Question Enclosure or Nas build advice and direction please...

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steveyg777

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Feb 12, 2011
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I have a synology ds920+ in and have replaced several drives and have a collection of 8tb Seagate compute (yes i know some are smr, hourly i can still use them?) and Toshiba n300 drives and an ironwolf. I wanted to create storage that i can put together a collection of retro files on (all kinds of consoles and especially a full collection of amiga games). I've probably got 6x8tb drives at least and other drives lying around to use. I was wondering about getting a large enclosure (possibly 8 bays) and controlling then as raid via a pi to keep costs down but don't know if it will be powerful enough to cope? I'd like to put them to use and organise the remainder of my digital files that aren't on my synology nas.

I want to make a new nas of sorts with the drives to hold the retro stuff, i may use it to backup my syno and other devices to as well (already got a dedicated drive for syno backup by-the-way).

So i need advice for the following:

1. Drive setup - I don't know whether to go with a jbod or raid of some kind, i read raid5 is deprecated but not keen on sacrificing lots of drives to on like raid6 or 10 and read that raid6 is even slower than 5.

2. Enclosure - I'm not sure what enclosure to buy bit don't want to be buying something as expensive as a qnap or syno etc (although I've got my eye on these https://amzn.eu/d/3QV0i96, https://amzn.eu/d/5eObj, https://amzn.eu/d/dMP49SK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TR-004-Desktop-Expansion-Enclosure/dp/B07K23ZJFN
and I've even seen a 10bay - possibly orico). Or should i go with something else, I'm obviously very keen to get it while Black Friday is still on and I’ve got an egift card to go towards one if it’s bought from Amazon.

3. Software - not sure what software to use to achieve the nas side of things (i was thinking about omv cos truenas looked more difficult but not sure now) - I'd prefer to keep the amount of geeking about on Linux to the minimum if possible but not sure if that's possible and may be persuaded if it's not too difficult.

4. Filesystem - and then also not sure what filesystem to use. My syno uses shr1 with btrfs but i read omv isn't able to use the advanced features of btrfs, is this still true? What's the best software and filesystem combo? Zfs? Ext4? something else?

5. Raspberry pi - should i use a pi to handle raid? Is it too much geeking with Linux to setup quickly and maintenance freely (with regards to changing failing disks, maintenance, etc)? I saw a little touch screen you can but for the pi to make it a more self contained system or isn't that really needed?

I could really do with some pointers cos i feel there is so much choice out there and don't know what, of the above aspects of a new nas, will work together well or cause compatibility issues with one another, etc ...

Can anyone steer me through the mine field please?
 
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punkncat

punkncat

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This sounds like a perfect placement for someone's old full tower PC. You could keep it on Windows or load up FreeNAS or the like on it.

I have a Synology that I use and TBH I don't really care for it. (it is one of the little two bay jobbies) The UI isn't very intuitive IMO and don't like that fact that it claims that it is hot swappable and will rebuild the files if you just lose one drive...but doesn't. I actually locked myself out of this one. I can access it, read and write to it and so forth but can no longer log in as the Administrator and perform maintenance tasks. I have to reset it for that and am afraid I will lose the files. In that, I won't really be losing anything because it is backed up elsewhere I just haven't seen a need to do anything about it quite yet.

For simplicity within my own arena of familiarity, I actually still prefer just to stand up a Windows box and share the drive pool.
 
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USAFRet

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punkncat said:
This sounds like a perfect placement for someone's old full tower PC. You could keep it on Windows or load up FreeNAS or the like on it.

I have a Synology that I use and TBH I don't really care for it. (it is one of the little two bay jobbies) The UI isn't very intuitive IMO and don't like that fact that it claims that it is hot swappable and will rebuild the files if you just lose one drive...but doesn't. I actually locked myself out of this one. I can access it, read and write to it and so forth but can no longer log in as the Administrator and perform maintenance tasks. I have to reset it for that and am afraid I will lose the files. In that, I won't really be losing anything because it is backed up elsewhere I just haven't seen a need to do anything about it quite yet.

For simplicity within my own arena of familiarity, I actually still prefer just to stand up a Windows box and share the drive pool.
Click to expand...
And my near 7 year experience with my QNAP is just the opposite.
It has been absolutely rock solid. Intuitive.

But, to each his own.
 
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steveyg777

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Feb 12, 2011
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punkncat said:
This sounds like a perfect placement for someone's old full tower PC. You could keep it on Windows or load up FreeNAS or the like on it.

I have a Synology that I use and TBH I don't really care for it. (it is one of the little two bay jobbies) The UI isn't very intuitive IMO and don't like that fact that it claims that it is hot swappable and will rebuild the files if you just lose one drive...but doesn't. I actually locked myself out of this one. I can access it, read and write to it and so forth but can no longer log in as the Administrator and perform maintenance tasks. I have to reset it for that and am afraid I will lose the files. In that, I won't really be losing anything because it is backed up elsewhere I just haven't seen a need to do anything about it quite yet.

For simplicity within my own arena of familiarity, I actually still prefer just to stand up a Windows box and share the drive pool.
Click to expand...
I was going for a solution that is more remote accessible (web ui) and less power hungry. I'm hoping that i can get a good balance of enclosure, bays, filesystem, power, self automation, security and reliability. Can anyone suggest any of three above aspects (like a particular high count bay enclosure? Raid level? Filesystem? Software? Would it all work on a pi? Etc? )
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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steveyg777 said:
I was going for a solution that is more remote accessible (web ui) and less power hungry. I'm hoping that i can get a good balance of enclosure, bays, filesystem, power, self automation, security and reliability. Can anyone suggest any of three above aspects (like a particular high count bay enclosure? Raid level? Filesystem? Software? Would it all work on a pi? Etc? )
Click to expand...
Generally, leave RAID alone unless you know why you need it.
 
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steveyg777

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USAFRet said:
Generally, leave RAID alone unless you know why you need it.
Click to expand...
I use raid (shr1) on my synology and was going to use it on this setup in order to improve reliability and protection. Is this not good enough? Is there a choice of software that would be ideal for maintaining the raid array and make it easy to replace failed disks?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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steveyg777 said:
I use raid (shr1) on my synology and was going to use it on this setup in order to improve reliability and protection. Is this not good enough? Is there a choice of software that would be ideal for maintaining the raid array and make it easy to replace failed disks?
Click to expand...
RAID is not a substitute for a real backup routine.

And if you have a good backup routine, you probably don't need the RAID array.

A RAID 1 is really only good for continued uptime, in the event of a physical drive fail. It does nothing for all the other forms of data loss.
 
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thestryker

thestryker

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Due to the current state of the storage market it's impossible to find a RAID setup really worth using as a home user. My old server box (12-13 yrs) was running RAID 6 with a good controller and this did what I wanted. My new one is running RAIDZ2 because I wanted more checks on data integrity and was willing to sacrifice performance to get it.

RAID can potentially provide higher transfer rate than JBOD depending on which you use and how good your hardware is. Realistically speaking it is primarily good for running long term while preventing data failure from minimal drive failure. I've never had multiple drives die at the same time in over a decade (I replaced all my drives about 5-6 years in). I did have drive 1 drive failure in the first array and multiple that had/were failing by the time I retired it (one replaced and one I had a drive standing by).

This is a really long winded way of saying RAID is a poor choice for most people and if there's data one really wants to protect then back it up on multiple drives and cloud.
 
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