Considering unRAID

[biff]

Currently I have an HTPC with 4x 2TB drives that are just about full and I keep a 1:1 backup of my media on drives that I keep in a drawer - well I'm supposed to but I'm proving to be not very diligent about backing up. Keeping a 1:1 wasn't such a big deal when it was just a couple drives and 2TB drives were $69. Now that I'm about to move onto my 5th 2TB drive and the price has pretty much doubled (for who knows how long) keeping a 1:1 going is starting to turn into a lot storage and a lot of $$$ sitting in a drawer doing squat.

I know no one here can tell me how much data security I'm going to be comfortable with but I'm hoping to get some opinions on this either for or against. Thoughts?

[LarkStarr]

but RAID isn't a backup solution. corruption and accidents and such will still affect your files. It will only protect you against the loss or a hard drive or two (depending on your setup).

If you're cool with that, then.. yeah.

[Perineum]

I think plain old RAID5 on an Intel ICHxR chipset is hard to beat for smallish RAID arrays.

Sure, they take a while to rebuild if a drive goes down, but it's not that bad.

[jtktam]

Originally Posted by Perineum

I think plain old RAID5 on an Intel ICHxR chipset is hard to beat for smallish RAID arrays.

Sure, they take a while to rebuild if a drive goes down, but it's not that bad.

any of these software / fakeraid implementation takes hours and hours to rebuild.. during the rebuild process if you lose another drive, you lost your whole array

the idea of RAID 5 back when drives were 60-250 gb range isn't bad.. have you ever try to rebuild an array with 2tb drives?

it's at least 24 - 30 hours rebuild time

-joe

[Perineum]

Yeah, it takes a while. But it's not that bad, especially if it's just data.

[jtktam]

I am currently using QNAP nas boxes and even then it takes 18-24 hours to rebuild a RAID 6 array (can stand to lose 2 drives instead of 1 with RAID 5)

-joe

[DaleF]

Unraid, on it's own isn't a backup. You can use it for primary and/or secondary storage, but you still want that second level (at least).

[jtktam]

you should consider writing a scheduled batch job using robocopy that will mirror your drive to an external drive.. then rotate the drives to your drawer as backup..

-joe

[snoosebum]

I'm looking at the same thing. Probably Unraid. Maybe flexraid ontop of whs. If you can wait a while windows 8 might have something called "Storage Spaces" with either Mirroring as your doing now or Parity, it sounds good reading about it but I guess the proof is in the pudding.

Technically this is not a backup as stated its redundancy but what most people fail to realize is whats at stake (some movies you'd have to rerip and some metadata you'd have to re scrape) I dont think a true backup is necessary. The family pictures, last years taxes etc should have a proper offsite backup, but if you lose your copy of Borat in a fire... probably not.

From what I've read unraid should be able to restore 2 TB in 10 to 20 hours. If you lose 2 or more drives you will lose data, but not the entire array.

[biff]

Originally Posted by snoosebum

what most people fail to realize is whats at stake (some movies you'd have to rerip and some metadata you'd have to re scrape) I dont think a true backup is necessary. The family pictures, last years taxes etc should have a proper offsite backup, but if you lose your copy of Borat in a fire... probably not.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking and why I'm not sure which way I want to go. My important stuff is backed up in multiple locations so no issues there, it's just the 'fun stuff' that's in question.