[sapper6fd]

After much reading about RAID and all I decided not to do a RAID setup at all and just have each disk be its own independent volume instead. I don't need the redundacy, and if one drive is about to fail, I can always move those files to another drive and replace the bad drive with a new one. This makes it easy to pinpoint what drive is going bad and exactly which files I will lose.

Often there inst much warning of an impending drive failure. Some times you know days or weeks beforehand its about to go, other times - no warning at all it just drops. You could pick up a third (external) drive and use it as a backup.

[madcow]

I have a synology ds411j running in RAID5 for 4x2TB drives using Synology Hybrid Raid.

In retrospect I think I should not have used the RAID setup and instead opted for a a conventional 4 separate drive solution.

Here's why (for me)
- My only critical files are my documents and my photos. They need to be backed up
- My media (movies and music) are not critical and I could re-obtain them if the were damaged through hardware failure
- RAID is not backup
- RAID protects against disk failures, but not against file operations such as accidental deletion.
- Having a RAID array makes it harder to transfer data to a new system (once I get one, which is not in the near future).
- So now I have a RAID array, and I still need additional backup for my documents and photo's

If I opted for the non-raid solution I would:
- store documents on 1 disk and make 2 backups to two other disks.
- the media are distributed over the other disks
- not having RAID provides my with 2TB additional space
- However, RAID5 may increase the filethroughput of the system. I have no idea how good/bad raid vs non-raid on the ds411j compares

In my opinion RAID is useful if continuity of the server is required, such as is the case in business environments. For home usage, a good backup policy is much more valueable.

[Prof Yaffle]

Everybody repeat the phrase above ... "RAID is not backup", "RAID is not backup", "RAID is not backup".

[wsume99]

I don't need the redundacy, and if one drive is about to fail, I can always move those files to another drive and replace the bad drive with a new one. This makes it easy to pinpoint what drive is going bad and exactly which files I will lose.

That certainly is one option and I wish you lots of luck with that.

My 2 cents - you can either learn about redundancy now or you can do it after one of your drives fail and you lose some data at which point you'll come to the realization that you may not have necessarily needed redundancy but it sure is a nice thing to have.

Also, there is a distinction between not wanting to permanently lose data and not having to repopulate your data (such as re-ripping movies). If you don't want to permantely lose data then you'd better be looking at a true backup (i.e. offsite). If you want to avoid having to re-rip a large part of your media collection then redundancy is the right solution.

[Rick P.]

A vote for the redundancy of RAID 5 here. All of my TV comes off my server and I'm sure that one of Murphy's laws is that whatever my wife or kids wanted to watch would be on the drive that fails. And they DO fail - I currently have 9 drives in my server and have lost two 2 TB drives over the past 18 months or so. The family had no idea there was a problem and even running degraded the array is much faster than it needs to be. I use Linux software RAID (mdadm) and wouldn't use or recommended hardware RAID for home file server use.

[BLKMGK]

Some sort of parity backing the datastore for sure but I vote unRAID vs a standard RAID5. My drives can spin down, I don't have to have all drives spinning for access, and if I screw something up or have a failure the filesystem is standard ReiserFS and not some striped madness I have to figure out. I only ever lose one drive to parity and I can use the full capacity of different sized drives and manufacturers. So long as the parity drive is as big or bigger than all others I'm golden. I can add or upgrade drives with ease too! Stop the service, swap the new drive in, restart the service, assign the new drive - it's that easy.

unRAID is slower for sure and I have to wait for drives to spin up that have been sleeping but for media storage it works well. unRAID is also not free but the price is reasonable IMO and the Pro license supports something like 24 drives. To each their own but running drives standalone, especially if off of USB, is just plain asking for it. I'd also echo the sentiment about not using hardware RAID at home - certainly not off of a mobo.

[Dougie Fresh]

Everybody repeat the phrase above ... "RAID is not backup", "RAID is not backup", "RAID is not backup".

But wait, there's two copies of everything so if Junior accidentally deletes one I still have the oth... oh wait...

[Nasty87]

Mac-User, after over a year, how is your Synology set up going? Having your own cloud seems ideal and the best solution. What Synology Raid/SHR type are you using for your hard drives or are they built into the Synology products?

How many hard drives are required for your set up, I am guessing just 1 in each device. They mirror to each other?

[txcanyon]

I use Openmediavault. I used to use a Raid 5 setup via Server 2008 R2.

2x 3TB WD Reds using the onboard Sata controller, and does not require any initialization of the drives, it will use what you already have (though I would recommend not using NTFS formatted drives. back up your files, and start fresh with ext4 filesystems)

One contains the actual data in its normal state (\Videos\Movies;|Videos\TV Shows; etc). I then use a plugin for it called SnapRaid
http://http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/

Which then does per file hashing and stores it in a "parity file" similar to what a raid 5 might do; it gets stored on the 2nd 3TB drive. Every morning at 3am I have a script that runs a diff on the files in the specified directory, and will add/remove/update the parity file as necessary. Also if there is no changes to the file structure, it wont even spin up the parity drive. Once I run out of space on the data drive, I just add a drive, and adjust the Snapraid configuration as necessary, thats it. There is also a drive pooling plugin that will allow you to combine drives under a single directory.

Once a week, I have it scrub the drive for bit errors, and if necessary replace with a undamaged file from the parity.

With the recent release of 1.0.x it has truly become evolutionary for the home use file server/nas. There are a plethora of plugins (to include Plex Media Server) that help make it much more than just a box in the corner. Plus since it is a working Debian install, it crunches WCG for me

[cv15xbmc]

Sorry to highjack thread, but say with Raid 1, if i invest in a 4-bay NAS now and buy one drive and dont run any raid, and then later add another to either use as more storage or run say raid 1, will i have to reformat drive?

Just trying to save money on cost and slowly add (i will hav data backed up on other drives)

[discordian666]

Having duplicate server, plus tape backups plus the rare stuff in the cloud stored on my crashplan+

That's a backup!