Become a Site Supporter and Never see Ads again!

Author Topic: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014  (Read 5111 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline rastasean

  • in paradise
  • Trade Count: (23)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 3699
  • Gender: Male
DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« on: June 10, 2014, 09:18:45 PM »
Not my article but helpful for those who want to have an in-house NAS:

http://blog.brianmoses.net/2014/06/diy-nas-econonas-2014.html

Article explains Brian making a freeNAS server for $550 with 4 2TB drives for a total of 8TB of disks.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

adrianf74

  • Guest
  • Trade Count: (0)
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2014, 07:27:18 PM »
Interesting article.  I got had many decisions to make when building a home media server and ended up building something that didn't run as a RAID but still had some redundancy built in.  It's called disParity and more about it can be found here:

http://www.vilett.com/disParity/

What I liked most about this is that all of my drives are kept separate but one drive has parity files written to it much like those that accompany RAR file sets.  If I lose a drive, I can rebuild it using the contents of the parity drive plus the others.   If I lose the parity drive, I just rebuild it.  If I lose more than two drives, I only lose those drives and not everything.  I also use Hard Disk Sentinel Pro to monitor my drives' health status so when/if a drive starts to fail, I can start a rebuild before catastrophe happens.

Offline rastasean

  • in paradise
  • Trade Count: (23)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 3699
  • Gender: Male
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2014, 03:05:34 PM »
Hi Adrian,
Interesting article.  I got had many decisions to make when building a home media server and ended up building something that didn't run as a RAID but still had some redundancy built in.  It's called disParity and more about it can be found here:

http://www.vilett.com/disParity/

What I liked most about this is that all of my drives are kept separate but one drive has parity files written to it much like those that accompany RAR file sets.  If I lose a drive, I can rebuild it using the contents of the parity drive plus the others.   If I lose the parity drive, I just rebuild it.  If I lose more than two drives, I only lose those drives and not everything.  I also use Hard Disk Sentinel Pro to monitor my drives' health status so when/if a drive starts to fail, I can start a rebuild before catastrophe happens.

The article mentioned  RAID-Z2 but that's not your conventional RAID 5 thing that most people know about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_RAID_levels
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Offline JackoRoses

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 2836
  • Gender: Male
  • lost cause
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2014, 06:44:53 PM »
I'd rather back up to dvd and use the extra storage space instead of dealing with raid.
Put the drive in, don't load it up fully but use it for a month. If it lasts that long it will most likely make it 5 years.
DisParity is cool, at least it only takes a drive.
You do backup don't you? So why waste time on raid for home use.. Heck if the drive dies it's a good time to load it up with new material.

http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/jackoroses
AKG ck61's/ck62's/ck63's/480b's > zaolla's/Dogstar silver cables > optimod V3  > zaolla spdif> HD-P2
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. "
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Big Brother is here and he is watching you.

Offline voltronic

  • Trade Count: (40)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 4104
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2014, 08:28:50 PM »
I thought about going NAS for a while, but instead I just bought one 3TB WD RED as another internal and have nightly mirroring set up.  Thought about a NAS, but I can't justify the price and don't need that massive amount of stuff immediately available on my network.  For long-term backups, I also recently got a blu-ray burner.  I trust optical storage media much more than hard drives over a period of years, as long as you get the correct type of BD-R media (HTL, which is not dye-based).
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
- Gustav Mahler

Acoustic Recording Techniques
Team Classical
Team Line Audio
Team DPA

adrianf74

  • Guest
  • Trade Count: (0)
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2014, 10:28:01 PM »
@JackoRoses: In the case of my home media server, I'm not overly worried about movies, etc.  My personal documents (scans, photos, audio masters, raw files, etc.) are backed up on two other drives outside of my main system.  This makes things more than manageable enough.

@JackoRoses and @Voltronic: I can't say that I'd want to use any form of optical media for long-term storage.  Back in the day, I'd archived ALL of my FLAC shows to DVD-R (certified Taiyo Yuden at that) and a good half of them had read-errors over time even though they were stored in a proper climate and out of sunlight.  I'd sooner have my stuff on multiple drives that I can monitor health (via S.M.A.R.T.) than count on media.   disParity just makes my life easier.

Offline JackoRoses

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 2836
  • Gender: Male
  • lost cause
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #6 on: June 13, 2014, 08:58:08 PM »
@JackoRoses: In the case of my home media server, I'm not overly worried about movies, etc.  My personal documents (scans, photos, audio masters, raw files, etc.) are backed up on two other drives outside of my main system.  This makes things more than manageable enough.

