June 24, 201115 yr Hello, I have a small sports photo company where we sell photos online. So most photos sell in the first few weeks after an event completes but we still want to save all photos in case any future interest arises. We currently have about 13TB used in various hard drives and small nas boxes. We are looking to add more storage and/or convert over to a better affordable storage solution. I am just learning about unraid. In my case data really never changes, we just keep adding. My question is, from what I have told you does it sound like unraid would work for me? how does the storage work? if I have 12 hard drives, are they seen as just 1(as is with raid) or 12 different ones? how is the data protected? or would I setup backup jobs to copy to other hard drives? do the new 3tb internal hard drives work with unraid? thank you for any info and clarification you can give me as I begin my endevour into unraid!
June 24, 201115 yr Author also, can additional drives be added as needed (assuming there are open slots)?
June 24, 201115 yr Hello, I have a small sports photo company where we sell photos online. So most photos sell in the first few weeks after an event completes but we still want to save all photos in case any future interest arises. We currently have about 13TB used in various hard drives and small nas boxes. We are looking to add more storage and/or convert over to a better affordable storage solution. I am just learning about unraid. In my case data really never changes, we just keep adding. My question is, from what I have told you does it sound like unraid would work for me? Can it be made to work for you? Yes. Is it the best solution for you? I really can't say. If it were me, given the low relative investment I'd give it a shot. how does the storage work? if I have 12 hard drives, are they seen as just 1(as is with raid) or 12 different ones? If you set up user shares you can present one drive to network users. otherwise you'll present 12 shares. how is the data protected? or would I setup backup jobs to copy to other hard drives? http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#How_does_parity_work.3F do the new 3tb internal hard drives work with unraid? There is support for 3TB drives in 5.0beta7, but controller compatibility with 3TB is still something to be aware of. also, can additional drives be added as needed (assuming there are open slots)? Yes, simply stop the array,add your new drive (preclearing is advised), and restart the array
June 24, 201115 yr thanks if I go with 2tb drives, and I later upgrade to 3tb drives? Yes, but you would need at least two of them - one for parity and one for data.
June 24, 201115 yr Forgive me if you already understand this, but it seems relevant if you haven't thought about it. There is a difference between any form of RAID and a "backup." RAID specifically protects you from a hardware faliure. In this version of RAID if any one drives fails you can recover lost data. Other versions can go to 2 or more, but there are many pros and cons, not going into them here. A backup protects you from data corruption (and hardware). For example in your case suppose you touch up a photo and intend to save it to a new file, but accidently overwrite the old. If you have a backup, you can go to that to replace the overwritten file. With RAID once it is overwritten, it is gone (cache drive exception noted). There are number of other scenarios such as software glitches, power failures etc that could cause data corruption. However backups are 1:1 and therefore take up lots of extra space, IE more costly. They also are not typically live updates like RAID can be and at best run once a day or week os if you have a failure before the backup runs you are SOL on any new data since the last backup. Often people run RAID for their main storage and if the potential for corruption or importance of the data warrants it, they run a seperate backup either nightly or weekly etc.. As noted above the right mix is diffrerent for everyone. The cost of UnRAID really is cheap consdiering the protection it provides. Failures of 2 drives simultainiously are rare.. but they do happen. Single hard drive failures occur all the time. I don't know many people have haven't been through at least one if not many. Backups provide more security but cost a lot more and have other issues.
June 24, 201115 yr UnRAID can be a backup but is not is not a backup in and of itself. You are correct, RAID and unRAID protect against disk failure. Very important files should be backed up offsite. Using primary and backup unRAID servers is advisable. The rational that supports using a single unRAID also supports using unRAID as a backup to the primary. Synchronization between a primary and backup can happen as often as you like. File versioning can help between backups. There is no cache drive exception. Editing an existing file does not use the cache. Support for 2 concurrent drive failures is on the roadmap.
