Evening all,

As for the earlier poster I too want a NAS resource, but my needs are slightly different.

I want a network attached reliable (ie RAID-type) resource that will use mixed hardware and is easily extensible.

It would also be good to be able to login to it remotely with both http & ftp.

I have a 5-year old intel system that is virtually unused, currently with 1GB RAM, 2x320GB + 1x160GB drives, DVR RW, 1GB network card etc.

I also have a mix of perfectly good drives (IDE & SATA) that I'd like to set up in a managed RAID system, so that I can make use of the drive assortment and have reliable storage.

I'd also like to be able to hotswap drives - although IDE won't like that - but I'm not so sure about SATA.

My main needs for the next couple of years will be scanning, catalogueing and storing thousands of photos & documents relating to the MAUGHAN one-name study for the Maughan Society. I have around 5TB on USB drives already, around 10,000 photos/negs and maybe a couple of thousand documents.

I have a Win7 laptop and a Win7 desktop, and will need to share with regular members (wife's & daughter's laptops) and occasional guest members.

I'd also like to use the NAS box as a LAMP (or IIRC WAMP these days) test/development resource for the society website (wordpress/tng/mediawiki/forum).

I'm using a wifi network at present but will most likely provide hardwired gigabit connections for the desktop & the NAS plus guest connections as needed.

A well-experienced friend of mine in Europe is strongly recommending Samba under Linux (Ubuntu IIRC).

Finally, I'm time rich (medically retired) but cash poor.

A lot to this, I know, but its going to occupy a lot of my spare time in the next few years so I'd like to start out in the right direction.

Regards, Mike

HP Microserver running NAS4Free (or FreeNAS).

4 x 3TB disks, and boot from a small (128GB) SSD.

Remember that a NAS device (even if running in a suitable RAID configuration) is NOT a substitute for a good backup strategy... I am not sure on what the current thinking around backups is. I know you are time rich, but cash poor, one (not so cheap solution) is secondary NAS mirroring the first NAS.

Othewise you would get some large disks for your intel machine and schedule some sort of daily/weekly archive from the NAS - at least you have two copies of your data then.

Or maybe a Bluray drive and make some disks for storage offsite somewhere?

Using your old PC will suck power.

I've built a system that has a quad core i5, 16GB RAM, 4 HDDs and an SSD for OS and there is overhead on an 80W supply.

The only reason it needs to be that big is that the disks spin up sucking juice.

If you're happy with an atom, becauseyou're not doing loads of things, then that goes down to 65W supply again with a good overhead.

The above are sold to customers as part of their digital archive solution.

Compared to that you're PC will use a lot more power and offer a lot less.

As for backup, I'd look at specialist online archive companies because backup isn't the same and if you're not recalling the data every 5 minutes, then it isn't going to make sense to pay to have it all accesible instantly rather than with a small lag.

If you're interested in such solutions drop me a PM and I'm happy to discuss.

Using your old PC will suck power.

Agree 100%. Actually work out what you have and how much power they use. I had a system that was similar to yours and I worked out that switching to an Atom based board it would pay for it self in 16 months (it will have been less with electric prices rises)

I ended up going for an Atom and running "Windows Home Server" on it. I have just recently upgraded it to run Windows 8 and I have installed "StableBit Drivepool" which gives you a great software like RAID capability for drives of different sizes (better than the Windows 8 offering)

This has been running for the last couple months fine and also runs other stuff like my CCTV software, video sharing, download stuff etc.

NOTE: Think what you want to use the machine for. I am now wanting to run Plex and allow it to transcode but my Atom is not up to this so would love an i5 can't afford one at the mo

Edited 8 April, 201313 yr by Rob_Quads

Is a mish mash of old drives going to provide a stable/reliable raid environment?

Is a mish mash of old drives going to provide a stable/reliable raid environment?

Personally, I'd rather do this than buy 4 new drives. I've been stung several times at work by bad batches of drives, one fails in the batch and they're all not far behind. My current NAS is made from 2 1TB drives I've taken from work surplus, they're different brands and made at different times. They may still fail independently due to genuine age, but the chances of being bitten by a manufacturing issue are much lower (still not zero as some core electronic components could still have been shared over the different factories).

As for what you need, I'd mostly agree with mbames. My Microserver is bloody fantastic compared to the old setup I cobbled together from spares, I use ZFS which allows me lots of flexibility with snapshots etc (which can help to provide the backup strategy mbames mentions).

