UnRAID backup best practices?

[mjeshurun]

Hi friends,
After an issue with my unRAID NextCloudPi (NCP) docker app which caused an unfortunate loss of data, I would like to start “fresh” and setup NCP to backup my data using an automated schedule.
I’m currently running my UnRAID server using a 2x4TB SSD’s cache pool (no array or parity disks).
I also bought a 2TB M.2 SATA SSD and would like to set it up as an extra backup drive, in case something goes wrong with the cache drives (which happened to me and that’s how I lost my data 😱 ).
What would be a good approach to do set up my server?
Would it be better to keep the 2x4TB SSD’s as a cache pool or will it be better to use 1x4TB SSD as a cache drive and the other 1x4TB SSD as an array disk? Or maybe I should skip the cache drive completely and setup one drive as an array disk and the second as a parity disk?
Would it be better to add the 2TB M.2 backup drive as an unassigned device or as an array disk?
Which format type should I use for the 2TB backup drive (xfs, btrfs, exfat…)?
What is the best way to backup the NCP docker app to automatically save all its data to the 2TB backup drive?
I welcome any tips 🙏

[Kam]

Hi,

 

I'm quite a new user to UNRAID (1 year), but I think array disk can only be HDDs as SSD's sectors cannot be accessed directly.

In my understanding you should use 2 HDDs (1 parity and 1 data) at least to build your array.

What I do is I have nextcloud docker running on the SSD cache (2x480GB mirrored with btrfs) and backups going to the array (12TB array + 4TB parity).

 

I would say you should buy HDDs to build your array. That would be much cheaper than using such big SSDs and more effective.

 

Good luck with your set up

Kam