With data storage needs increasing, using a NAS with a RAID setup provides an added layer of security. What RAID level should one use for the best balance between data protection and storage capacity?, and what are some best practices for maintaining and securing a RAID-enabled NAS?
i am sure you guys sit on heaps of experience on this topic so please share your thoughts and tips with me.
right no i have only two hdds from two diffrent companies one 4 tb and one 12 tb. my raid 0 ssd main drive went tits upp and im now banished to a old laptop until payday.
im looking for longterm reliable storage, and this warning from the thec gods have poised me to make my very own noahs ark.
i dont want to loose it all to something traivial as did not have backup.
For data protection, you must first keep proper backups. RAID is for uptime, and for a homelab it’s not always needed. Backups first (external drive, cloud), then RAID.
At the bare minimum, or at least to start get data in a raid that losing a drive or 2 won’t cause you to lose everything. You’re not out of the yet. If you can’t lose your files you want 2 separate copies in different machines, preferably at different locations. Be that a cloud service or a remote server.
My files are on my local NAS server that are also backed up to my remote NAS server at my dad’s house over a VPN. Essential files (not my plex media) are also in a 1tb cloud service. 3-2-1 backup plan is probably ideal but I’m pretty happy with my 2.5-2.5-1.5 approach 😅. 3-3-2 for critical stuff and 2-2-1 for everything else.
Should be using software-defined storage, like ZFS. Provides snapshots, rollbacks, compression, and optionally deduplication and encryption. ZFS is both a filesystem and volume manager. Good stuff.
I have a 2 bay NAS in RAID1 that houses all of our documents, family photos, etc. This is pushed to the cloud with up-to 30 day versioning of individual files.
RAID is for data redundancy. Cloud is for backup.
Backups are more important than raid levels.
Have automated backups that comply with the 3-2-1 rule first, you can migrate raid levels later.
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Like everyone else, raid is not a backup.
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dont use hardware raid, use some sort of software defined thing, like zfs or btrfs.
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the last suggestion i saw for zfs that seemed credible was to use mirrored pairs of disks.
So basically, buy a second 12tb drive, slap both in some sort of old desktop, setup truenas, and sort out a backup strategy.
I really need to start messing with software raid, it seems promising, my only question is… doens’t it need a beefy cpu, enough ram or cache and decent storage?
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no raid, get a second one as off-site backup