Need a cheap low power backup to prevent datarot

[Toasty]

So I'm going through old pictures and I'm noticing that there is a lot of data rot / corruption with these images. I do have them backed up to two different cloud services. One of the cloud backups is synced and the other was a copy and paste. The synced copy is corrupt as well but not the original copy.

I'd like to build or buy an onsite NAS that will help limit this down the road. What are some of the cheapest builds for the task? I haven't played around with FreeNAS before so right now my requirements are simple. The only other requirement would be low power draw. Not looking at running an VMs from the device although I know that ZFS if I go that route has some fairly hefty requirements for RAM and CPU.

My other option is to go with Synology and utilize Btrfs on either the DS216+II or DS916+.

 

[joeschmuck]

You get what you pay for is the first thing I will say. You could get away with a fairly cheap FreeNAS system but cheap is a relative term. If you really want to avoid bitrot then you need a system capable of doing that. Honestly, there are no cheap FreeNAS systems but you could probably get away with a TS140 computer w/8GB ECC RAM ($200) and a few hard drives and bee good to go, if you are basically only doing storage. I can't think of anything cheaper. I'd also get a SSD as your boot device, the size can be anything but you are shooting for the cheapest one, free is always nice. This will get you a more reliable system for the OS. So for $230 + the cost of the few hard drives, you could have a nice little setup.

Low Power consumption = higher initial cost and doesn't mean that you will recoup the costs.

Low noise = slower spinning hard drives like the WD Red lineup or similar. A 7200 RPM drive is generally louder than the 5400 RPM drives.

 

[Stux]

And backing it up to a zpool on a removable USB drive should take care of bit rot (detection) on the backup

 

[droeders]

And backing it up to a zpool on a removable USB drive should take care of bit rot (detection) on the backup

+1 for this.

I find it hard to rely on backups that don't offer (at least) bit rot detection.

Silent data corruption is real and you'll likely never know it happened with the vast majority of filesystems.

 

[melloa]

Btrfs

Are you sure that's stable already? I would vote 100% on a ZFS solution at this moment.

 

[Stux]

I believe btrs is stable if you don't care about raid5/6

 

[melloa]

I believe btrs is stable if you don't care about raid5/6

I hope so, for their users :)

I'm hard on changes, specially when something has proven to me, over-and-over-and-over again, that is good, or should I say great. I've had problems with my not-recommended hardware using FreeNAS and ZFS was always there for me. I don't thrust anything else until it can prove the same and when I was reading during my tests to decide what to use, btrfs was missing important functions.

At the time, more than two years ago, I tested all that I could get my hands on: Buffalo, xpenology, NAS4[Free](NAS), OMV, unraid, and RockStor. Some did have a more appealing UI than FreeNAS, more functions than FreeNAS, etc. xpenology and Rockstor where my two favorites.

With FN 10, things are (had) chang(ed)ing on a UI perspective, dockers implementation, etc, but one thing has never changed: ZFS.

At the end of the day, I've picked two:

- FreeNAS for two main reasons: FreeBSD (I'm a linux guy and need to move to that, right?) and OpenZFS;
- RockStor: I'm a CentOS guy and need to keep my eye on btrfs, and those guys are best in class on attitude and have a good product.

 

[Evi Vanoost]

In my opinion BTRFS is not a very stable or even well designed file system. Look at their various gotchas and bugs, all leading from the wrong design. The primary focus of a FS should be to store your data safely and securely, the primary focus of BTRFS is to avoid the ZFS limitations and as such they don't care whether or not your data is safe, as long as it scales.

When ZFS first came out, it was very simple, couple of thousand lines. BTRFS was several million lines when it first came out. Even now, the developers are saying it's "mostly" stable and only sometimes eats your data and then give a list of things that could eat your data: using DirectIO could eat your data, power outages could eat your data, resizing could eat your data. That's not good enough for me.

As far as your original question: how much data are you storing and how fast/reliable does it need to be. There are various low-cost options, look at the SuperMicro lineups for decent and cheap barebone server hardware.