Home Backup & Storage Server - Advice Needed

[Larry365]

I'm warming to the idea of building a home server to centralise data and for backing up critical data across multiple computers.

Essentially I have a 2 local computers and a remote computer (my mums) which I want to be backed up daily. And then I have storage needs in the realm of 8-10TB, of which certain folders need to be accessed remotely too.

My current thoughts are:

2TB Raid 1 with backup - 3x 2TB drives WD Red - for critical data backup
>8TB Raid 5 - 5x 2TB drives WD Red - for centralised storage of movies, ISO's, camera footage etc.
I am toying with the idea of 3TB or 4TB drives for the raid 5 but would like opinions on reliability when rebuilding such an array. (4x3TB is working out cheapest of all drives when building a ~8-9TB array)

I will not be working from the raid. For example, when editing a video, I plan on copying the files to a local drive and working from there.

I wouldn't say I was a novice when it comes to pcs/building pcs.. but I have never had any experience with servers. I am continuing to read but I am getting overloaded with info on software raids, hardware raids, files systems, OS, vm's..

Just looking for some thoughts on this solution and an idea of the hardware I'm gonna need. Is there another solution out there I haven't thought of? Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Bluecube]

Going by what you've told us, Windows is probably the best OS as it keeps things relatively simple. With Windows you can use software RAID which is pretty easy to set up. I wouldn't recommend hardware RAID as it's expensive and can be fiddly.

An alternative to RAID would be using Stablebit Drivepool which duplicates files across a series of disks for you. The great thing is that the disks are just bog standard NTFS drives so you can pull them out and use them in another PC if you so wish.

 

[Phantom Shadow]

My plan atm is to pick up 3x3TB WD Reds and put them in a raidz1 (raid5) array using freenas. Just bought a Lenovo TS140 for £240 which is pretty good for the hardware you get (the processor alone seems to be around £150). The TS140 supposedly idles around 15-20W too (plus your HDDs). ZFS and ECC ram will get you very reliable storage with error checking etc, more than just raid 5 would give you. Probably more involved to get set up properly though, and depending on the data the added error checking of ZFS may not be of any benefit to you.

Raid 1 for critical data is a good choice, from what I've read raid 5 will give a higher chance of problems during a rebuild. Hard to work out what's actually a problem and what is people just being overly cautious. Lots of talk about how with >11.5TB you have a very good chance of an unrecoverable read error during a rebuild. But the drives keep functioning you just read 1 bit back wrong. With non-critical data like videos, or at least with critical data backed up elsewhere then it seems to be a non-issue really.

Windows with software raid will likely require less hardware and be easier to set up. While freenas/ZFS will need at least 8gb ram, but will keep your data more intact (supposedly).

With raid 5 sure I've read somewhere that you want 2n+1 drives (3,5,9, etc) for best performance, so you may want to reconsider 4x4TB.

 

[Burned_Alive]

With raid 5 sure I've read somewhere that you want 2n+1 drives (3,5,9, etc) for best performance, so you may want to reconsider 4x4TB.

While this is technically true, a 4 disk array will still perform better than a 3 disk array as the increased spindle will out perform the loss through the block sizing.