Looking for best Raid and Backup solution for 8 2TB drives

[slimeberto]

So I'm in the process of acquiring the remaining few drives to set this up at home. The idea is to setup my first reliable and redundant home media repository. Everything is currently residing on a single 2TB drive.

What I'm thinking of doing moving forward is to setup 2 4 drive Raid 10 arrays, thus doubling my current capacity. And providing a local backup by setting up incremental backups of the data from the primary array to the secondary array.

This isn't mission critical files, but I would like to eliminate the single point of failure I'm currently looking at while expanding my capacity. I will be using an older Dell Perc 310 to handle the raid arrays, as such Raid 6 is out of the question as it doesn't offer it, and everything I've read says Raid isn't a good option with > 250 GB drives, especially these being older drives to boot.

 

[velocityg4]

Fundamentally flawed backup. Data not fully protected.
- PSU failure, Fire, theft, lightning strike, &c will take everything out.
- RAID controller failure will make recovery difficult if not impossible
- No protection against ransom ware.

Overkill. Backup does not need RAID 10. Nor do you need RAID 10 or the expense of a RAID card. Based on your description.
- If you want RAID for speed and redundancy. Just use RAID 5, Storage Spaces in parity, &c
- Since your backup size isn’t huge. Get two large external HDD. Rotate them out. Keeping one in a fire/water resistant safe bolted to the floor. Otherwise keep one local backup and one remote backup through a service like Backblaze. Which allows you to create a private encryption key.
- These options can save some money and provide better data protection.

 

[slimeberto]

I already have 3 Perc 310 cards that were given to me. So the raid hardware isn't a cost issue. I was contemplating Free as but those Dell cards have a performance hit in HBA mode, that being said the sites isn't crucial to me as it's only for supporting a few SD Plex feeds which have been adequately handled by the single hard drive currently.

I'm afraid to put all my eggs in one basket with a larger hard drive but if the cost is similar than yes I can run an external larger drive or drives for redundancy and keep an on-site and off-site backup.

 

[USAFRet]

Backup solution:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

That is based around a dedicated NAS box, but could just as easily be a separate PC or a couple of USB connected drives.

 

[velocityg4]

I already have 3 Perc 310 cards that were given to me. So the raid hardware isn't a cost issue. I was contemplating Free as but those Dell cards have a performance hit in HBA mode, that being said the sites isn't crucial to me as it's only for supporting a few SD Plex feeds which have been adequately handled by the single hard drive currently.

I'm afraid to put all my eggs in one basket with a larger hard drive but if the cost is similar than yes I can run an external larger drive or drives for redundancy and keep an on-site and off-site backup.

I'd certainly only use one backup drive. It's a lot less hassle, less noise, less heat and uses a lot less power. No reason to waste electricity if you don't need to. It'd be different if you already had a system. As costs per TB is about the same in either case. There isn't a strong argument for a RAID backup of personal files.

In my own setup I only keep one backup set. I only connect my external to the media center about once a year for backup. Then it is stored in my safe. The odds of an internal and backup failing at one time are very low. In a worst case scenario I'd just re-encode my library again with a more efficient codec.

Once it's setup. How much does it really change in a year?

I do have multiple drives. Drives larger than 4TB had a significantly higher cost per TB, at the time, and h.264 was the only viable option for HD video.If I was doing it now I'd just have a single 8TB internal and external and everything stored in x.265.

Right now looking at a sampling of the few cheapest drives on PCpartpicker. It seems 6TB, 4TB and 2TB drives have about the same cost per TB. 8TB drives are a bit higher per TB. As you have three cards. Port usage is not a concern. It'll just come down to space usage, noise, heat and power consumption.