I've set up something very similar to what you're after (Ubuntu Linux, Samba, webserver, etc) so feel free to drop me a PM if you're stuck

I agree. When ever you build a array of any decent kind I would always get discs of different makes/models. At work we have a batch of disk and every week another one will fail. We are currently at failure 25/40. Most annoying is that they can't be pro-actively replaced without us buying replacements grrr

So what's fault tolerance/recovery like for a load of random old drives.

Assuming you're using RAID, just about as good as new drives (in my opinion). With RAID, you just need to keep enough drives running to be able to keep the array healthy and resilver. If you bought 4 new drives and 2 went faulty in very quick succession (which is very possible if they're from a bad batch) then that could mean the end of your array depending on configuration. A RAID5 array can only survive a single drive failure. A 4 drive RAID10 may survive a 2 drive outage depending on which drives died. The chances of 4 different drives of differing ages dying 2 at once is either the same or smaller than having 2 drives from the same batch fail.

Plus if there's a firmware issue on your new drives then again, that's something that could hit all of them at once. Crucial released SSDs with firmware which would make them all but useless after ~500 hours powered on, for example, because of an error within the SMART data on the drives. The fix? A firmware upgrade which may erase the data on the drive. You wouldn't want that to happen on all 4 new drives at the same time, but you can "afford" to lose 1 drive in a RAID5, or 1 drive in a RAID1 mirror. You can then do what needs to be done on the faulty drive, either firmware upgrade/wipe/resilver, or just replace the drive.

The ideal solution is to buy 4 new drives from different vendors, from different retailers, to reduce your chances as far as possible of getting several drives from a dud batch. However the OP has said he's cash poor, so 4 drives plus 4 (mildly extortionate) shipping charges from different retailers all adds to the cost when all he might need is some used drives which have proved reliable and can be upgraded later on when it's an issue.

What are the hardware requirements to build a random RAID array of old drives. Sounds like he will need a minimum of 8 TB of space, probably more, does his current hardware support loads of drives.

Well, that'll be the sticking point. The 5TB is currently on USB drives, so depends how many drives that's across, whether they can be slowly integrated into a RAID array over USB drives, etc. But as I say, it may be a case of simply getting something going with what he has to start with, and adding to it as money allows (going back to the "time rich/cash poor" comment). There are too many variables to give a totally accurate answer, really. My initial post was simply to say that I would be perfectly happy with the stability of a mixup of older drives in a decent array because it does have advantages over just dropping the cash on a number of new drives.

Not disagreeing, just a few random questions as I am in a similar situation. My WHS is limited in that the motherboard only has 6 SATA ports and I also have a load of old drives in it. (3 drives failed this past year)

Money is the big limiting factor.

First thing is probably worth saying that for proper RAID its unlikely you will be able to use RAID - well unless you want to loose a lot of space as you need to use drives of the same size.

You'll probably have to use another Drivepool type system. The one I have used I can just put all my drives into a "Pool", turn on replication and it will make sure my data is always replicated in 2 places (they are adding the capability to request 3 places). I then have one large drive and it sorts everything out for me.

What about using a service that offered you that Gateway/NAS up front and backed it all in a managed service.

No upfront costs and no migration costs every few years.

Seems nuts to try and run your own mini repository and then back it up when there are companies out there (Yes I work for one now) that can do all of that for you for much less.

If you do want to run it yourself, bear in mind that many disks die due to spin up/ spin down cycles and old drives will have been through lots of these.

Combined with the fact you'd want RAID 6 for reliability on the old disks as there's a good chance of more than one dying at any given time.

That means if you're running 5 drives, you'd only have 3 drives worth of space.

If the drives are smaller, then that's 3 times, the smallest drive typically.

I personally don't rate the reliability of old drives and all new drives go through a very long winded test process. As long as the drive isn't brand new tech, then you should get a reliable drive, and certainly no less reliable than drives that are a couple of years old.

If any of those old drives have ever been dropped, then the chance of failure is quite high.

You'll need a reasonable amount of CPU (not loads but enough) to do the rebuilds on that too, if you're using software RAID.

Otherwise a real hardware card will cost you a few hundred pounds and you'll want a BBU on that too (Or a UPS with auto shut down for the system).

Another point is to pick your file system very carefully.

Prior to my current role, I spent many years designing RAID and other storage systems, so feel free to ping any questions you have at me.

Edited 8 April, 201313 yr by cheezemonkhai