June 25, 201115 yr UnRAID can be a backup but is not is not a backup in and of itself. You are correct, RAID and unRAID protect against disk failure. Very important files should be backed up offsite. Using primary and backup unRAID servers is advisable. The rational that supports using a single unRAID also supports using unRAID as a backup to the primary. Synchronization between a primary and backup can happen as often as you like. File versioning can help between backups. There is no cache drive exception. Editing an existing file does not use the cache. Support for 2 concurrent drive failures is on the roadmap. Agreed, certainly having two unraid servers, one for regular storage and one for backup is a great way to go. the incremental cost for the software and extra hard drive is so minimal if you are building a server for the backup anyway. I probably should have mentioned that. The question of how often to backup is an debatable one. This really varies with application.
June 25, 201115 yr UnRAID can be a backup but is not is not a backup in and of itself. You are correct, RAID and unRAID protect against disk failure. Very important files should be backed up offsite. Using primary and backup unRAID servers is advisable. The rational that supports using a single unRAID also supports using unRAID as a backup to the primary. Synchronization between a primary and backup can happen as often as you like. File versioning can help between backups. There is no cache drive exception. Editing an existing file does not use the cache. Support for 2 concurrent drive failures is on the roadmap. Agreed, certainly having two unraid servers, one for regular storage and one for backup is a great way to go. the incremental cost for the software and extra hard drive is so minimal if you are building a server for the backup anyway. I probably should have mentioned that. The question of how often to backup is an debatable one. This really varies with application. Just playing devils advocate here since I just recently came back from the world of WHS.... One of the things we (whs users) complain of is the wasted space of disk duplication. UnRaid has a huge benifit here by using only a parity disk. Now if we run a second UnRaid server for backup we are we are doing disk duplication plus parity, wasting double the disk space plus two drives for parity. Is their not a more effecient way to accomplish this. I myself have not figured one out yet
June 25, 201115 yr UnRAID can be a backup but is not is not a backup in and of itself. You are correct, RAID and unRAID protect against disk failure. Very important files should be backed up offsite. Using primary and backup unRAID servers is advisable. The rational that supports using a single unRAID also supports using unRAID as a backup to the primary. Synchronization between a primary and backup can happen as often as you like. File versioning can help between backups. There is no cache drive exception. Editing an existing file does not use the cache. Support for 2 concurrent drive failures is on the roadmap. Agreed, certainly having two unraid servers, one for regular storage and one for backup is a great way to go. the incremental cost for the software and extra hard drive is so minimal if you are building a server for the backup anyway. I probably should have mentioned that. The question of how often to backup is an debatable one. This really varies with application. Just playing devils advocate here since I just recently came back from the world of WHS.... One of the things we (whs users) complain of is the wasted space of disk duplication. UnRaid has a huge benifit here by using only a parity disk. Now if we run a second UnRaid server for backup we are we are doing disk duplication plus parity, wasting double the disk space plus two drives for parity. Is their not a more effecient way to accomplish this. I myself have not figured one out yet Yes but... a second server, especially if not adjacent to the first, provides a backup of the data. That is VERY different than a mirrored disk which is updated when the file is modified. If you accidentally overwrite a WHS file, it is gone. No RAID or mirrored disk configuration replaces backups of your files If you have a second server with backup copies of your files, you can retrieve the backup of the file you accidentally overwrote Joe L.
