(2014-08-08, 02:30)XBL. Wrote: @OP: since you want something easy and don't really want anything special, you can just go with a Windows setup (if you're comfortable with that OS). Personally I'd go with something as Ubuntu + Amahi as frontend (if you really want a frontend), but this does mean a slight learning curve.
Windows wouldn't work for the OP's needs, since he says he wants it to run from a USB drive. It looks like Amahi isn't free, in which case I'd personally pass on it.
(2014-08-08, 02:33)Stereodude Wrote: (2014-08-08, 02:15)two515ty Wrote: What are the dangers of a RAID reconstruction? I'm curious myself because I'm planning on migrating to a RAID-Z2 (RAID6) system in the future, but I've never really heard about RAID reconstruction being dangerous.
The theory is that you're putting too much stress on the drive while rebuilding. Personally, I think it's a bunch of bunk in a home use scenario. The drives aren't forced to do a pile of seeks thrashing the drive while rebuilding. It's a continuous sequential read operation from all the drives except the drive that's being rebuilt to which is getting a continuous sequential write. Now, if you were trying do a bunch of reading and writing to the array while rebuilding it you could put additional stress on the drives, but that's probably unlikely for the typical home user.
That's what I thought. I figure that for most home users, a rebuild with just a few drives isn't going to kill your hardware, but I'm just speculating. I haven't had any hardware failures on my NAS (tackles tree), but I don't imagine so many people would use RAID if its recovery mechanism was so "dangerous."
(2014-08-08, 02:35)nevillebartos Wrote: (2014-08-08, 02:15)two515ty Wrote: What are the dangers of a RAID reconstruction? I'm curious myself because I'm planning on migrating to a RAID-Z2 (RAID6) system in the future, but I've never really heard about RAID reconstruction being dangerous.
Well the problem is if something goes wrong during the reconstruction. Two different cases being power failure or unrecoverable read error. Reconstruction takes a LONG time, if you lose power during this time or your machine opts out for whatever reason, you're a goner. URE's are something which there are a few articles on and are a compelling reason to go for RAID6 over 5 in larger storage arrays - if you were running RAID 5 and a disk failed, then you went to reconstruct then met a URE along the way the reconstruction will fail - an estimation of the odds of this happening can be calculated from manufacturers drive specs, I think over 12TB or something and it starts looking grim for RAID 5, RAID 6 is significantly more resilient. A good UPS is also key especially during reconstruction.
Power failure shouldn't be a problem IMO, as any one concerned about the safety of their data should have their server running on a UPS.
As far as URE's and 12 TB, I've never really heard of such issues when I was reading about RAID-Z and FreeNAS. In any case, when talking about the OP who has 8 separate disks, nothing less than RAID-Z2/RAID6 should be used IMO. It seems that he is set on running each disk as an independent volume, so any discussion of RAID isn't really applicable either way.
(2014-08-08, 02:38)nevillebartos Wrote: (2014-08-08, 02:33)Stereodude Wrote: The theory is that you're putting too much stress on the drive while rebuilding. Personally, I think it's a bunch of bunk in a home use scenario. The drives aren't forced to do a pile of seeks thrashing the drive while rebuilding. It's a continuous sequential read operation from all the drives except the drive that's being rebuilt to which is getting a continuous sequential write. Now, if you were trying do a bunch of reading and writing to the array while rebuilding it you could put additional stress on the drives, but that's probably unlikely for the typical home user.
An interesting point - especially when we consider that when we put these things together it's generally with a bunch of drives bought at once, so chances are same manufacturer, same age, from the same batch... If one goes, it may not be unlikely that another is close to death... Stressing all drives during the rebuild may push another drive over the edge.
In the research that I did about buying drives for a NAS, many people actually recommended mixing and matching drives from different manufacturers, merchants, and purchase dates to help reduce the risk of buying a bad batch of drives all at once.
(2014-08-08, 03:14)Soul_Est Wrote: I would recommend a proper home server build including ECC RAM and a ZFS compatible OS. Whether you use Z-RAID(1-3) or not, you can ensure that your data is indeed safe on the server. Please just stick with software RAID if you build an array. Hardware RAID can end in tears if you're not suitably prepared. There is also Greyhole, but I haven't read up on it for some time.
+1. Software RAID is the way to go nowadays. Hardware RAID is just not ideal, given the low benefits-to-risks ratio. Personally, I use FreeNAS without ECC RAM, but I also don't have any extremely important data on my server either. I don't know that I'd really recommend the extra cost of ECC for the OP, since he seems comfortable re-ripping media as needed.
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)... but if you can setup ZFS, you are not a Linux noob.
HDD's are relatively cheap (especially compared to my time) so someone saying that they cannot spare the disk space is not a good enough excuse.
. It's just that the cost for ECC RAM would be too high, and wouldn't offer enough benefit (meaning that I won't cry if my data is corrupted) to warrant the cost. I wanted a mini-ITX build, and there just aren't many mini-ITX boards that support ECC that are affordable. I have an ECS NM70-i2 with 16 GB of Kingston RAM running FreeNAS and it's been running quite well for me.
