I have not had fail on me has been a cpu. I've been running this setup for 3 years with no problems. Mike I'm still liking the idea of a build like this, I have a 120gb SSD drive that is sitting unused, I could build this PC now and once I sell a few things buy the drives.  That looks about right for a freenas rig, just add another stick of ram and you are set. FreeNAS is very lightweight, the OS can be run from a 8 GB flash drive but it requires 8 GB of RAM to run correctly. If you really want to save money you can get away with an even cheaper CPU and motherboard. Like I said I run it on a Q6600 which was released 10 years ago and have no issues. The OS uses next to nothing in terms of processing power and the transcoding PLEX does is remarkably efficient. I run a similar power supply, and with three conventional drives spinning have not had a problem (and my machine has a graphics card in it). If I were building a rig now it would be similar to what you priced out. |
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Post by millst on Jan 10, 2018 14:47:37 GMT -5
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 10, 2018 14:50:17 GMT -5
To be honest with you, I haven't followed this closely in recent years, so perhaps this is no longer a problem. However, in the past, I heard many stories about people whose controller died, and who then plugged their drives into a new controller that was supposed to be compatible.... Only to be greeted with a message suggesting that they format their drive - or that the drive they'd inserted was blank or contained invalid data. (In the old days one also frequently encountered off-standard equipment... for example a certain SCSI drive that would only work with certain brands of controller.) If you really want to know your odds, Google "can't read drive removed from RAID array", followed by the name of your favorite vendor..... Now, to be fair, this could happen for a few reasons...... - it could be that the controller itself wasn't 100% on-standard and compatible - either in hardware or software - it could be that the drive was simply bad (for example, a power surge could have wiped out the controller, and all the drives connected to it) - it could be that, as it was failing, the controller wrote corrupt data to all the drives in the array (which is not at all uncommon) From my historical experience, RAID arrays were developed and became popular, when drives frequently failed. Their main benefit was, and still is, that they allow both redundancy and "live recovery". If a single drive fails, you can replace it, and the replacement can be reconstructed WHILE YOUR ARRAY REMAINS ONLINE AND YOUR DATA REMAINS AVAILABLE. This is an important benefit in situations where data availability is critical - and where individual drives frequently fail. It means you can lose a drive a month - yet suffer zero down-time because of it. However, the array controller was very reliable and, if it did go down, your array was down............ Since the sort of folks who bought RAID arrays in those days were the sort of folks who always did backups anyway.... Whether your drives would work properly in a different box simply wasn't important... In fact, if they suspected data corruption, just to play it safe, they'd probably reformat the drives, then load the new array from the latest backup anyway. (Likewise, the first thing many array manufacturers would recommend you do after installing drives in their box, just to avoid potential compatibility issues, was to format them.) My only overall take-away from this is that NO SINGLE PHYSICAL STORAGE DEVICE PROVIDES ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL PROTECTION FROM DATA LOSS.
I'll leave it to the statistics guys to figure out whether a proprietary commercial controller is "safer" than an open-source one.
You're probably more likely to be able to find a way to read that open-source-written drive a decade from now... as long as the group that supports it hasn't lost interest. But a commercial vendor, with a product to sell, and money on the table, might have designed a better product that's less likely to fail to begin with. However, neither is going to ENSURE that your data won't become lost or corrupted if something goes wrong.
The only way to do that is an actual backup (and, if your data is important, I might even suggest multiple backups, on different types of media, accessible using different types of software). NAS drives are usually a small, single-function LINUX boxes dedicated to getting and sending files. If the drive is used as a RAID device, it usually has a piece of hardware called a RAID Controller. RAID controllers often use use a proprietary filesystem and the drives are formatted accordingly. If the RAID fails or the RAID controller dies, you may be left with all of your data on a working disk drive but no ready way to access the contents. OTOH, if there is no RAID, the LINUX OS will likely have formatted the drive using one of several common and well known filesystems. Your disk drive can be pulled from the Linux drive box and installed into another computer for the data to be read. But if there is a RAID Controller and a proprietary RAID filesystem, you will need a working RAID controller replacement (of the same make, and sometimes the same model) to read the data. It is difficult, though not impossible, to obtain special software ($$$) that will read the proprietary filesystem used on some NAS drives. So I advocate using a RAID box that uses a non-proprietary format. Synology fails. For RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 & 10 as well as for SHR, Synology uses md and lvm with the option of file systems being ext4 or btrfs. All is standard open source software. So in what sense is RAID implemented in Synology NAS appliances with proprietary technology? |
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Post by creimes on Jan 10, 2018 14:57:02 GMT -5
Yeah after doing some reading on FreeNAS I realized 4gb wasn't enough and these days ram isn't cheap |
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Post by copperpipe on Jan 10, 2018 15:00:23 GMT -5
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 10, 2018 15:04:52 GMT -5
Keith, Was your response really in reference to Synology using proprietary RAID or not?
