TimTheSettler

Yup. My first XT computer didn't have a hard drive and then the next one did, 20MB. Come to think of it, it ran for a long time, into the early 2000's and then I gave it to a computer museum.

You make a lot of good points. Did the client give the drives to IRN right away or after some time? Did anyone confirm that the drives were good before going into storage? I guess I don't see how the hard drives could become bricks just sitting in storage. I understand the concept of bit rot but bit rot leads to corruption, not a completely bricked drive. Someone in that article is either jumping to conclusions or withholding some of the details. I have old floppies still lying around and an old 400MB hard drive that I've been meaning to check out. Maybe it's time I did that.

Nice find. I have a hard time trusting apps anymore unless they support standardized formats. That way, if the app goes away I still have my data.

I'm impressed with the helpfulness of people like @trurl and many others. It genuinely feels like a community here.

Welcome! Like you I have lots of hard drives lying around and wanted to put them into a single machine but I've had a hard time finding a good case with lots of room. There are a few cases out there with impressive space for hard drives but you need to buy extra drive trays or cages and those are impossible to find. Anyway, think about what you want to do with your hardware and consider what you have and what you'll need to get.

If you're using Windows then just create a shortcut to the file or pin it. Each app in Windows has a jump list (recently used files) and you can pin those so that they always remain in the list. Pinned files would be those that you use on a regular basis or very important and need to find whereas you can keep a list of shortcuts in a handy folder. If you're using Linux then you would do something similar using symlinks.

Yeah, that article is misleading as is most articles out there nowadays.

Are you referring to the article about people who don't know how to store or handle hard drives giving them to a company like Iron Mountain and then finding out, years later, that they were garbage (because the original owners of the hard drives didn't know how to store or handle hard drives in the first place)? That's how I read that article.

Yes, I forgot to mention that. All my file servers are in different locations. Having off-site backup should be a key part of your backup strategy. This is a good option. A slightly less extreme option is to create a personal share for each person in the family and a user ID that for that person. You can also create a common shared folder so that each user (family member) can access the common stuff but only has access to their own share. All drives on the server are encrypted so the only person who technically has access to all the data on the server is the server admin. You can make it so that the server admin does not have access to the shared folders from outside of the unRAID server but has access to the data within the server. This still gives good protection and makes it a bit easier to recover the data.

As you can see in my signature I have 14 18TB drives, 3 14TB drives, and 9 10TB drives spread across 4 servers. So, in total, I have 26 Exos drives and all have been working beautifully for the past two years. Most use SATA power cables although a couple use Molex/SATA connectors (not enough SATA connectors in my PSU). I also have six drives on an HBA card while the rest are all connected to headers on their respective motherboards. Note that I've run into crappy Molex connectors in the past, ones where the pins will slide out as you plug them in (PSU Molex to Molex/SATA connector). If you're not aware of that then the drive might not power up or you kill the drive. I'm not trying to discredit your extensive research here but I just want to point out there could be other factors, other than the drives themselves. In fact, I'm glad that you posted all this info. It gets a discussion going and allows those of us with Exos drives to be on-guard.

Here are some screenshots of Syncthing and Vorta.

Your needs were the same as mine and my setup is "set it and forget" other than monitoring it from time to time. Caveats: You must spend some time setting all this up for it to be "set and forget". No single app does all of what you want but it's possible to do most of it with only a few apps (all apps listed here have a GUI). You should have at least two unRAID servers or at least one unRAID server with a backup service like Backblaze or BorgBase. Steps: Create shares on your unRAID server. Save all personal files to the share(s) on unRAID, not on Windows. Alternatively you can sync your Windows folders to unRAID (see step #2). Install the Syncthing docker on unRAID server #1 and on all your devices (Windows and Android). Choose a folder on the device (camera, pictures, documents) and sync them to a folder on unRAID. Install Vorta on unRAID server #1 and create a backup repository for each share (or create one backup repo for a group of or all the shares). The repo should be on your second unRAID server or the backup service. Repos are encrypted and deduplicated. Schedule the backup to run once a day at a certain time. This will capture changes each day. Only differences are kept so the repo is small. You can restore from any point in time (your recycle bin). Install the AppdataBackup plugin to back up your docker containers (and the config for steps #2 and #3). Once you've done all this then whenever you change a file on your desktop computer or take a picture on your phone it will sync to unRAID. Each night all your files will be backed up. If you need to restore you can do so as needed. Windows image backups are trickier. You'll need an app. I use Paragon backup. I've used this for 15 years and it's never failed me. Someone else here might have another (free?) tool for you. Regardless of what you use, simply dump the image into a shared folder in unRAID and Vorta can back it up.

I use Vorta (Borg). Reliable although a little tricky to get started. It now backs up my system each and every day. Sadly, there isn't really a good tool out there. I wish there was something like the Indexing Service on a Windows Server. The best solution would be a docker app that uses the Windows Indexing Protocol (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/lwef/-search-2x-wds-content-indexing-services-protocol#13-protocol-overview-synopsis). Although it's not quite what you're looking for, another option is to use Syncthing which will mirror the contents of a folder so that your data exists in the NAS and on your desktop computer and on your mobile device. It can be bidirectional (change in one place and it updates in all the other places) or it can be replication (changes occur in only one place and data is replicated to the other devices). The benefit is that the files exist on all devices so if the devices are disconnected briefly the files are still there. The drawback is that the files exist in all devices so they take up space there.

