Yesterday, I put together a 2T NAS storage from my 2T WD green label HDD and a refurb Zyxel 2 bay NAS326 from ebay. Great price, free ship, looked very good on arrival. "Suggested" here via reading someone mention they use one in another thread -
Last one! ZYXEL NAS326 - 2-Bay Personal Cloud Storage | eBay
Got all the Windows machines connected, my rPi system just now. I hear the voice above this reply on maintaining backups!
Last one! ZYXEL NAS326 - 2-Bay Personal Cloud Storage | eBay
Got all the Windows machines connected, my rPi system just now. I hear the voice above this reply on maintaining backups!
Last edited:
Is "RAID 1" worth it? (Duplicates 1st HDD onto 2nd, using an atypical drive format...)
The NAS326 spins down the drives after 15 minutes...
I could easily backup once a month, onto an outboard drive in a more common format. Probably be a while before I exceed 1 TB, let alone 2, 1T being is the size of backup drives I happen to have on hand.
Or is RAID 1 more "set it and forget it" in terms of storage reliability, as in "not in this lifetime" - considering the 15 minute spin-down, "anded" MTBF of two initially healthy 2T HDDs, yearly backup.
Just wondering what's better? Before I throw more money at it - in ignorance. Thanks,
The NAS326 spins down the drives after 15 minutes...
I could easily backup once a month, onto an outboard drive in a more common format. Probably be a while before I exceed 1 TB, let alone 2, 1T being is the size of backup drives I happen to have on hand.
Or is RAID 1 more "set it and forget it" in terms of storage reliability, as in "not in this lifetime" - considering the 15 minute spin-down, "anded" MTBF of two initially healthy 2T HDDs, yearly backup.
Just wondering what's better? Before I throw more money at it - in ignorance. Thanks,
Running a 6x 4TB HDD Freenas Raid-Z2 Server which is replicated to Backblaze cloud. Its got great performance with its 10Gb Networking but it doesnt half drink electricity! and needs additional cooling on warm days. Debating moving to solid state, not so much for performance but power and cooling..
I've always kept an off site backup for my files. What if your house burns down or is flooded? I keep a monthly rotated backup drive at work. I have two of these drives so there is never a time all my data is at the one location.
IMO only do that if:
1. You set up a software raid. In case you have a hardware solution and the hardware itself fails, you sometimes need the exact same hardware in order to save the data.
2. Get HDD's from two separate production facilities. In case there is a design flaw or other unforeseen issue it is likely that one drive will fail before the other, giving you "fair warning".
Hi, I use the same Zyxel NAS326 with 2x2TB WD RED HDD. You can disable the spindown. I am still considering an external HDD backup, probably 1TB is enough for pictures only. Or a reliable and long-term supported (free?) cloud storage.
Probably it is a good idea to shutdown the NAS every now and then, take off the HDDs and run a S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics on them (HD Sentinel, HDD Scan).
BTW I realized that about 80% of my data backups are never used again. They are "save and forget". It is interesting to review my files just to wonder why the hell did I download it? Or what the xvahssa-jhcgjaa_jdy3_bjj27864bx.exe might be? Or why was it important tvfhbzrzrv.pdf to save? Or a lot of Linux ISO images that I'll never use. Drivers from unknown sources that are obsolete in Windows 10 era.
That's going to be... expensive.
Do your disks hibernate when there's been no activity for a while? That can help a lot with electricity bills. Similarly you could get the OS to sleep and wake on Lan, keyboard (whatever) activity.
Obviously you can pay a price in terms of an initial response, but my elderly Synology server worked pretty well that way with only mild inconvenience, and that was put together in 2014, I'd imagine recovery from sleep would be much quicker with today's processors
I'd agree, in a headless server, it's the disc controller and the drives that're going to be working hardest, once you move to SSDs (of any sort) power requirements drop significantly. The main problem with SSDs is price. I purchased 2TB HDDs for my server about 7 years ago, and paid roughly the same as you'd pay now for a 2TB SSD.
SSDs consume less power than HDD, from what I've read, typically around 50% less than an HDD when actively used. When in standby it's very different, an HDD uses around 1w, where the SSD uses 40mw. So if it wasn't for the cost, it would be a no-brainer to use SSDs for performance and reliability.