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Post by creimes on Jan 10, 2018 15:05:23 GMT -5
Simplicity is an awesome thing, as long as it works. Currently Google photos backs up all our photos from our Android phones, I also like the idea of them automatically backing up to a NAS as well even though I own a SLR I tend to use it less often as my smartphone for obvious reasons such as I don't have my SLR on me as much haha. I've put off backup service on my Windows PC as I just wasn't familiar with how to do it as the Mac Mini was easy as buying a drive and turning Time Machine on, so after a while you tend to forget whats where until something fails and you then realize the outcome of lost data  Chad |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 10, 2018 15:11:08 GMT -5
I guess it depends on your perspective. If I'm working on a project while I'm on the road, I might consider iCloud to count as "data redundancy". However, for important data that I want to protect long term, a commercial server, which I don't own or control, or even know where it is, doesn't count for much. I'm guessing that, if something goes wrong and my pictures disappear from iCloud, I'll be lucky to get an apology.... let alone have any chance of ever seeing them again. And, if Amazon ever goes out of business, or gets badly hacked, I wouldn't bet on seeing them again either.... However, I pretty much agree with you...... As a way to make your data easily available, and keep it reasonably safe from day-to-day issues, a NAS is an excellent option. However, I would classify it more as "an availability and convenience option" than as "data security". (There's a reason why your bank sends their account backups someplace else on a truck to be buried under a mountain... and even that isn't 100.0% effective all the time.) Which is exactly why you should use a Synology! Agreed... Synology is a simple, set it and forget it type of device. Nothing wrong going down that path as long as that fits your use case. I just didn't fit into my use case. You said you have a Mac Mini with Photos, if not already enabled, use iCloud to store your images and there is your redundancy. If you are an Amazon Prime member, they provide unlimited photo storage, so redundancy. Content for Plex... to me, less need for redundancy. I think you said you already have another PC, besides the Mac Mini, so if your current computer case and motherboard support it, install a couple of drives and use Windows storage spaces until you can afford a Synology and or have time to research and a better understanding of unRAID or FreeeNAS. They are very different than Windows or macOS as well as different than a Synology. If you want to get your feet wet with FreeNAS, you can follow this simple tutorial to setup a free virtual instance: Hardware wise... don't skimp today as you'll need to upgrade later as your needs might change; therefore, spending twice as much in the long run. I was in the same position as you were back in August 2017. I researched for weeks and actually decided on FreeNAS until I tried unRAID... ran both as VMs on my iMac. For my needs I ultimately selected unRAID. |
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Post by millst on Jan 10, 2018 15:19:00 GMT -5
True, there is no actual formal requirement. Yes, it will function. However, if that's how you want to interpret that quote, some questions: How much support will you get from FreeNAS people when they hear you have non-ECC RAM? Do you think an unsupported ZFS flag is enabled in FreeNAS? How do you recover from an error in a ZFS filesystem (hint: there's no chkdsk/fsck)? For those trying to be cheap, read the post I linked and make the call for yourself. -tm |
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Post by copperpipe on Jan 10, 2018 15:19:18 GMT -5
Power supply size is fine. HDDs use around 5W. Let's go nuts...triple that and throw in 8 drives for 120W total. You've still got 310W remaining for your 54W processor and other peripherals. -tm Regarding the power supply: you can't just add up the watts that you think you're using and then get to a number < total output. There are different rails in the system, the rail that the harddrives use is +5v. In this PS, that rail is 120 watts max. I've fixed too many computers to recommend low wattage PS's, they just die too quickly. I've never calculated it out (admittedly), but I don't build anything with < 500 watts. It's never a good idea to stress components to near their max capability, far better to over compensate (IMHO). Edit: actually this PS only has 6 SATA plugs, so it may be fine for the 6 disks. Still, I wouldn't do it. |
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Post by millst on Jan 10, 2018 15:21:02 GMT -5
True, but OP isn't using 8 drives either At the same time, you don't want an way oversized power supply or it will run with less efficiency. -tm |
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Post by copperpipe on Jan 10, 2018 15:25:33 GMT -5
True, there is no actual formal requirement. Yes, it will function. However, if that's how you want to interpret that quote, some questions: How much support will you get from FreeNAS people when they hear you have non-ECC RAM? Do you think an unsupported ZFS flag is enabled in FreeNAS? How do you recover from an error in a ZFS filesystem (hint: there's no chkdsk/fsck)? For those trying to be cheap, read the post I linked and make the call for yourself. -tm Well I don't want to get into an argument since I basically agree with the suggestion to use ECC. But the linked thread is not 100% correct, it's pretty commonly referecned in this argument and recognized to have flaws though I'm not up to speed in what exactly they are. Anyway, always better to trust the guy who wrote the software over some other guy on the internet , but better yet, yes, go with ECC. |
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Post by millst on Jan 10, 2018 15:38:02 GMT -5
Agree, it's not perfect and they're a bit hyperbolic, but they also write/maintain/support the FreeNAS software as opposed to us random guys -tm |
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