I'm new to unraid never used it before we currently use Microsoft one drive as our back up system and its on my MacBook and windows pc so when I edit a file it changes on the other pc automatically.

 

Would I be able to use unraid as a reliable back up sauce say 1 drive fails the other takes over then when I replace the failed drive it will rebuild the new one? can I link a cloud software into it so I can have my business documents on the server then my computers edit out of the server?

 

 

Please help me any help is massively appreciated 

 

lee.

Edited January 5, 20197 yr by leeboulton
Slight error

4 hours ago, leeboulton said:

Would I be able to use unraid as a reliable back up sauce say 1 drive fails the other takes over then when I replace the failed drive it will rebuild the new one? can I link a cloud software into it so I can have my business documents on the server then my computers edit out of the server?

 

The way unRAID works is that it lets you create an array of one or more data disks which can be protected by zero, one or two parity drives.  Of course, with zero parity, if a data drive fails, you have lost the data on that drive (assuming no backups). 

 

If you have a single parity drive and one data drive fails, the content of the failed drive is emulated because the parity drive knows what is missing (assuming the data on all the other drives is intact).  When the failed drive is replaced, the "missing" data is rebuilt on that drive.

 

With dual parity, you can lose up to two disks simultaneously without loss of data.

 

If a parity drive fails, you replace it and parity is rebuilt.  In a single parity situation, the array is unprotected while the new parity drive is being rebuilt.  In this scenario, if a data drive fails while parity is being rebuilt, you would lose the data on that drive.

 

Of course, parity is not a backup strategy and all important data should be backed up regularly.

 

If you care to read more about parity: https://wiki.unraid.net/Parity#How_parity_works

(It's a little outdated as dual-parity is now supported)

 

There are several cloud/sync options for unRAID such as Owncloud, Rclone, Dropbox, etc.  It all depends on exactly what you want to accomplish and in what way.

Edited January 6, 20197 yr by Hoopster

Have you got a video containing a setup of unpaid and maybe how to back up the system safely. I thought if I had 2 parity drives that would be a good backup but I don't know much about this OS

1 hour ago, leeboulton said:

Have you got a video containing a setup of unpaid and maybe how to back up the system safely. I thought if I had 2 parity drives that would be a good backup but I don't know much about this OS

spaceinvaderone produces a lot of good videos on unRAID, popular docker apps, plugins, VM setup etc.

 

Here is a link to his YouTube channel (some of the older videos may be a bit out of date as there have been several major changes to unRAID in the last couple of years):

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDfnUn74N0WeAPvMqTOrtA

 

Check out a few of his videos.  A good one with which to start is unRAID basics;

 

 

And here is one on initial installation and setup of unRAID on the flash drive:

 

 

 

As far as backup is concerned, start by understanding that parity IS NOT a substitute for good data backups.  Even with parity protection, data can be lost.  Parity drives only protect against disk drive failures.  Any data you really care about should be backed up in more than one location.

 

I personally have a backup server to which all new/changed files are backed up once a week.  In addition I use a cloud backup service (runs as a docker app in the background) that backs up my data to the cloud.  I also back up really important things from time to time to an external hard drive which is stored off site.

 

 

Edited January 9, 20197 yr by Hoopster

51 minutes ago, leeboulton said:

I thought if I had 2 parity drives that would be a good backup but I don't know much about this OS

As mentioned, parity is not a substitute for backups. That applies whether you are talking 1 parity, 2 parity, or any other OS besides Unraid that implements parity in some way. Parity just helps you recover when a disk fails. Most data loss occurs for some other reason, including user error.