Home Server: NAS or RAID Enclosure over USB?

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  aboabo on 06/04/2021 - 12:13

  I bought this many years ago. Under $300. Still going strong.

  https://www.mwave.com.au/product/seagate-central-4tb-shared-…

  Not sure who sells them now.

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  Chandler on 06/04/2021 - 12:59

  +2

  Lastly, NAS enclosures are bloody expensive for more than 2 bays and more than 1GB of memory.

  Buying a NAS is like buying a pre-built desktop, but with a locked-down OS and locked-down hardware. Most consumer NAS hardware is running (heavily-)customised versions of Linux. So, if you're considering buying a NAS, also consider buying (or building) a desktop. You can easily get comparable performance for significantly less, and will be significantly more flexible. And if you've got a tight budget, consider buying a 2nd hand or refurbished workstation. It's basically taking what you've already done and moving it to a desktop rather than a not-easily-upgraded laptop; which is why you're here in the first place.

  If you're not interested in going full-DIY on the software side, you can use as OS like UnRAID or FreeNAS.

  For hardware suggestions, Serverbuilds.net is a great resource, with builds like their NAS Killer. Only issue I have with the site is it is very US-orientated, in terms of obtaining parts.

  • 

    fatherofcats on 06/04/2021 - 14:54

    also consider buying (or building) a desktop

    Yeah, honestly my first choice would be to build a system but the budget doesn't allow that currently :/

    And if you've got a tight budget, consider buying a 2nd hand or refurbished workstation.

    Also considered this but it can be hard to track down one with a decent GPU.
    My main issue is that I already have a fairly decent machine (the old laptop) so I feel like buying more hardware right now would be redundant when all I need is the storage upgrade. The laptop is a 6-core i7 with a 1060m but the keyboard and screen are busted so it's worth nothing to sell, but it still probably outperforms most old office PCs I could get for $400.

    UnRAID and FreeNAS look interesting!

    • 

      Chandler on 07/04/2021 - 08:23

      +1

      Have a look https://perfectmediaserver.com/ too

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  Screamingeagle on 06/04/2021 - 13:01

  Have you looked at/considered unRAID?

  I have a server which runs unRAID. Admittedly it is in a tower and not on a laptop though. I currently have one of these (mine is the JBOD version) plugged in via USB 3.0 and has 4 hard drives inside of it. It maxes out a gigabit LAN connection when reading from it.

  Mine runs a plex server which to do up to 3 streams quite easily (limit of my hardware) and as a file server. It appears that Nextcloud and OpenDroneMap can run on unRAID inside a docker. Depending on the machine learning software and the $XMR mining software as to whether it can run natively inside unRAID but unRAID does have great VM support. Some people have turned a single unRAID machine into multiple gaming machines.

  One of the advantages of running unRAID instead of a traditional raid is that you can mix and match the hard drive sizes. The only thing you need to make sure is that the Parity drive/drives are either as big or bigger than the biggest of the data drives. Also adding a new user share to unRAID would take about 30 seconds to do. However, due to overhead caused by the parity calculations, writing data into the array can be a bit slower sometimes though.

  • 

    fatherofcats on 06/04/2021 - 14:57

    It maxes out a gigabit LAN connection when reading from it.

    This is what I wanted to hear! And that enclosure is pretty much what I'm thinking.

    One of the advantages of running unRAID instead of a traditional raid is that you can mix and match the hard drive sizes.

    Also neat.

    • 

      Screamingeagle on 06/04/2021 - 21:58

      +1

      Just one thing that I forgot to mention about that enclosure is that it has poor ventilation. I purchased two of them. one about 4 years ago and another at the beginning of last year. The newer one has a better door for ventilation but it is still not good. I have read that some people drill holes in the front door to improve the airflow but on both of mine I ended up completely removing the door. Another thing was that I did have to replace the fan in one of them earlier this year.

      • 

        fatherofcats on 07/04/2021 - 09:52

        Wow, great in-depth documentation. Will be using some version of this in the future.

  • 

    smashman42 on 06/04/2021 - 15:25

    +1

    Does that JBOD box pass through the individual drives to the OS?

    If so, that's pretty much perfect for the OPs use case for whatever software RAID option they choose, as they can keep using the laptop for now & shift to desktop later etc

    • 

      Screamingeagle on 06/04/2021 - 21:53

      +2

      Yes it does pass the individual drives to the OS. I have used it with unRAID and Windows. You can also see the individual drives in the BIOS and on boot up as well. I used to have 2 of them but have since reduced the number of drives I need and all of the drives showed up without any issues. It can also pass SMART data to the OS as well.

      I purchased one about 4 years ago (maybe) and another about 18 months ago. I did have to replace a fan in one of them earlier this year.

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  [Deactivated] on 06/04/2021 - 13:02

  How important is your data?

  If you highly value your data but like retaining control while doing it as cheaply as possible… then I recommend using ZFS with mirrored drives as an absolute minimum.