I'd be looking at 4x6TB as a minimum and ideally 8TB because I want to run mirrored raid so that the server will survive the simultaneous failure of two drives. Short of a lottery win there's nothing SSD that I could purchase to come even close to spinning iron at a price I can afford :-|
SSDs consume less power than HDD, from what I've read, typically around 50% less than an HDD when actively used. When in standby it's very different, an HDD uses around 1w, where the SSD uses 40mw. So if it wasn't for the cost, it would be a no-brainer to use SSDs for performance and reliability.
I'd be looking at 4x6TB as a minimum and ideally 8TB because I want to run mirrored raid so that the server will survive the simultaneous failure of two drives. Short of a lottery win there's nothing SSD that I could purchase to come even close to spinning iron at a price I can afford :-|
Yeah, I know it's not "healthy". But I have been very happy with my two HGST Ultrastar 10TB drives.
I do not trust the original Seagate or WD manufacturing facilities.
IBM did a major job turning over the infamous "Deathstar" production line before they sold it to Hitachi.
At any rate, not sure how you go about identifying for absolutely sure where the HDD's are made these days.
Deskstar - Wikipedia
WD wants to better their reputation, but me - the customer, simply want a more reliable product.
I do not trust the original Seagate or WD manufacturing facilities.
IBM did a major job turning over the infamous "Deathstar" production line before they sold it to Hitachi.
At any rate, not sure how you go about identifying for absolutely sure where the HDD's are made these days.
Deskstar - Wikipedia
WD wants to better their reputation, but me - the customer, simply want a more reliable product.
As do we all, but nothing is perfect, that's why guarantees exist. So I back up. My server has 4 drives in it mirrored so two drives can fail simultaneously and I'll still have my data. In addition, the really important stuff is regularly backed up and there's an off site copy.
So far at least, that's over 6TB, more every year, and I've not ripped all my DVDs yet.
I purchased all the drives at the same time (same make/model), and one failed after about 4 years. The server continued to run and it was easy to slot in the replacement, and then sit and watch as it was populated
At the moment I'm ripping my LPs, mostly for the convenience of being able to stream them, but also as a form of backup.
My 10 TB drives are just one each on two separate computers, I thought about mirroring them, but part of the odds are that something will happen to one computer. So now it's just the same data but on two machines.
I am not going to bother with DVD's, but I still buy some CD's through Discogs.com
I am not going to bother with DVD's, but I still buy some CD's through Discogs.com
I recently upgraded OS to W10, then upgraded laptop computer. I find the NAS a good place to put all the files I've accumulated over the years of previous laptop ownership - probably will try to keep the discipline of just putting everything there. Even if I throw everything I can think of - previous employ files, stuff I should just delete - I think I'll be lucky to get 1/2 way on the 2 TB drives I have in RAID1. I'm not a sound creator like KaffiMann, so I imagine I'll be under the 1TB boundary for quite some time - particularly if I bother to "manage" my content.
No wonder SATA's so cheap - I knew there had to be a reason why. So much for not keeping up.
Pretty soon they wont have the connector or space for that type of drive; it'll be filled with more battery!
Thanks!
Best thing is to get a 1TB drive like for instance the Kingston A2000 or the Crucial P1 for OS and programs/games, no need to break the bank but 500GB is not enough if you only have 1 drive.
Everything you want to store goes to a larger classic HDD or another slightly slower SATA ssd like the Samsung QVO series.
On my main rig I got a Kingston A2000 just for OS, a Crucial P1 1TB just for programs (and a few games) that require a lot of heavy read/write, a Samsung QVO 860 1 TB for lighter programs and my music project files, and the 10TB Ultrastar for family photos, music and backup.
On my laptop I got the Crucial P1 1TB (NVME) and a Samsung 860 something 1 TB (Sata).
Backup PC in the livingroom is just a Samsung 860 Evo 500GB + the 10TB Ultrastar, so only sata.
Kids got sata 860 Evo on their (recycled) computers, I got the computers for free after HDD failures, upgrades: RAM, graphics and ssd.
Purchased Windows licenses for about 10$ each on sales, it's nice because I can control their screen time and stuff using a "Family" setup.
Also got a family account on Bitdefender with VPN, up to 15 units, we only use windows and android.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.