I just know enough to be dangerous - I admit it.
My goal is to store music and movies - a fair amount - 5-6 TB worth. All data is backed up off site. 1 music player in system, 2 movie players. Don't want any noise in music room, thus all drives are in a spare room elsewhere.
In general the data is placed on the disc drive once and read (played) many times. I think this used to be called WORM or something such
I have built a freenas 7 demonstration computer (small single drive with limited PC memory capability) and it seems to work fine for music and movies. Could do 2 movies and a music session simultaneously without issues. Works well so far.
Most music software scans the data drives and creates its own database of songs with their attendant locations, "tags" that have been edited, times played, etc,, etc. Thus, in general, one hates to have to redo everything (and trying to remember what music was on what drive) if something goes wrong. Having said that, it is not earth shattering if one has to create the music library again - it is very possible to live without music or movies for a few days, etc. Thus 100% uptime is not a necessity or a major life event - just nice.
So my questons are:
1) If I did a FreeNAS device for all of the data, what would be the preferred RAID level (if any) for my installation/needs? I have read the descriptions and there seems to be good/bad for every scenario.
I am also unclear that the ZFS options GETS ME anything of value.
2) Do I really need a NAS? Would an old clunker PC with either multiple shared internal drives in it, or multiple attached shared USB drives, on my network accomplish the same thing. It seems to me that, IN MY INSTALLATION, this would be the easiest to maintain - ie just replacing a single drive at a time as/if necessary. I don't know enough to know if "performance issues" would be an issue
Thanks for opinions and help. I have no real experience with this stuff and am looking for education from those who are experienced.
Robert Harris, M.D.
My goal is to store music and movies - a fair amount - 5-6 TB worth. All data is backed up off site. 1 music player in system, 2 movie players. Don't want any noise in music room, thus all drives are in a spare room elsewhere.
In general the data is placed on the disc drive once and read (played) many times. I think this used to be called WORM or something such
I have built a freenas 7 demonstration computer (small single drive with limited PC memory capability) and it seems to work fine for music and movies. Could do 2 movies and a music session simultaneously without issues. Works well so far.
Most music software scans the data drives and creates its own database of songs with their attendant locations, "tags" that have been edited, times played, etc,, etc. Thus, in general, one hates to have to redo everything (and trying to remember what music was on what drive) if something goes wrong. Having said that, it is not earth shattering if one has to create the music library again - it is very possible to live without music or movies for a few days, etc. Thus 100% uptime is not a necessity or a major life event - just nice.
So my questons are:
1) If I did a FreeNAS device for all of the data, what would be the preferred RAID level (if any) for my installation/needs? I have read the descriptions and there seems to be good/bad for every scenario.
I am also unclear that the ZFS options GETS ME anything of value.
2) Do I really need a NAS? Would an old clunker PC with either multiple shared internal drives in it, or multiple attached shared USB drives, on my network accomplish the same thing. It seems to me that, IN MY INSTALLATION, this would be the easiest to maintain - ie just replacing a single drive at a time as/if necessary. I don't know enough to know if "performance issues" would be an issue
Thanks for opinions and help. I have no real experience with this stuff and am looking for education from those who are experienced.
Robert Harris, M.D.