@JackoRoses and @Voltronic: I can't say that I'd want to use any form of optical media for long-term storage.  Back in the day, I'd archived ALL of my FLAC shows to DVD-R (certified Taiyo Yuden at that) and a good half of them had read-errors over time even though they were stored in a proper climate and out of sunlight.  I'd sooner have my stuff on multiple drives that I can monitor health (via S.M.A.R.T.) than count on media.   disParity just makes my life easier.
see I just haven't ran into that issue with optical media yet; stuff burnt from 98 still reads ok. I don't keep it stored all that perfect other than out of light really.
I haven't gone through all my disks either. verbatims here
http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/jackoroses
AKG ck61's/ck62's/ck63's/480b's > zaolla's/Dogstar silver cables > optimod V3  > zaolla spdif> HD-P2
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. "
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Big Brother is here and he is watching you.

Offline voltronic

  • Trade Count: (40)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 4104
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #7 on: June 13, 2014, 09:13:57 PM »
@JackoRoses: In the case of my home media server, I'm not overly worried about movies, etc.  My personal documents (scans, photos, audio masters, raw files, etc.) are backed up on two other drives outside of my main system.  This makes things more than manageable enough.

@JackoRoses and @Voltronic: I can't say that I'd want to use any form of optical media for long-term storage.  Back in the day, I'd archived ALL of my FLAC shows to DVD-R (certified Taiyo Yuden at that) and a good half of them had read-errors over time even though they were stored in a proper climate and out of sunlight.  I'd sooner have my stuff on multiple drives that I can monitor health (via S.M.A.R.T.) than count on media.   disParity just makes my life easier.
see I just haven't ran into that issue with optical media yet; stuff burnt from 98 still reads ok. I don't keep it stored all that perfect other than out of light really.
I haven't gone through all my disks either. verbatims here

Yeah, my CD-Rs from the late 90s still read fine also.  As my backup needs grew, I then re-backed up all that stuff to DVD-R, and now again to BD-R.  The likelyhood that discs I burn now will fail in 10 years is pretty slim.  Hard drives I don't trust for nearly as long, but the advantage of course is accessiblity and capacity.
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
- Gustav Mahler

Acoustic Recording Techniques
Team Classical
Team Line Audio
Team DPA

Offline Brian Skalinder

  • Complaint Dept.
  • Trade Count: (28)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 18868
  • Gender: Male
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #8 on: June 14, 2014, 12:50:32 PM »
I abandoned DVDs as a backup while converting my CDs to DVDs in part because I found it a PITA and time consuming to load, copy, burn, remove, etc. each and every CD / DVD.  I also ran across the occasional, if infrequent, bad disc, which made me nervous.  I figured it would prove a big hassle to monitor the quality of my optical backups in the hopes of identifying when the media started to deteriorate.  With HDDs, I'm easily able to maintain sufficient redundancy (including off-site) that the shorter lifespan of the medium becomes irrelevant.

I've come close to deploying an NAS solution, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.  For now, my current system suffices.  HDD accessibility and capacity contribute to the relative ease with which I may transfer my backups from one HDD to another, or to a future high-capacity medium.  Quick & easy redundancy makes it more likely I'll actually ensure I have sufficient redundancy.  And while I haven't yet switched to my next medium, I imagine when I do it will also offer accessibility and capacity, making the migration quick & easy.

For those using optical backups, I'm curious:
  • Do you also use additional copies for redundancy (either on optical or other media)?
  • When's the last time you checked the readiability of every single one of your backup discs (or at least an appropriately sized sampling given the number of discs)?  And if you haven't done it recently, what gives you confidence that some are not already deteriorating?
  • How do you deal with off-site backup?  Also optical media, or another approach?
Milab VM-44 Links > Fostex FR-2LE or
Naiant IPA (tinybox format) >
Roland R-05

adrianf74

  • Guest
  • Trade Count: (0)
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2014, 01:33:18 PM »
For those using optical backups, I'm curious:
  • Do you also use additional copies for redundancy (either on optical or other media)?
  • How do you deal with off-site backup?  Also optical media, or another approach?

I have the main file set in my HTPC (which is backed up using parity files and the other drives in the set) along with monitoring S.M.A.R.T. status all the time;  as soon as ANY status changes, I get an email and the system is automatically shut down as soon as it is safe to do. 

I also keep two portable hard drives of my masters/personal docs.  One is kept on site.  The other is kept off site and I bring it home monthly to backup the new additions.

