Do I Really Need RAID?

wes96 on 21/02/2018 - 21:29

So I made a bit of a mistake… but firstly, I'm not an expert on these levels so most of the terminology is wrong.

I brought a 4 Bay QNAP NAS not too long ago and have been loving it since. What I'm not loving so much are the capacity of the drives I brought. I got 2 4TB SeaGate IronWolf HDD and they are configured to share the lot together so it's 8TB when I look at it in the network.

Now here's my problem, I've already run out of space… My original plan was to get 4 x 4TB and do a 8TB RAID so I'll always have a copy of everything on it. But now I need to change my plans. Am I better off buying two higher capacity HDD or am I better to ditch the RAID plan and getting two 4TB again so it has 16TB total?

The most important files on the drive are family photos which is about 300GB. The rest are backups of documents which generally speaking are never accessed again but just nice to have them there still. It's also used as a media server. I would be doing transfers twice a month and my Mac Time Machine is linked to it. Hopefully these details give you lot an idea as to what the NAS will endure.

Computing NAS

Comments

  • cypher67 on 21/02/2018 - 21:36

    Go raid5 or Hybrid raid. You lose the capacity of only 1 of the 4 drives so if you have 4x4 u get 12tb of active storage and still the safety of redundancy. If 1 drive dies, replace it and it will rebuild the raid with no lose of contents.

    Lastly its bought not brought, id let it pass but you did it twice :D.

    • Sunny84 on 21/02/2018 - 22:17
      +1

      Agree with the above but also consider backing up your important stuff like photos to the cloud or a portable drive as raid5 wont protect against a virus e.g. ransomware…

    • Nugs on 22/02/2018 - 05:21
      +5

      "Lastly its bought not brought, id let it pass but you did it twice :D."

      It's I'd, not id.

    • kipps on 22/02/2018 - 08:25

      There are a number of articles which suggest that RAID5 is not good for large array sizes - see, for example, http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-200…

    • Xyzzy on 22/02/2018 - 14:35

      It's "it's" not "its".

  • [Deactivated] on 21/02/2018 - 21:57
    -3

    no

  • Odin on 21/02/2018 - 22:30
    +2

    No. Frankly raid is almost never needed for your home user. I'm sure there will be a tonne of disagreement, but the reality is it's just PC nerds making your life needlessly complicated.

    You don't need raid, it's stupid to have on-site redundancy unless you have terrabytes of critical data.

    If you've just got normal human amounts of critical data, you'd use online backup because it would be off site. Which is the only backup that really matters.

    • airzone on 21/02/2018 - 22:47

      OP's 300gb is a lot to download from a cloud service when a disk shits itself. On a QNAP, having RAID is as simple as clicking a button during the setup. Especially when the OP probably selected the JBOD "RAID" option to begin with.

      • Odin on 21/02/2018 - 22:56

        It's a once off requirement for a 0.01% chance event. So what if it takes 3 days to re-download the critical files, it's a once in a lifetime event.

        Wasting your time and money on a RAID setup is stupid.

        • airzone on 21/02/2018 - 23:04
          +1

          I must have lived many lifetimes then.

        • BensonP on 22/02/2018 - 06:01
          -2

          Might just cancel my home insurance and car insurance. What are the odds of a car accident and house burning down?

          And why pay my car licence renewal?

    • [Deactivated] on 22/02/2018 - 03:00
      -2

      Redundancy and backups aren't important, until your data is gone.

      Online backup is not feasible for most Australians who live with 1-2Mbit upload if they're lucky, and you're relying on the service provider still being in business when you need your data.

      I would even say that cloud storage can be more difficult for lay people than a network share.

      • kipps on 22/02/2018 - 08:20
        +2

        Disagree re online backup being useless in Australia.

        Upload speed doesn't matter terribly much unless significant amounts of data to be backed up changes regularly. Most people will probably find that they're only uploading about 100MB per day once the first backup is completed. It is insignificant.

        I've been using Backblaze for at least a year now with no issue. Cap the upload speed and leave it running all the time - you don't even notice it.

        It's the download speed that matters if you need to recover from data loss. And that only matters if all other backups are also gone.

        Having lost data for all sorts of reasons previously, for $5USD/month, Backblaze is absolutely worth it.

      • thord on 23/02/2018 - 13:20
        +1

        Online backup absolutely is a solution for most Australians. Unless you're doing TBs it's fine. It's a once off thing that occasionally gets small MB updates when daily files change. It's perfectly serviceable for the majority of Australians.

        If you absolutely insist it won't work. Then offsite hard backups on DVDs/spare HDD would be better than RAID,

    • Tacooo on 22/02/2018 - 10:08
      +2

      Nope. 100% agree.

      Delete a file? Congrats, your RAID array just removed it too. Now you have no files.

      Ransomware/cryptovirus? Congrats, your entire array is now encrypted too.

      It's redundancy for disk failure only and anyone who uses it as a backup is an idiot, plain and simple. This isn't to be confused with using RAID inside of a backup but that's a different beast altogether (and a perfectly fine usage scenario).

  • blimpyboy on 21/02/2018 - 22:31

    RAID (especially RAID 5 as cypher67 noted above) is useful, but… 8TB is already a lot, so could we cover why you need that much in the first place?

    Movies? A locally hosted NAS is cool, but this is OzBargain: Perhaps it would be cheaper/easier to just stream Netflix?

    If you've got files which are are "never accessed", it sounds like those folks who hoard filing cabinets full of old papers because they might come in handy one day.

    This might bring you down to the point where you can easily manage on RAID 5, with plenty of headroom.