I came across these amazing videos. Very well done; great narration; great explanation; great diagrams. It doesn't matter if this is new to you or you're an old hack who (thinks he/she) knows everything. They're just cool to watch.

I love the network setup. Mine is pretty simple because I'm not a network guy. Very nice!

The core configuration (shares, users, etc.) are all the same. All three servers run syncthing with almost identical folder setups. All three servers are physically identical with similar components. However, each server has their own dockers, some are similar for regular server maintenance (like syncthing) while others (like Plex or Minecraft) are run on some but not all of them. So the configurations are all the same, most of the data are the same, most of the plugins/dockers are the same, but there are some differences.

I use Syncthing everywhere and I agree that the Android version is challenging but it's mainly because of Android. However, as many people point out here, syncthing is a replication tool, not a true backup. You need to sync your Android files to unRAID and then use Duplicati or Vorta/Borg to back those up (snapshots).

Here's a trick if you don't have a backup or just as another way to solve this problem. Go to the Apps and install a second instance. Go to the console and navigate to "config/plugins/DockerMan/templates-user" (as mentioned by trurl above). Copy/replace the old, broken template file with the new template from your new instance. Edit the file that you just replaced using the vi editor and change the name of the container to match the name of the old container. In the Docker tab the app won't have an "Edit" menu item but after you've followed the steps above and then refresh the Docker tab the "Edit" button will show up and you will be able to update the app again. You can now remove the second instance since you don't need it anymore.

I have this problem on one of my servers but only the first docker app is affected. All the other apps are ok. I didn't bother to do anything and now a couple months later, on a completely different server, I have the same problem. Only the first docker app is affected (note that krusader is the second app on this other server and it's ok there). So I looked at the template file and found that it was corrupted. That's just weird.

First of all I completely agree with @Miss_Sissy's post. She gives good advice. I would add that it might be a good idea to hire one of the paid support people to help you through the process (https://unraid.net/blog/unraid-paid-support). I was a Windows guy but Windows was getting too expensive for me and all the software that ran on Windows just as expensive. I needed a more reliable but cheaper option that had a good GUI (I'm not a Linux guy). I tried TrueNAS and it's good and powerful but complicated. I tried unRAID and I really like it. I think you will too.

Sorry, a bit late to the game here. When I hear of HA I think of clustering/replication and load balancing. You should read the following articles: https://www.ituonline.com/blogs/achieving-high-availability/ https://mariadb.com/kb/en/kubernetes-overview-for-mariadb-users/ Proxmox, VMware, Hyper-V, and unRAID are all VMEs but to different degrees. These alone don't give you High Availability; it's the apps inside that need to be designed for this. But if you have multiple VMEs and, of course, multiple VMs (dockers) inside then you can set up the apps to have the proper clustering (vertical/horizontal), replication, and load balancing. Assuming these strategies are supported by the app. But in your case the goal is to minimize downtime when you're doing an upgrade and you've hit upon the solution. Copy/back up the original container (Container A) to another container (Container B) and then point the app to that backup. Upgrade the original container (Container A). Copy/back up (Container B - the backup) to the original container (Container A) and then point the app to the original again.

Good to know. I guess I've been lucky or prudent with my settings. Many people like to use the Mover but I actually turned it off. My array is used for all my data and my cache is used for appdata. The beauty of unRAID is that you can play around with stuff. Get started with some simple, basic settings and then tweak things as you go.

ECC is quite expensive and you already have the hardware. It's also one of those one-in-a-million situations that isn't worth worrying about. Will you be using a parity HDD? Use XFS. Wait for ZFS to mature and then maybe use it later (you can switch over at a later time). There are a whole list of benefits and disadvantages that it's better to keep it simple for now and use XFS. It's a good idea to double up the NVMe and SSD so that they are mirrored. Use two NVMe as Cache1 and two SSD as Cache2 or use the NVMe and SSD you have today as Cache1. Use btrfs as the file system (keep it simple and avoid ZFS for now). All cache devices in the same pool are mirrored with btrfs (see below). Use one cache for the appdata (docker). Be sure to use the appdataBackup plugin to back that up. You don't need daily backups unless the apps you're using change each day. Use the other cache for file mover. You don't need to do anything special for plex. It should be fast enough reading from the HDD (I've never had problems streaming plex from my server). Use the NVMe cache for file mover and the SSD for the apps that way file transfer is nice and fast. SSD will be fast enough for the apps. Not sure what issues you are talking about. Been using this for a few years now.

Just so that I've got it right, you back up the photos folder on the file server to the photos folder on the backup server using Duplicacy. I would then copy that Duplicacy backup folder/file to the cloud. If the photos folder on the file server is lost you restore from the backup server and if the photos folder on the backup server is lost then you can rebuild from the photos folder on the file server or from the Duplicacy folder/file in the cloud. If both your file server and backup server are lost then you restore from the cloud.