June 25, 201115 yr UnRAID can be a backup but is not is not a backup in and of itself. You are correct, RAID and unRAID protect against disk failure. Very important files should be backed up offsite. Using primary and backup unRAID servers is advisable. The rational that supports using a single unRAID also supports using unRAID as a backup to the primary. Synchronization between a primary and backup can happen as often as you like. File versioning can help between backups. There is no cache drive exception. Editing an existing file does not use the cache. Support for 2 concurrent drive failures is on the roadmap. Agreed, certainly having two unraid servers, one for regular storage and one for backup is a great way to go. the incremental cost for the software and extra hard drive is so minimal if you are building a server for the backup anyway. I probably should have mentioned that. The question of how often to backup is an debatable one. This really varies with application. Just playing devils advocate here since I just recently came back from the world of WHS.... One of the things we (whs users) complain of is the wasted space of disk duplication. UnRaid has a huge benifit here by using only a parity disk. Now if we run a second UnRaid server for backup we are we are doing disk duplication plus parity, wasting double the disk space plus two drives for parity. Is their not a more effecient way to accomplish this. I myself have not figured one out yet Yes but... a second server, especially if not adjacent to the first, provides a backup of the data. That is VERY different than a mirrored disk which is updated when the file is modified. If you accidentally overwrite a WHS file, it is gone. No RAID or mirrored disk configuration replaces backups of your files If you have a second server with backup copies of your files, you can retrieve the backup of the file you accidentally overwrote Joe L. Versioning is definitely a huge benifit, but isn't there a more effecient way to accomplish this? My array is small at the moment (4TB) but for those of you with huge 20 +TB servers is this the best way to go. Sorry don't mean to hijack the thread but backup of the array seemed to be a concern of the OP, as it should be...
June 27, 201115 yr UnRAID can be a backup but is not is not a backup in and of itself. You are correct, RAID and unRAID protect against disk failure. Very important files should be backed up offsite. Using primary and backup unRAID servers is advisable. The rational that supports using a single unRAID also supports using unRAID as a backup to the primary. Synchronization between a primary and backup can happen as often as you like. File versioning can help between backups. There is no cache drive exception. Editing an existing file does not use the cache. Support for 2 concurrent drive failures is on the roadmap. Agreed, certainly having two unraid servers, one for regular storage and one for backup is a great way to go. the incremental cost for the software and extra hard drive is so minimal if you are building a server for the backup anyway. I probably should have mentioned that. The question of how often to backup is an debatable one. This really varies with application. Just playing devils advocate here since I just recently came back from the world of WHS.... One of the things we (whs users) complain of is the wasted space of disk duplication. UnRaid has a huge benifit here by using only a parity disk. Now if we run a second UnRaid server for backup we are we are doing disk duplication plus parity, wasting double the disk space plus two drives for parity. Is their not a more effecient way to accomplish this. I myself have not figured one out yet This argument is orthogonal. If you have rationalized WHS as your storage solution and you want a backup server then the backup server will be a second WHS. The same applies to unRAID.
June 27, 201115 yr For what it's worth: You really need to think about the data you are protecting in deciding how/if to backup. I have about 300-400 GB of photos, home movies, scanned docuents etc, that I actually backup in two places. One is a HD in another computer and one is an external HD. One is automatically done once a week, and the other I run about once a month. This is data that is irriplacable if it were lost. (I dont even want to think of trying to explain to my wife I've lost the past 10 years of photos). However with that many documents the chances of me realizing something got corrupted before the backup is overwritten is pretty slim. I mean how often do you look at 10 years worth of photos. However it does protect for accidental deletion or being overwritten, if I realize the mistake was made. There are snyc programs that can warn you if something has been deleted before you delete it from the backup as well. However, the fast majority of my data is DVD's, BD's, MKV's, really large files. I dont see the justification to run a seperate backup of them. If one movie gets corrupted or accidentally deleted, then the original media is my backup. For one movie it's really not much worse than going a backup to restore. RAID protects the loss of an entire HD which is where going back to original media becomes really difficult (IE 100 discs at a time). WHS just has their own version of a mirror RAID. It really is not a backup.
June 30, 201115 yr orthogonal - Nice I had to look this one up My question was does it really need to be a fully reduntant server? Parity and all. Currently my server holds 4TB of storage. I could easily duplicate this. As Toddlt states my irreplaceable photos are on the server, My PC, My wifes PC, and an external drive. Also am considering cloud storage for these. I think I would literally kill myself before explaining to the wife that they were lost....as she would kill me anyway. For those of you with 20 disks of media, I have read time and time again how you would not want to sit down re rip hundreds of movies again. My question was is there a better solution. Something along the lines of a compressed backup maybe so that it does not take another 20 drives to hold. I don't know if you can compress video files enough to make this worth while. Saving one 2TB disk is not worth this work... But as I look up at the title of the thread again I see I am way off topic as his concern was photo backup....so I digress. I love to see new ideas and how people work these issue out though. Its nice to to find someone work something out in a way you did not realize.