Offline rastasean

  • in paradise
  • Trade Count: (23)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 3699
  • Gender: Male
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #10 on: June 17, 2014, 05:35:28 PM »
For those using optical backups, I'm curious:
  • Do you also use additional copies for redundancy (either on optical or other media)?
  • How do you deal with off-site backup?  Also optical media, or another approach?

I have the main file set in my HTPC (which is backed up using parity files and the other drives in the set) along with monitoring S.M.A.R.T. status all the time;  as soon as ANY status changes, I get an email and the system is automatically shut down as soon as it is safe to do. 

I also keep two portable hard drives of my masters/personal docs.  One is kept on site.  The other is kept off site and I bring it home monthly to backup the new additions.

Smart tells you the drive has issues but how do you know if the data is fine?
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Offline voltronic

  • Trade Count: (40)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 4104
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #11 on: June 17, 2014, 10:22:11 PM »
For those using optical backups, I'm curious:
  • Do you also use additional copies for redundancy (either on optical or other media)?
  • When's the last time you checked the readiability of every single one of your backup discs (or at least an appropriately sized sampling given the number of discs)?  And if you haven't done it recently, what gives you confidence that some are not already deteriorating?
  • How do you deal with off-site backup?  Also optical media, or another approach?

In answer to the above:

1. Yes - I have a WD RED 3TB that is just for nightly mirrored backups of all media.  I also have external drives I periodically mirror to. 
2. I check them about once a year.  When through all the DVD-R discs just a few months ago when I got the BD drive, as I had to look through them all to make sure I wasn't missing anything on my HDD backups that I wanted to copy to BD also.  I have always been very particular about brands of optical media I use, and despite what others might say I find it makes a big difference in reliablity.  All of my DVD-Rs are Taiyo Yuden; BD-R I am using Verbatim.  Wish I could find the Panasonic BD-Rs at a reasonable price; they are supposedly the best in long-term reliability tests.
3. No offsite backups right now.  I should probably do something about that...
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
- Gustav Mahler

Acoustic Recording Techniques
Team Classical
Team Line Audio
Team DPA

Offline rastasean

  • in paradise
  • Trade Count: (23)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 3699
  • Gender: Male
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #12 on: June 18, 2014, 04:52:01 PM »
For those using optical backups, I'm curious:
  • Do you also use additional copies for redundancy (either on optical or other media)?
  • When's the last time you checked the readiability of every single one of your backup discs (or at least an appropriately sized sampling given the number of discs)?  And if you haven't done it recently, what gives you confidence that some are not already deteriorating?
  • How do you deal with off-site backup?  Also optical media, or another approach?

In answer to the above:

2. I check them about once a year.  When through all the DVD-R discs just a few months ago when I got the BD drive, as I had to look through them all to make sure I wasn't missing anything on my HDD backups that I wanted to copy to BD also.  I have always been very particular about brands of optical media I use, and despite what others might say I find it makes a big difference in reliablity.  All of my DVD-Rs are Taiyo Yuden; BD-R I am using Verbatim.  Wish I could find the Panasonic BD-Rs at a reasonable price; they are supposedly the best in long-term reliability tests.

So you check your media annually and by what methods?
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Offline voltronic

  • Trade Count: (40)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 4104
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #13 on: June 18, 2014, 09:53:50 PM »
For those using optical backups, I'm curious:
  • Do you also use additional copies for redundancy (either on optical or other media)?
  • When's the last time you checked the readiability of every single one of your backup discs (or at least an appropriately sized sampling given the number of discs)?  And if you haven't done it recently, what gives you confidence that some are not already deteriorating?
  • How do you deal with off-site backup?  Also optical media, or another approach?

In answer to the above:

2. I check them about once a year.  When through all the DVD-R discs just a few months ago when I got the BD drive, as I had to look through them all to make sure I wasn't missing anything on my HDD backups that I wanted to copy to BD also.  I have always been very particular about brands of optical media I use, and despite what others might say I find it makes a big difference in reliablity.  All of my DVD-Rs are Taiyo Yuden; BD-R I am using Verbatim.  Wish I could find the Panasonic BD-Rs at a reasonable price; they are supposedly the best in long-term reliability tests.

So you check your media annually and by what methods?

