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a NAS question
2017-Aug-25, Friday 03:08 pmWhat do you know about Network Attached Storage (NAS)? I have a specific set of features that I want, and I'm wondering how best (and frugally) to achieve it. It seemed too complex a technical question to type in a tweet or other social media, so I'm writing it up here.
The end-purpose of this storage device will be simply to save many files that are quite large but seldom accessed: games, movies, and eventually security cam archives. Speaking of games, I expect Star Citizen to need 150GB when it finally releases, but that's another post.
The features that I want are these:
What do I select for hardware and software?
Software: I never remember RAID levels without looking them up every time I discuss them, but I'm wondering if Feature #1 above means that I should actually be looking at unRAID as my software choice. It also serves Feature #4 well. And it's cheap, since it's also free ($$$) for only 3 drives total (1 stripe + 2 data). So, I've already halfway convinced myself to give it a try, unless someone points me to a more common alternative that works well.
Hardware: Which leaves the hardware choice entirely up to me. Buy some traditional NAS then just overwrite its operating system? Buy a regular desktop computer system, but overwrite it then fill it with as many hard drives as it can handle? Is there a cheap rack solution that might even allow hot-pluggable SATA drives? Too many options, so I don't even know where to start.
I'm open to brainstormed ideas and real-world anecdotes.
The end-purpose of this storage device will be simply to save many files that are quite large but seldom accessed: games, movies, and eventually security cam archives. Speaking of games, I expect Star Citizen to need 150GB when it finally releases, but that's another post.
The features that I want are these:
- Varieties of hard drive capacities, because I want to reuse the old hard drives I already have laying around without having to buy a fleet ($$$) of the same drive models whenever I want more capacity.
- SATA 3.5" hard drives, because the old drives I have are that physical size and interface.
- Redundancy, so any one hard drive can fail without losing data.
- Low power usage, so I can keep it online fulltime without expecting to see my electric bill spike upwards ($$$).
- Ethernet accessible, so any number of devices in the house could use it simultaneously.
What do I select for hardware and software?
Software: I never remember RAID levels without looking them up every time I discuss them, but I'm wondering if Feature #1 above means that I should actually be looking at unRAID as my software choice. It also serves Feature #4 well. And it's cheap, since it's also free ($$$) for only 3 drives total (1 stripe + 2 data). So, I've already halfway convinced myself to give it a try, unless someone points me to a more common alternative that works well.
Hardware: Which leaves the hardware choice entirely up to me. Buy some traditional NAS then just overwrite its operating system? Buy a regular desktop computer system, but overwrite it then fill it with as many hard drives as it can handle? Is there a cheap rack solution that might even allow hot-pluggable SATA drives? Too many options, so I don't even know where to start.
I'm open to brainstormed ideas and real-world anecdotes.