Setting up Mac Mini as a file storage/archive

[Sapien]

Hello All,

 

firstly, I'm new to this, so please have some patients if my terminology and methodology is a little off.

 

I have 2 laptops in the house that are used for general entertainment (web/streaming ect) and also for working on images and video (Adobe suite/FCPX).  I have lots of music/films etc and a fast growing collection of images and footage. Up until last year I was just using WD my passport 2/4TB usb 3drives and it got a bit too much to keep track of everything and I had no back up contingency or built in redundancy.

 

I want to build a network based storage and grow it as I need more space/can buy more drives.  I currently have 3x 8TB WD Red NAS drives and a mac mini (late 2012 with USB 3(X4)/Thunderport 1/Firewire/HDMI/1gbE) on hand.

 

I understand this is not ideal and at the moment each 8TB drive has a separate USB 3 casing, so 3 of my 4 USB slots are taken on the back of the Mac Mini. And at the moment I am just using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone 1 8TB to another (the 3rd is new, hence looking for a new method). I have about 10tb of data now and I *think* I can set it up with Unraid using one drive for parity and having 16tb of space. I am also aware that this is not a back up solution but more just adding some redundancy for drive failure. Back up solution is stage 2.

 

So, assuming I keep the mac mini, could I buy a 2/3/or5 bay USB 3 case to house the 3 HDDs and expand later (as I have ran out of usb3 slots) without loosing too much data transfer speed? I would edit from the network if I could but its not necessary as my workflow uses a external SSD and then to archive once the project is complete.  Also I connect the mac Mini using Thunderbolt (1) direct to the working laptop along with all 3 units connected via our router (mainly just for the media access).

 

I am also open to rethinking how to do this but utilising the hardware I already have. At this stage I have not tested Unraid as I want to get the HDD housing first.

 

If you didnt exit this post after 'I'm new to this' and got this far, then thanks for your time reading

 

Josh

[trurl]

USB is not recommended for the parity array or cache pool due to unreliability of connections and other complications with many implementations. 

[Sapien]

Ok thanks, I understand the parity must be at least the size of the largest HDD.

 

Would this rule out the Mini as a server?

 

[trurl]

37 minutes ago, Sapien said:

Ok thanks, I understand the parity must be at least the size of the largest HDD.

 

Would this rule out the Mini as a server?

It's best if each disk in the parity array or cache pool has its own separate SAS or SATA connection, or you are very likely going to have problems.

 

Unless I misunderstood your proposed configuration, you were planning to connect those disk using USB. As I said, not recommended.

 

When Unraid loses a connection to a disk, which happens more than you might think with USB, Unraid disables the disk because it is untrustworthy for maintaining parity and the redundancy of the rest of the array. If a disk fails or is missing, every bit of parity PLUS every bit of ALL remaining disks must be reliably read to reliably reconstruct the data for the missing disk. So, as you can see, every disk is important and every connection to every disk is important.

 

Once a disk is disabled, it has to be rebuilt from the parity calculation. This involves reading every bit of parity PLUS every bit of ALL remaining disks to calculate the data for the disabled disk, and writing that result back to the entire disk. So, just getting things back to normal can take considerable time, and you have no redundancy until it is back to normal. And if you lose a connection during that process, you are just going downhill from there.

 

USB enclosures sometimes also fail to identify the enclosed disks in a consistent manner, which prevents Unraid from recognizing them and how they were assigned before, which means the whole array has to be setup again.

 

And USB enclosures sometimes also report the size of disks incorrectly.

 

So as you can see, USB is not the best way to connect your array or cache disks in Unraid. It is allowed, and it might even work for some specific hardware implementations, but I wouldn't risk it. About the only way it might make sense is if you just gave up on even having a parity disk and so having any redundancy.

 

People mostly use USB connections as Unassigned Devices, temporarily connected, to transfer data to/from the array or cache.

 

 

[Sapien]

Thanks Trurl. thats very helpful. 

 

I understand the Mini can only support 2 Sata connections (with some modification to the non server model) and then only 2.5" disks fit internally, so it would have to include more mods to route the sata connection out of the casing and add external power for the larger disks. As far as I'm aware only the latest Mac Pro support 3.5" disk and has any Sata connections. So mac products are kinda ruled out for Unraid ?  Thunderbolt 1/2 dont seem to have many options for Sata enclosures (if that protocol is more reliable).

 

So its basically a PC build I'm looking at here? unless anyone uses a Mini and has some workarounds?

[trurl]

1 hour ago, Sapien said:

Thunderbolt 1/2 dont seem to have many options for Sata enclosures (if that protocol is more reliable).

I've never heard of anyone using Thunderbolt on Unraid. I doubt it is supported by any drivers and you can't install any.

 

 

[Sapien]

OK thanks for your help. I did download the Mac version but now I'm wondering how anyone would be able to use it on any of their products.

[wgstarks]

21 hours ago, Sapien said:

OK thanks for your help. I did download the Mac version but now I'm wondering how anyone would be able to use it on any of their products.

I think you downloaded the flash drive creator tool for Mac. This just allows you to create the bootable flash drive on a Mac. Doesn’t actually run unRAID on a Mac.