Um... I put them in the computer and see if they read?  I don't get involved with MD5 hashes if that's what you're getting at.  Honestly the annual check hasn't been a planned housekeeping task, it's just sort of happened the last several years as I have upgrade my computer from CD to DVD and now BD drives, re-copying media to the hard drives and then to the newer optical discs along the way.  Intermediately, I have also purchased new internal and external hard drives, and/or changed the partitioning on my system and media drives.  Each time that happened, I would go through my optical media backups and either copy those files again to the media drive and/or update tags and such from what is already on said hard drive, then burn those to new optical media.  Whenever I get new music files (or anything else I care deeply about), I keep a log of what is not backed up to optical and then when I accumulate enough to fill a disc I burn those new files.  Nightly mirrored backups are still taking place on the hard drives.

I worked for several years as a computer repair tech, and I have seen too many random hard drive failures to trust mechanical drives as the only form of critical data backup.  S.M.A.R.T. will sometimes give you a heads up things are going bad, but other times shit just happens and you've got bad sectors or something worse happens without warning.  Or maybe you're a klutz and drop your external drive.  If your drive fails containing critical files you have no other backup of, then you're spending major $$$ for a company like Ontrack to recover them for you.

I also fully acknowledge my hypocrisy here by not having off-site backups.  I won't use the online backup solutions simply because I flat out don't trust them from a privacy standpoint.  What I'm planning to do is have a hard drive and cache of optical media in a safety deposit box or something similar.
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
- Gustav Mahler

Acoustic Recording Techniques
Team Classical
Team Line Audio
Team DPA

Offline rastasean

  • in paradise
  • Trade Count: (23)
  • Needs to get out more...
  • *****
  • Posts: 3699
  • Gender: Male
Re: DIY NAS: EconoNAS 2014
« Reply #14 on: June 18, 2014, 10:38:33 PM »
Hi voltronic,

So you check your media annually and by what methods?

Um... I put them in the computer and see if they read?  I don't get involved with MD5 hashes if that's what you're getting at.  Honestly the annual check hasn't been a planned housekeeping task, it's just sort of happened the last several years as I have upgrade my computer from CD to DVD and now BD drives, re-copying media to the hard drives and then to the newer optical discs along the way.  Intermediately, I have also purchased new internal and external hard drives, and/or changed the partitioning on my system and media drives.  Each time that happened, I would go through my optical media backups and either copy those files again to the media drive and/or update tags and such from what is already on said hard drive, then burn those to new optical media.  Whenever I get new music files (or anything else I care deeply about), I keep a log of what is not backed up to optical and then when I accumulate enough to fill a disc I burn those new files.  Nightly mirrored backups are still taking place on the hard drives.

I worked for several years as a computer repair tech, and I have seen too many random hard drive failures to trust mechanical drives as the only form of critical data backup.  S.M.A.R.T. will sometimes give you a heads up things are going bad, but other times shit just happens and you've got bad sectors or something worse happens without warning.  Or maybe you're a klutz and drop your external drive.  If your drive fails containing critical files you have no other backup of, then you're spending major $$$ for a company like Ontrack to recover them for you.

I also fully acknowledge my hypocrisy here by not having off-site backups.  I won't use the online backup solutions simply because I flat out don't trust them from a privacy standpoint.  What I'm planning to do is have a hard drive and cache of optical media in a safety deposit box or something similar.
[/quote]

Well putting the disc in the computer to see if it reads is good but if that disc doesn't read next week, you may not know for  51 weeks and if it's your only copy, you're SOL. An md5 or sha1 hash is good to know if it's the same fingerprint, but it still won't do any good if you've verified that you can't read the disc. Do you have any recommendations on how to store your optical media? In theory, we should all have our media is perfectly controlled rooms sealed off from that dust and dirt that we collect but unfortunately, at least for me, that's not really possible right now.

I get what you're saying about HDD and mechanical drives but optical media can't be made out to be the solution to all our problems. Hell in a few years more, we may not be able to buy new CDROM drives or DVD drives. Yes, I know it will probably be longer than that but just take a look at this chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_drive#Other_sizes The floppy disk was introduced in 1971 and I don't know of a practical purpose for a single floppy disk, even the ones that store 200MB.

In my opinion, if you're going to store data on HDD, it should be stored in a zfs.

I understand not trusting online backup solutions but there are good ones out there. My favorite is tarsnap: http://www.tarsnap.com/ the client code is all open source. More on tarsnap:
https://www.tarsnap.com/security.html
https://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html

Granted, you probably won't want to shove your flac/wave recordings up there since that would use much disk space and really not worth it when you have places like LMA.

I have a feeling more and more companies are going to struggle with good, reliable storage solutions as time progresses and the need/want to keep everything increases.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

 

RSS | Mobile
Page created in 0.114 seconds with 44 queries.
© 2002-2024 Taperssection.com
Powered by SMF