Suggestion for new to Unraid


jena

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Hi, I have got a good condition DELL Optiplex 3010 (i3 2Core/4Threads, 2.xGHz, 8GB DDR3) and plan to turn it into a NAS.

I currently have a very old HP slim tower (2TB retail WD Red WD20EFRX purchased in 2013) running freenas 9.2 (2GB RAM, a no go for ZFS).

I don't have a lot money, so didn't have redundancy in FreeNAS (RAID1, etc.). Currently my redundancy is cold backup to a USB hard drive.\

Also my most recent working files back up to Cloud Drive like Dropbox, etc.

 

I have only used 800GB drive over the six years.

I don't have a lot of data, nor am I interested in data hoarding. 

 

My main use of the NAS: 

Service life of 10 years (Who knows how technology will evolve in 10 years)

1. SyncThings, sync most recent files on all my PC and laptops (distributed backup)

2. Migrate existing data 800GB

3. Growing demand of photo and video storage (upgraded my camera last year), estimate 200GB per year. 

4. Plex server, mostly host my own family videos.

Maybe host some classic movies, but not a lot (I don't have a lot of time watching movies), maybe 1TB at most.

5. Music sever (100GB music), stream to my phone (Android), use Plex? or other software?

6. Running some light weight VM, maybe a Win10 VM for software testing, hand brake transcoding when I upgrade to Ryzen CPU

7. Reliable, spend minimal time on maintaining. I used FreeNas for many years, spend countless hours. 

 

What I have:

1. Optiplex 3010, (i3 2Core/4Threads, 2.xGHz, 8GB DDR3, two drive caddies)

In three years, when I will upgrade my main PC to Ryzen 5xxx, I could use some of my current PC parts (AMD Ryzen 3600x, MB, and RAM) to upgrade it. 

2. Six year old 2TB WD Red

3. Bought a like new 2TB Seagate desktop drive from a local person (didn't know SMR at that time)

4. Spare LiteOn MLC 256GB M.2 SATA SSD

5. Spare BX100 500GB 2.5 SATA SSD

6. Drive cage (3 x 3.5) installed at the 5.25 bay on Optiplex. 

7. I do like to upgrade to 10GBe or SFP+, 10G network in three years.

 

My Question: Your suggestion of hard drive buying strategy?

My thought is reusing my 2TB, starting with a 8TB or 12TB as parity drive (since I cannot later install hard drive larger than parity).

Wait for a WD external drive deal, buy two. One to replace 2TB, the other to be used as cold backup (backup most important data from Unraid to this USB external.)

 

Or maybe cheap out for now, using SMR 2TB as parity and wait for deal?

Should I buy a better drive for parity like HGST Data Center Drive (they are not more expensive than WD Red on BHphoto at retail price) and only put shucked drives as data drives?

 

I can put my current HP (FreeNAS) somewhere offsite as third backup.

I guess buying hard drive slowly over the years, end up two data + two parity (14.4TB usable space) + a cold backup, which are probably sufficient for my need in 10 years. 

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

Edited by jena
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2 minutes ago, trurl said:

Dual parity makes more sense after your drive count has increased to quite a bit more than just 2 data drives. 

Sure. I guess offsite or cold backup could be more important than dual parity. 

Other suggestions?

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