Am I due for a rebuild?

[Riverhawk]

I'm assuming the answer will be something like "If it ain't broke then don't fix it", but I wanted to get in front of future issues. My build is 8 years old and I'm afraid to update from 6.8.3. I mostly use it for downloads(deluge), storage and Plex(~5 users). Transcoding is an issue so I keep my 4k rips in a private share duping existing 1080p movies(silly imo). Current build:

Intel Xeon E3-1240 @ 3.4Ghz.
Samsung SSD for cache.
6-6TB WD Reds for storage with about 2TB left.
Norco rack mounted case with slots available...but, I can't even remember how many more slots are actually wired. 

I'm kicking around the ideas of:
1. Building something again similar to above with a larger parity(12TB?) and can handle transcoding. Copy data over from the 6TB drives to new 12TBs, sell them, and run latest Unraid.
2. Building something again to my original with a larger parity, but don't worry about Plex and buy an i7 NUC as a Plex server. Perform everything mentioned in #1(copying/selling drives, etc).
3. Saving some time/pain(?) and switching to a Synology and an i7 NUC.

Thanks

[trurl]

7 minutes ago, Riverhawk said:

build is 8 years old

Any ReiserFS disks?

[trurl]

9 minutes ago, Riverhawk said:

copying/selling drives

Do you have backups?

[Riverhawk]

37 minutes ago, trurl said:

Any ReiserFS disks?

All xfs.

[Riverhawk]

37 minutes ago, trurl said:

Do you have backups?

No backups.

[trurl]

Might be a good start to backups if you keep those disks instead of selling them.

 

Parity is NOT a substitute for backups.

 

You must always have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable.

[Riverhawk]

8 minutes ago, trurl said:

Might be a good start to backups if you keep those disks instead of selling them.

 

Parity is NOT a substitute for backups.

 

You must always have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable.

LOL, I must have missed this important bit of info. You mean my NAS with parity needs a backup? I assumed if a single disk fails it can be rebuilt? I realize a huge disaster is unrecoverable, but the one-off disk failure isn't covered? Whoops. 

I hope I'm not getting too off-topic from the original question, but if I were to build a new system with different drives and copy the data(mostly movies) from the current array...do I need to do anything special with the old drives or are they "good enough" to be the backup? Like, is the data split up and unreadable if I were to connect it to an existing PC in case I needed to recover?

[Kilrah]

5 minutes ago, Riverhawk said:

I assumed if a single disk fails it can be rebuilt?

That's correct, but outright failure of one disk is only one of many ways to lose data, and not the most common one at that.

 

5 minutes ago, Riverhawk said:

Like, is the data split up and unreadable if I were to connect it to an existing PC in case I needed to recover?

Array drives are all readable on their own.

[trurl]

7 minutes ago, Riverhawk said:

the one-off disk failure isn't covered?

That is what parity is for.

 

Plenty of much more common ways to lose data than a disk failure, including user error.

[trurl]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Array drives are all readable on their own.

on any Linux

[Riverhawk]

Gotcha, thanks @trurl and @Kilrah for the clarification and education.

Soo...without a magic eight ball...you think 8 years is enough for a NAS? I feel like I don't have much life left(sound about right?), Unraid is running an older version, and I have to keep dupe movie resolutions because it can't HW transcode.

[trurl]

I have probably rebuilt my server twice in eight years. Nothing remains of my original build from 2011, except perhaps some old 2TB disks I still use Unassigned for creating offsite backups.

 

I guess it is all about how much you want to spend, how much you want to tinker with hardware, and how much you can gain from newer hardware. HW transcode seems worthwhile.

 

I wouldn't put plex on anything except the server containing my media.

[Decto]

1 hour ago, Riverhawk said:

Intel Xeon E3-1240 @ 3.4Ghz.
Samsung SSD for cache.
6-6TB WD Reds for storage with about 2TB left.
Norco rack mounted case with slots available...but, I can't even remember how many more slots are actually wired. 
 

 

You don't say what hardware you have, but a couple of thoughts.

 

The Xeon E3's ending in 5 have the iGPU, e.g E3-1245 so if the motherboard supports you could do some transcoding, though Sandy Bridge is quite old these days with limited format support so 4k decode not likely an option.

 

If you have a spare slot, a Quadro T400 is fairly efficient, supports latests standards and will only use a few watts at idle when configured.

Fairly inexpensive as a server pull on ebay. I have a P1000 (spare) and P2000 (installed) which are earlier versions and work super with my Xeon E5.

 

No Need to replace the full array, you can upgrade the parity drive to 12GB, then add the old parity drive in for more storage, or upgrade any of the other drives. Parity just needs to be the same size or larger than all other drives so no reason to replace unless you are concerned about the age of the remaining discs.

 

Is there a specific reason you didn't update, I'm running a couple of old systems which upgraded fine, though always take a backup so you can revert.

[Riverhawk]

8 minutes ago, Decto said:

 

You don't say what hardware you have, but a couple of thoughts.

 

The Xeon E3's ending in 5 have the iGPU, e.g E3-1245 so if the motherboard supports you could do some transcoding, though Sandy Bridge is quite old these days with limited format support so 4k decode not likely an option.

 

If you have a spare slot, a Quadro T400 is fairly efficient, supports latests standards and will only use a few watts at idle when configured.

Fairly inexpensive as a server pull on ebay. I have a P1000 (spare) and P2000 (installed) which are earlier versions and work super with my Xeon E5.

 

No Need to replace the full array, you can upgrade the parity drive to 12GB, then add the old parity drive in for more storage, or upgrade any of the other drives. Parity just needs to be the same size or larger than all other drives so no reason to replace unless you are concerned about the age of the remaining discs.

 

Is there a specific reason you didn't update, I'm running a couple of old systems which upgraded fine, though always take a backup so you can revert.

Thanks for this. 
Nope, nothing holding me back from updating Unraid. I think Unraid had some bad releases last year which scared me. Plus I haven't updated any of my HW bios...not even sure if that's a factor.

Yeah, so I am somewhat concerned about the age of the disks and system. I guess I'm probably just unnecessarily nervous to even get hands on with the current system as it's still working. Family and friends also use it so if I screw up I'll have to answer texts.