kayot
Dabbler
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2014
- Messages
- 36
Background - I have been building a hard disk set for about nine years. Back when I started I had no idea what RAID was. By the time I learned, my disks were near full and I was dumping my whole paycheck on school loans. So I created two sets, one was a backup and one was the main. I used Dynamic Disks due to a lack of knowledge.
After losing the array three times due to MS's poor implementation and my own ignorance, I went with a DrivePool/SnapRAID setup which I've been using till this day. It was inexpensive and did not require a backup set while allowing the set to grow faster then my budget could handle it. The primary downsides were a lack of Hard Link support and no ability to use any sort of advance filesystem features.
Now I'm sitting here with 12 2TB drives with 9 for data and 3 for SnapRAID parity.
I'm looking into purchasing 4 6TB WD Green drives WD60EZRX (with wdidle set to max) or 4 6TB Red drives WD60EFRX and using the 2TB drives as a backup solution. I want to use a 90GB SSD for the De-duplication record. The majority of the total space used is large files like movies.
I've used Linux (Debian[Mint]/Arch), but not FreeBSD and by extension FreeNAS.
System Specs of the NAS:
AMD FX 4130 Black Edition 3.8GHz Quad-Core Socket AM3+ Boxed Processor
ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS Socket AM3+ 760G mATX AMD Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) CL9 @1.5V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory
OCZ Technology Vertex 3 SSD Series 90GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
I plan to use this for archive usage. The array will never experience long term stress. I don't want anything besides the De-duplication data (and if possible, the OS) on the SSD to save wear-writes. I plan to re-silver the array to make it bigger. It won't grow beyond four/five disks; what ever I start with.
My questions are as follows:
- Is a RAID-Z1 with monthly/biweekly backups good enough for the four disk set, or should I really consider a 5 disk RAID-Z2?
- Should I bother with a dedicated RAID Card with JBOD or is the cheap Motherboard good enough for my needs?
- What Backup Software should I use on the 2TB disk set?
- If I lose a drive and there is an Unrecoverable Read Error on another disk during a repair, do I lose the set or will it rebuild around it (so I can avoid a full backup recovery by just re-silvering a replacement drive and replacing the bad files from backup)?
- Should I bother with De-duplication? Is it worth it and will the SSD keep up with it?
-- I know De-duplication is a complicated question. I'm wondering; with a mixed archive of movies, music, and games, is it worth the overhead on the SSD. Please, only people that have done this. I've read of ton of speculation and doom-saying and I want real world results.
- Does ZFS Support Hard Links? (In case De-duplication isn't possible)
I'm making a vbox to test out possible scenarios so I can answer the rest of my questions.
After losing the array three times due to MS's poor implementation and my own ignorance, I went with a DrivePool/SnapRAID setup which I've been using till this day. It was inexpensive and did not require a backup set while allowing the set to grow faster then my budget could handle it. The primary downsides were a lack of Hard Link support and no ability to use any sort of advance filesystem features.
Now I'm sitting here with 12 2TB drives with 9 for data and 3 for SnapRAID parity.
I'm looking into purchasing 4 6TB WD Green drives WD60EZRX (with wdidle set to max) or 4 6TB Red drives WD60EFRX and using the 2TB drives as a backup solution. I want to use a 90GB SSD for the De-duplication record. The majority of the total space used is large files like movies.
I've used Linux (Debian[Mint]/Arch), but not FreeBSD and by extension FreeNAS.
System Specs of the NAS:
AMD FX 4130 Black Edition 3.8GHz Quad-Core Socket AM3+ Boxed Processor
ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS Socket AM3+ 760G mATX AMD Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) CL9 @1.5V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory
OCZ Technology Vertex 3 SSD Series 90GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
I plan to use this for archive usage. The array will never experience long term stress. I don't want anything besides the De-duplication data (and if possible, the OS) on the SSD to save wear-writes. I plan to re-silver the array to make it bigger. It won't grow beyond four/five disks; what ever I start with.
My questions are as follows:
- Is a RAID-Z1 with monthly/biweekly backups good enough for the four disk set, or should I really consider a 5 disk RAID-Z2?
- Should I bother with a dedicated RAID Card with JBOD or is the cheap Motherboard good enough for my needs?
- What Backup Software should I use on the 2TB disk set?
- If I lose a drive and there is an Unrecoverable Read Error on another disk during a repair, do I lose the set or will it rebuild around it (so I can avoid a full backup recovery by just re-silvering a replacement drive and replacing the bad files from backup)?
- Should I bother with De-duplication? Is it worth it and will the SSD keep up with it?
-- I know De-duplication is a complicated question. I'm wondering; with a mixed archive of movies, music, and games, is it worth the overhead on the SSD. Please, only people that have done this. I've read of ton of speculation and doom-saying and I want real world results.
- Does ZFS Support Hard Links? (In case De-duplication isn't possible)
I'm making a vbox to test out possible scenarios so I can answer the rest of my questions.