Cold Storage via USB3?

[bako]

Anybody know if Freenas works with USB3 now? I've read past threads about it "creating issues" that's more basic user inclined. I'm trying to figure out a way to do cold storage backups on a Home Freenas server. Why USB3? Speed. Why not eSATA? It's pretty much a dead connector that not many manufacturers make External drives for anymore. Why not SAS? "Home" server doesn't really justify the cost. Tape? Lol... "Home" server. Don't exactly have room for a Tape rotator and a single tape is too small. DVD? Blu-ray? Pretty much the same as tape. Thus the most practical is a couple of multi TB USB3 external drives that I can throw into a safe.

I'm open to other options if you guys have any ideas.

 

[JohnDigital]

USB3 is working nice for me. I got a WD12TB on a special and its working great, i formatted it in zfs and keep all my family content on there as well as my music collection and whatnot. Then i figure in any emergency or whatnot you just have to grab that drive.

IMHO its worth checking out.

 

[JohnDigital]

PS Ive seen speeds at around 136MB/s on initial fill up so its working at the advertised rate more or less too.

 

[sretalla]

It has always "worked", but the way that USB controllers (particularly, but not limited to Marvel ones) handle the huge dumps of ZFS transaction groups, which can make them unreliable over time or under heavy workload.

In addition to that, you usually won't be able to get SMART tests to work properly on drives attached that way either, so you will potentially have disks die without warning or be writing your cold storage data to a dying disk without knowing it.

That may not be enough to stop you from doing it if it gets you a result that you're satisfied with, but at least you won't be doing it without understanding the risks.

 

[Arwen]

I use external SATA drives, (through eSATA if I can), for backing up my FreeNAS and misc. other computers, (all Linux: desktop, laptop and media server).

If you can, use ZFS because it can detect failures. I scrub it once per backup, before the backup, (monthly rotation, so every 2 months).

There is a resource I wrote on the subject:
How to: Backup to local disks
It's not intended to be a perfect solution for everyone, just what I do. And to give ideas to people.

My own rules about backups:

1. Document how you perform the backup, (and restore)
2. Test restores occasionally, (if you don't test, how do you know it works?)
3. Any backup scheme you can't restore from, might as well be WORN, (Write Once, Read Never).
4. Repeatable & verifiable procedure is more important than ease of use.