adrianwi
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2013
- Messages
- 1,231
Still quite new to this, so please be gentle!
I'm looking for some advice on the best way to configure my home storage using the 2 devices I have.
I've been running a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with 4x2TB WD (green) drives setup in RAID5 (~5.5TB) for about 18 months and have gradually filled with a combination of media (films/tv/music/etc.) and personal data backups. I have a 2TB USB drive attached which takes weekly backups of the files I really would be devastated to loose (photos, own company data, etc.)
I've also kept further backups of the media on seperate 3TB drives in the garage, so when a friend mentioned having a HP Microserver N40 spare and suggested looking at FreeNAS (rather than buy a new NAS device - the ReadyNAS won't take 3TB drives) it looked like a sensible option.
After a fairly steep learning curve and lots of trial and error, I finally got the N40 up and running FreeNAS 9.1.1 with 3x3TB Seagate drives and 16GB RAM. Then spent some more time working out how to configure users, groups and permissions before testing time machine backups (about 3 hours to backup 160GB data wirelessly on my MBA) and copying data across from my ReadyNAS (about 5 hours for ~500GB TV shows) which seemed pretty good?
A 4th 3TB Seagate drive arrived yesterday, so I popped it in to create a new volume and suddenly realised I had some decisions to make. I was originally planning to replicate the set-up on the ReadyNAS, which I believe in ZFS is RAIDZ1 but the FreeNAS was recommending a mirror (2x2), which would only give me the same ~5.5TB space as the ReadyNAS. When I changed it to RAID it recommended RAIDZ2 which gives me the same space but from what I've read slower performance. When I changed it to RAIDZ1 it said this wasn't an optimal configuration, but does give me ~8TB space.
I tried this configuration, but copying the same test data from the ReadyNAS looked like it was going to take about 15 hours, so almost 3 times as long as when configured with 3 disks.
Anyway, hopefully that's enough (too much) background and I was hoping for some advice. Once I'd moved the data across to FreeNAS I was planning to create a single volume on the ReadyNAS to use as a backup for the N40, so how would you suggest configuring FreeNAS? I'd like a good balance between space, performance and redundancy, although wondering whether having a 2nd device backing up provides enough redundancy. The goal at the start was to create more storage (I'd anticipated having ~9TB to play with) given the ReadyNAS is almost full.
In terms of the data, some is invaluable and I would be devastated to loose whilst some would be upsetting to loose but not irriplaceable so not the end of the world, just inconvenient.
Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks
ps: once I've got the storage side sorted, I was hoping to configure FreeNAS as a Plex Media Server, which I currently have running on my iMac.
I'm looking for some advice on the best way to configure my home storage using the 2 devices I have.
I've been running a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with 4x2TB WD (green) drives setup in RAID5 (~5.5TB) for about 18 months and have gradually filled with a combination of media (films/tv/music/etc.) and personal data backups. I have a 2TB USB drive attached which takes weekly backups of the files I really would be devastated to loose (photos, own company data, etc.)
I've also kept further backups of the media on seperate 3TB drives in the garage, so when a friend mentioned having a HP Microserver N40 spare and suggested looking at FreeNAS (rather than buy a new NAS device - the ReadyNAS won't take 3TB drives) it looked like a sensible option.
After a fairly steep learning curve and lots of trial and error, I finally got the N40 up and running FreeNAS 9.1.1 with 3x3TB Seagate drives and 16GB RAM. Then spent some more time working out how to configure users, groups and permissions before testing time machine backups (about 3 hours to backup 160GB data wirelessly on my MBA) and copying data across from my ReadyNAS (about 5 hours for ~500GB TV shows) which seemed pretty good?
A 4th 3TB Seagate drive arrived yesterday, so I popped it in to create a new volume and suddenly realised I had some decisions to make. I was originally planning to replicate the set-up on the ReadyNAS, which I believe in ZFS is RAIDZ1 but the FreeNAS was recommending a mirror (2x2), which would only give me the same ~5.5TB space as the ReadyNAS. When I changed it to RAID it recommended RAIDZ2 which gives me the same space but from what I've read slower performance. When I changed it to RAIDZ1 it said this wasn't an optimal configuration, but does give me ~8TB space.
I tried this configuration, but copying the same test data from the ReadyNAS looked like it was going to take about 15 hours, so almost 3 times as long as when configured with 3 disks.
Anyway, hopefully that's enough (too much) background and I was hoping for some advice. Once I'd moved the data across to FreeNAS I was planning to create a single volume on the ReadyNAS to use as a backup for the N40, so how would you suggest configuring FreeNAS? I'd like a good balance between space, performance and redundancy, although wondering whether having a 2nd device backing up provides enough redundancy. The goal at the start was to create more storage (I'd anticipated having ~9TB to play with) given the ReadyNAS is almost full.
In terms of the data, some is invaluable and I would be devastated to loose whilst some would be upsetting to loose but not irriplaceable so not the end of the world, just inconvenient.
Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks
ps: once I've got the storage side sorted, I was hoping to configure FreeNAS as a Plex Media Server, which I currently have running on my iMac.