  Hardware RAID will always be risky business as you are reliant on the RAID controller working and doing the right thing.

  Software RAID (e.g. using ZFS) allows you a lot of flexibility, the best being that you can move your hard drives to a different system if need be.

  If setting up Linux or BSD isn't your thing then consider the FreeNAS software using ZFS under the hood.

  Finally don't forget offsite backups on a regular basis just in case your home burns to the ground.

  • 

    fatherofcats on 06/04/2021 - 15:01

    How important is your data?
    Finally don't forget offsite backups on a regular basis just in case your home burns to the ground.

    I have a couple of redundancies for the important stuff, but it's mostly movies and drone images/video. Sucks to lose that stuff but not the end of the world!

    Hardware RAID will always be risky business as you are reliant on the RAID controller working and doing the right thing.
    Software RAID (e.g. using ZFS) allows you a lot of flexibility, the best being that you can move your hard drives to a different system if need be.

    Hadn't looked into it too much yet because I have only been considering a RAID enabled enclosure.

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  holoz0r on 06/04/2021 - 13:05

  +1

  unraid with your own hardware, or free nas with your own hardware. each has pro and con, and both are based in 'nix and you can use docker to your hearts content to achieve anything

  • 

    fatherofcats on 06/04/2021 - 15:02

    Sounds like the way to go

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  AndyC1 on 06/04/2021 - 13:49

  Not off the shelf, but sound's like you may like to tinker so maybe have a look at these as something to think about outside the normal box:
  https://www.ricmedia.com/build-raspberry-pi3-raid-nas-server…
  https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/building-fastest-rasp…

  • 

    fatherofcats on 06/04/2021 - 15:05

    I do like a good tinker. My current setup is just jerry-rigged out of old parts… it's the only reason I have it. That's why I'm hoping I could just slap a USB RAID enclosure in an problem solved.

    I have been considering an RPi option, but the processing power put me off! The second setup looks pretty cool though.

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  smashman42 on 06/04/2021 - 14:23

  +1

  +1 the DIY NAS/Server options, for the hardware anyway

  Just remember with the Unraid vs ZFS recommendations, the strengths and weaknesses of each - it can be boiled down to…

  ZFS is more performance, but more RAM hungry and less easy to upgrade (need clusters of drives for upgrades, can't add a single drive easily)

  Unraid is single drive performance (tiered SSD write caching can help, but you can do that with anything 'nix based) easy throw any drive in upgrade, but proprietary software and have to run on those stupid USB thumb drives that wear out periodically, not a real SSD (doubt they've fixed that as the broken USB thumb drive thing is how their licensing works)

  Open Media Vault would be a fully open source option that can be setup to be like Unraid, or can run ZFS like FreeNAS, or be in between with a similar to proprietary NAS with MDADM RAID with ZFS or BTRFS or whatever on top as just a file system rather than as everything as ZFS is (or BTRFS is meant to be but was never finished for Raid5/6 and is still broken) - but when you get into that custom sort of situation the web UI ends up only half working and if you aren't careful you can break it, so you may as well have rolled your own Linux distro and use SSH or VNC to admin it (guess what I found out the hard way?)

  So what are your needs (now and in the future) and upgrade path going to look like, how much time can you devote to making it work - do any of these actually fit what you want?

  Honestly, a desktop PC rather than laptop (full size, not low profile to make GPU upgrades easier - you can get fancy with a hot swap case if you want or just use whatever) with Ubuntu on it just as you have now is probs the way to go. If you've been living with a single 1TB drive your data needs can't be growing that fast and single drive performance would be fine - so I'd shuck some 8-16TB drives, MDADM mirror them in Ubuntu in a cheap desktop, and forget about all the evangelising of NAS distros for crap you don't want/need /flame suit on

  • 

    fatherofcats on 06/04/2021 - 15:18

    So what are your needs (now and in the future) and upgrade path going to look like, how much time can you devote to making it work - do any of these actually fit what you want?

    Right now I need more storage, but can't afford to rework my setup. That's why I thought USB RAID enclosure in my current system would work. Later, that enclosure can go into a new system or the disks can get moved to a dedicated server machine.

    Honestly, a desktop PC rather than laptop (full size, not low profile to make GPU upgrades easier - you can get fancy with a hot swap case if you want or just use whatever) with Ubuntu on it just as you have now is probs the way to go.

    In an ideal world I'd have a setup like that! Right now I gotta make do :/

    If you've been living with a single 1TB drive your data needs can't be growing that fast and single drive performance would be fine

    The current setup with 1TB initially existed to run plex… but now it's overflowing into the OS SSD, my main machine is almost full, and the external drives are stacking up… it's a mess! I even had to stop taking plex requests (should never have told the housemates about it).

    so I'd shuck some 8-16TB drives, MDADM mirror them in Ubuntu in a cheap desktop, and forget about all the evangelising of NAS distros for crap you don't want/need /flame suit on

    Sounds like the way to go