    Finally, your family photos: these are valuable and need to be backed up… but is a home-based NAS sufficient? RAID will protect you against a single hard disk failure. But what if you get hit with ransomware, or a thief steals your NAS box, or your house burns down?

  • Tacooo on 21/02/2018 - 22:47
    +1

    RAID IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION. It never has been and never will be. RAID is for redundancy. So do you need it? Absolutely not.

    • cypher67 on 21/02/2018 - 23:00

      Pretty sure OP is using the term backup as the same as redundancy.

    • [Deactivated] on 22/02/2018 - 03:03

      Sure it is. It sounds like OPs original data was on his PC, so he copied it to his NAS for backup.

      RAID itself is not backup, but the backup can be on RAID storage.
      Although I would presume that when the OP copied the data to the NAS, it was also deleted from his PC thus, not backup.

      HOWEVER, having data on a redundant storage array is still safer than having data on a single drive as is the case with most PCs.

      In conclusion, get off your high horse.

      • Tacooo on 22/02/2018 - 10:01

        No high horse here. Simply stating facts. If you think me being technically correct in every sense of the word is being on a high horse then you should open your eyes.

  • airzone on 21/02/2018 - 22:55
    +1

    It's up to you. RAID will save you the headache of restoring from backup when you have a disk failure. Which you will have, eventually.

    Your QNAP will support some form of hybrid RAID, or at least RAID 5. That should net you about 12tb capacity with a single disk failure allowance. If you use the hybrid RAID option, it should also allow you to expand the disk space by swapping to higher capacity disks, one at a time without having to backup and restore.

    The average home user won't need mirrors.

  • WreckTangle on 21/02/2018 - 23:05
    +6

    I ‘m here because I thought were were going to discuss fly spray.

  • niknah on 21/02/2018 - 23:46

    IronWolf are the low end 3 year warranty disks. Ironwolf Pros are the 5 year warranty ones. There's good reason why they won't put a couple of years extra warranty on them.

    I usually get two different brands, Seagate + WD. Just in case the disks are all made in the same factory at the same time and they all break down at around the same time which means that you'll lose the data even if it was RAID.

    If you're paranoid, you can get two NASes also, just in case one has develops a faulty RAM which will cause it to write incorrect data onto the disk.

    For photos, google photos has free unlimited storage, they do modify the photos slightly to make it smaller. There're unlimited backup providers out there like backblaze for about US$50 per year.

  • BigLeviathan on 22/02/2018 - 00:04

    For the RAID, for home use RAID 1 is normally sufficient, as long both drives are NAS drives for longevity and warranty (which in your case, already is).

    Agreed with the above comments, RAID is not a BACKUP solution, it is just preventing you in case one of the drives is failed.

    Perhaps a good idea to have a small UPS system too (to ensure the NAS is shutdown properly, in the case of power outage), this also to ensure that your RAID file system is not corrupted (happened to me once).

    Also, for important stuff, follow the 3-2-1 backup rule; 3 copies of data, 2 different media, 1 copy offsite; I used crashplan for offsite backup (as Crashplan recently stop the home/residential plan, I am in the process of migrating my files to Backblaze)

  • havebeerbelywillsumo on 22/02/2018 - 01:21
    +2

    I'm in the "can't see the point of Raid for a normal user" camp.

    The very simple reason is that it isn't a 100% safe backup

    See others, as they have said - fire, theft, tsunami, virus/ransomware - it's gone. It really is that simple.

    Backup to a reputable cloud service (watch that there are no "max single file size" rules that will catch you out), 300 GB odd will take time esp if you're not on NBN, cover yourself while doing it with data in an alternate location for the interim.

    NOTE downloading that saved data WILL be slow for any sizable amount…that shouldn't matter for what you specified - photos and the like - but if there is something large and vital to recover NOW…a drive at a nearby rellies/friends place……I'd do this anyway, even with the cloud in place.

    • [Deactivated] on 22/02/2018 - 03:09

      Having RAID protects you from single or more drive failure, thus removing the need to recover data from a backup in the first place.
      Sure with things like fire, tsunami, etc, it doesn't help. But let's be honest, a tsunami in Australia? You're infinitely more likely to suffer a drive failure.

      • Tacooo on 22/02/2018 - 10:05
        +1

        RAID doesn't do a damn thing though if you accidentally delete a file. The moment you delete it it's gone from all drives. Another example is crypto. If you get a cryptovirus on your setup, congrats, now your entire array is useless too.

        It's redundancy for drive failure only.

    • pernunz on 22/02/2018 - 12:39
      +1

      I am also in this camp.

      I can see the use in lots of backed up offline storage in an area where internet speeds are slow, and everyone has different use cases.

      But, if the 300GB of photos is the main reason for having a backup, I'd question 2 things:

      1) Is there another viable backup solution for the photos which is more secure (eg. An External Hard Drive protects from just a HDD redundancy)

      2) What is using the other 3.5TB of data? A good reason good be lots of game data files which have been downloaded, and don't want to be re-downloaded when/if they game wants to be played, and this is where the poor internet connection kicks in.

  • idjces on 22/02/2018 - 16:45

    Backup the 300gb to a cloud service. I've used a 'few' google accounts and it's looks to have been the most effective at saving my bacon.

    I've been using various forms of raid for 10 years and managed to lose everything 5 or 6 times over now. Usually some combination of hardware failures - disk(s), raid cards, dodgy cables (only has to drop off one of the discs at a bad time). Combined with power outages, running out of space, and mostly laziness/bad practices.

    Looks like i'm forking out for syncing a pair of raid 6 arrays next :(, the $ will have to outweigh my laziness

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