NAS Owners/Users: Opinions & Suggestions on Storage Pools and Volumes

[theGinsue]

I'm looking for suggestions and opinions from other NAS owners/users regarding my storage.

I have a Synology 6-bay NAS. I currently have 4x 4Tb HDD's using a Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR; essentially a RAID 10 configuration. Yes, it's more expensive but the data safety of RAID 10 is important to me). This gives me 8Tb of storage which I have configured under 1 Source Pool and 1 Volume. My current storage utilization is about 42%.

I use the NAS to store documents, eBooks, audio books, recipes, pictures, videos, music, etc. but mostly I use it to host my movies which I digitize for backup/longevity of the source disk and ready availability to the movies without having to carry around the disks when I travel. I don't anticipate ever changing the primary use of the storage (for such things as setting up virtual computers, having separate OS's, etc.) - with the exception of creating a 2Tb Volume for encrypted content.


I recently bought 2x 12Tb HDD's for the 2 open bays. I'm trying to decide how to best integrate these new drives onto the NAS. These too will be set up with SHR (RAID 10) providing just 12Tb more storage.

Would it be best for me to:
- simply add these new drives to the existing Storage Pool/Volume?
- add these to the existing Storage Pool but create a new second Volume?
- create a new Storage Pool/New Volume?
- another option I haven't yet considered?

I'd really appreciate the "why" of the option you think might be best for me to fully grasp the benefits of the solution.

Thanks for your consideration.

[eddiememphis]

... but mostly I use it to host my movies which I digitize for backup/longevity of the source disk and ready availability to the movies without having to carry around the disks when I travel. .

Are you saying you make movies, thus the need for so much storage?

I am far from a tech guy but am always trying to learn.

I had to move a wordpress site to a different host today and it was both rewarding and frustrating.

[theGinsue]

No, definitely don't make movies.

I rip every movie I buy (and keep the original disk!) plus I'm always taking video clips of family, download web videos, etc. to save.

Right now I have just under 1800 movies (plus many web videos and 24+ television series) but I plan to continue buying/ripping 200+ movies/year until I can't think of any more movies to add.

I've been working on getting complete movie collections for specific actors (I have 47 of Clint Eastwood's 63 movies and 57 of Robin Williams 73 movies [many were just his voice in animated movies]). Still want to work on a Costner & Stallone collection.

I have the Wordpress app for Synology loaded but I have only used it once or twice.

[bradbn4]

[too much to read; jump to summary]

So the first question I have is what is your backup plan for critical non-recoverable data? The often issue with backups; is just how often do you verify that the backups are good? This is where a set of external drives can be useful to do your backups, unplug the hardware and rotate between the external drives so you have a current backup and a somewhat older backup. I have noticed using the USB backup utility of theirs can fail in the backup; so if you are using this method, remember to eject the drive reboot the NAS and verify the backup.

What you described on converting the movies from hard media to media server can be reproduced. I did something like that for my music collection, and re-did it a few more times when size of media was not as critical as my ability to detect the loss of quality in music. And yes, that will be a royal pain in the butt....

Ideal world if the NAS dies without taking the drive(s); it would be nice to have a backup hardware. I found this out when my NAS took a dump on a firmware update. I bought another NAS box and the raid was back online within 10 mins of me inserting the old disks into the new raid. I returned the NAS to the MFG due to the failed flash and now have a backup NAS. I did have a few external drives that I backed up the critical data to so even if the drives were no longer readable on the new device I was not 100% toast.

The good thing about the the type of data stored on the NAS is that high speed access is not needed. You just need good access while streaming to your device. So mirror + stripping may not be needed. Now if you are doing heavy I/O on the device then yea, you want performance + mirroring.


Key items; new drives are not the same as the old drives; so you would not create on big pool with the hardware. If the two new drives are the same make / model you can mirror the drives into a secondary pool. Due to total amount of space used you are not hungry for space, so I would use the secondary pool as a backup to the primary pool and be done with it.

Another option is to split each 12T drive into 2 chunks and sort of mimic what you have done with your first setup. Another "odd" thought is that you can Split one of the new drives into 2 sections, don't mirror it and use it as is. The second drive could also be used as "offline" backups where you copy all the files to the drive, eject the drive and remove it from the machine. With a simple backup such as that; the ability to move that device to a new NAS or even computer can be done to recover the files.

So the existing pool will continue to be used, the secondary drive can be used to provide rapid backup within the device, the last 12T drive will be used sort of the same way; but can be removed out of the device (or kept in the raid but not electronically connected).


[summary]

Mimic what you have done for the 4 x4T drives with the new 2 x 12T drives with mirror only. Continue to use the 4x4T setup for speed and the 2x12T as backup.
The same as above; but use a soft mirror between the 2x12T drives using Synology's software to maintain the backup features between each pool. This way if something happens on the write to the device you have a backup. By soft mirror; I am saying that periodically you have a scheduled backup process where the data from one drive is copied to the other. This makes the drive easier to be pulled from on NAS and used in another NAS for data recovery.

If I was keen on performing copy of NAS to external drive; I would keep the size of the work pool to somewhat smaller size than the removable drive.

For my solution using my NAS I went with more devices is better and performed manual copies between devices. I even setup NAS software in a VM and migrate critical data from the NAS into the VM and power off the VM. I also use external hard drives and copy files from the NAS in a backup chain. These devices are sort of plan "B" or "C". I am working on a plan "D" by encrypting my data and using a cloud service on a very small subset of materials. This material should be just outlook PST file along with documentation that I just could not throw money at to regenerate the info. Why look at plan "D"; house fire.

The only big got-ya issue using complex mirror / stripping / backup drive pool is migrating you lose portability of taking the drives from one device and moving them into a new one. The simple solution to this problem is to copy data off the complex setup to an external media.

[theGinsue]

I hadn't considered the option to use them to make backups, but it does make sense.

I currently back up the NAS data to portable USB HDD's but since I'm not in critical storage shortage, using the new drives for attached and removed storage options makes a lot of sense.

Thanks for the input.

[bradbn4]

Due to backup speed on larger devices; I have seen more than a few mega systems use removable hard drives as backup media for offsite storage.
Many of the Synology systems that have at least 4 drives can also support an external expansion cage so you can have your cake and it it to.

Before I got a real NAS; I did try using an older Raspberry PI 1 with an external HD kit to have a network shared drive. Lets say the performance of the hardware back then said nope. The setup worked but it was dead slow. However; I did learn all about SAMBA and CUPS, which I later used in my VMs.

My Asus router does have the ability to provide "shared" drive on my network, but there was a good reason to get hardware setup that has the horse power to do the job right. Don't get me wrong; to share lets say my music collection; book marks, the router would be work well.

For my use; I would not consider stripping a drive setup for my NAS unless I had a NAS that came with a native 10G(SPF+) option. High speed stuff is almost always best to do local to the computer you are on. For speed, I would get a high quality SSD device. For fun, I would setup my system just the way you did.

[Delfuego]

Hey Boss. Hit me up on PM/Email.

SHR is not RAID 10. More like a elastic RAID 5. It is only really using 1 disk for parity. If you convert to SHR2, then you can have 2 drives fail (Similar to RAID6). If you convert to SHR2 you cannot go backward. Same with if you add disks and/or expand the pool or volume. You can go up, but not down in size.