June 30, 201115 yr orthogonal - Nice I had to look this one up My question was does it really need to be a fully reduntant server? Parity and all. Currently my server holds 4TB of storage. I could easily duplicate this. As Toddlt states my irreplaceable photos are on the server, My PC, My wifes PC, and an external drive. Also am considering cloud storage for these. I think I would literally kill myself before explaining to the wife that they were lost....as she would kill me anyway. For those of you with 20 disks of media, I have read time and time again how you would not want to sit down re rip hundreds of movies again. My question was is there a better solution. Something along the lines of a compressed backup maybe so that it does not take another 20 drives to hold. I don't know if you can compress video files enough to make this worth while. Saving one 2TB disk is not worth this work... But as I look up at the title of the thread again I see I am way off topic as his concern was photo backup....so I digress. I love to see new ideas and how people work these issue out though. Its nice to to find someone work something out in a way you did not realize. Video files are already compressed... you'll not save anything. Only if your photos are in RAW format would they compress much. They too are in a "compressed" format.
June 30, 201115 yr orthogonal - Nice I had to look this one up My question was does it really need to be a fully reduntant server? Parity and all. Currently my server holds 4TB of storage. I could easily duplicate this. As Toddlt states my irreplaceable photos are on the server, My PC, My wifes PC, and an external drive. Also am considering cloud storage for these. I think I would literally kill myself before explaining to the wife that they were lost....as she would kill me anyway. For those of you with 20 disks of media, I have read time and time again how you would not want to sit down re rip hundreds of movies again. My question was is there a better solution. Something along the lines of a compressed backup maybe so that it does not take another 20 drives to hold. I don't know if you can compress video files enough to make this worth while. Saving one 2TB disk is not worth this work... But as I look up at the title of the thread again I see I am way off topic as his concern was photo backup....so I digress. I love to see new ideas and how people work these issue out though. Its nice to to find someone work something out in a way you did not realize. Video files are already compressed... you'll not save anything. Only if your photos are in RAW format would they compress much. They too are in a "compressed" format. Thanks for the info, I have a ton of RAW files and it will only increase, unless we are just out with the point and shoot camera I shoot everyhing in RAW now.
June 30, 201115 yr I should clairify... Video files ripped from DVD's are already compressed. Many inexpensive cameras shoot video that is not compressed. A "raw" un-compressed "avi" file can be compressed quite a bit..
June 30, 201115 yr I should clairify... Video files ripped from DVD's are already compressed. Many inexpensive cameras shoot video that is not compressed. A "raw" un-compressed "avi" file can be compressed quite a bit.. Ah ok when I saw RAW I was thinking Camera RAW photo format from the DSLR's
June 30, 201115 yr I should clairify... Video files ripped from DVD's are already compressed. Many inexpensive cameras shoot video that is not compressed. A "raw" un-compressed "avi" file can be compressed quite a bit.. Ah ok when I saw RAW I was thinking Camera RAW photo format from the DSLR's And so was I. But you can also have an un-compressed ".avi" file and for a few minutes length it can be huge. Compressing a .avi typically takes a very long time...
June 30, 201115 yr I should clairify... Video files ripped from DVD's are already compressed. Many inexpensive cameras shoot video that is not compressed. A "raw" un-compressed "avi" file can be compressed quite a bit.. Ah ok when I saw RAW I was thinking Camera RAW photo format from the DSLR's And so was I. But you can also have an un-compressed ".avi" file and for a few minutes length it can be huge. Compressing a .avi typically takes a very long time... I don't have a lot of experiance with digital video but this explains why the AVI's from my digital camera are so freaking HUGE.
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