This is a PSMA!
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That is a fair point, earlier I considered OpenMediaVault with a softraid and an LVM on top if it, but I take a lot of photos and have already seen bitrot in them, so I'd rather have some insurance for that.
I will in general avoid expanding filesystems, and simply decide that when I need more space to start building a new NAS, copy the data to it and repurpose the old NAS with larger drives or as a test machine.
Though this depends on how financially stable I am, I tend to buy parts over time...
What I've done is set up an UnRAID server with an XFS pool for my media pool and a ZFS pool for my photos, family videos and documents. The biggest advantage I see with UnRAID is that it's designed from the ground up for buying parts over time. When my media pool gets full, buy a bigger disk, slam it in, let it rebuild. When my documents (ZFS) pool is full I move it to my media array, break the ZFS pool and rebuild it bigger.
As opposed to say a TrueNAS scale deployment with pure ZFS, where I would highly suggest that you spend the money upfront and buy the system your going to want tomorrow, not today.
Sure UnRAID's ZFS is not as mature as almost every other NAS OS out there but it's good enough. Plus I have my pictures and stuff in a proper 3-2-1 backup so I'm not too worried about bitrot.
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someone still has to be the source. and there are a lot of companies out there that don't care about preserving their stuff.
yes and when that source is there, everyone who downloads it gets it for free and that's bad!
then the new people who have it can help others get it for free and that's also bad!
proton VPN, mullvad VPN, iVPN...and even shitty Torguard's proxy service can be helpful...not the VPN though, their VPN is fast, but it leaks and even when they're shown that it leaks they'll tell you it isn't happening just because you used a tester they didn't know about...which is why you shouldn't use those...they allow you to safely download things without paying...that would be bad!
don't connect through proxies based in countries where it's legal to do that either! that would be even worse to do!
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Tbf that's the matter of taste/preference. I'm have the completely opposite view to yours - I'm really attached to old vids, drawings, texts (that I made myself when I was younger). So I store and backup everything, even things most people would think of as unserious/unnecessary. It feels like a part of myself, a part of my story, you know, so I would be very upset if I lost it. And I can understand if someone have attachment to old films, books etc. I would say archiving old stuff is kind of a hobby in itself.
Although that being said, I can see advantages of your style - mainly less spending money on harddrives and time of setting them up and backing up stuff
Don't get me wrong - I am super sentimental, and can really get lost going down memory lane. I spend probably most of my mental life living in the past. But yeah, I guess the stuff I do preserve (99% text) just doesn't take up much room at all.
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I saved the best of my VHS for a long time. I couldn't get them for a while as I was moving around. The boxes were in a flood, but the tapes were at the top. Unfortunately, my yearbooks were at the bottom. Anyway, I finally got them out of my mom's basement where she'd been holding them for me. This was a couple weeks ago.
I was excited to see all those old movies again, but unfortunately I noticed on second glance that the film inside the tapes were either spotted white or completely white. That was the day that I learned that VHS tapes could actually rot. Its a shame...
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Genuine question, do people actually care about backing up media that much? I don't get it. Everything I actually care about personally I can fit on a thumbdrive and a box of notebooks.
I feel it. Most of the stuff I care about is random projects of mine, most of which are on github. The biggest downside of me losing my local files is honestly just significant, but not insurmountable inconvenience.
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What's a good medium to back up to, assuming I don't want to pay for a RAID setup?
You can set up a pretty robust backup system for pretty cheap if you already have the drives, and the knowledge to set it up yourself. I have two always on devices, an NAS that is my central location for important files, which syncs to a backup device with two hard drives that are synced at different intervals. If a drive fails, it gets replaced, and I haven't lost the core of my backups, I might lose some incremental backups, but it's more important to me that I have 3 copies available on different drives. 2 are in one location, the third in a separate location and my syncs are each an interation behind, so if there's a huge screw up, it'll take three sync cycles before the main copies are lost (not including the incremental backups I also keep).
This setup allows you to replace drives as they fail so you can constantly update with technologies and don't need to worry about what's the best medium.
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NAS stands for "Network Attached Storage", basically a computer whose sole purpose is storing and serving files in your home.
RAID stands for "Reduntant Array of Inexpensive Disks", and is broadly a way to merge multiple disks into one.
RAID 0 means that files are evenly distributed on all disks, which improves IO speed and extends a file system (≈ a partition) 's capacity, but it's useless against disk failure;
RAID 1(mirroring) means that all disks have the same data as a sort of real-time backup, and as long as one disk remains functional, all the other disks can fail without the data becoming inaccessible;
other RAID levels use clever math to offer a mix of the first two, spreading files among disks (like RAID 0) but still tolerating failures of a small number of disks (like RAID 1 but way less redundant).Wikipedia has a less abridged explaination on its RAID page.
Ahh , I see , i still have no clue
. But at least the acronyms are kind of giving me an idea. Thanks !So these are not like a physical 1 terabyte external storage thingy that I've seen on ebay etc.? Would one of those external drives work for backing up physical media collections, or are they a bad idea? Is that considered NAS?
I'm sorry I don't understand any of this stuff , I really should. I will check out the RAID wiki !
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I plan on having a raid of 5 drives and a hot spare, with a cold spare next to the NAS.
I am considering 8/10 TB drives, I currently have less than 10 TB of data in my archive.
What are the advantages of the different raid z leves?
Disks that can fail. I can lose 2 and be okay. That gives me time to swap in my spare or order a new one. For a home user imo 2 drive redundancy is plenty but 3 for a 6 drive mirror was too much. These things aren't cheap!
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You need three copies of your data: the working copy, the nightly backup, and the offsite backup in case of natural disaster. I physically mailed a drive to my father in another state in case my building catches fire. You can also use a safe deposit box or give a drive to a friend who is geologically separated from your location.
Notice: recent info suggests that SSDs suffer bit-rot when not powered. Not enough confirmed info at this time for me to go into it further, but please rewrite important data from time to time.
What if all I have in life is worthless or easily duplicated?
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Disks that can fail. I can lose 2 and be okay. That gives me time to swap in my spare or order a new one. For a home user imo 2 drive redundancy is plenty but 3 for a 6 drive mirror was too much. These things aren't cheap!
These things aren't cheap!
I am learning this now, especially since I will buy several of them.
This will be my most expensive computer I own by far....
But I am trying to buy reliable parts to last me 10+ years and possibly beyond...
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Ahh , I see , i still have no clue
. But at least the acronyms are kind of giving me an idea. Thanks !So these are not like a physical 1 terabyte external storage thingy that I've seen on ebay etc.? Would one of those external drives work for backing up physical media collections, or are they a bad idea? Is that considered NAS?
I'm sorry I don't understand any of this stuff , I really should. I will check out the RAID wiki !
Removable storage isn't NAS, it's just good ol' storage, but a valid backup option nonetheless.
Removable HDDs and SSDs tend to be less reliable than their internal counterparts, I don't know to what degree, but if you make backups reasonably frequently, your OS will PROBABLY detect failures and point them out.If you have extremely important data (like $9B worth of Bitcoin or something) you would need:
- more than one off-site backup;
- to know how to properly encrypt them and keep them safe;
- a more reliable source of advice than some shmuck on Lemmy.
Speaking of encryption: do NOT store unencrypted sensitive data on removable storage.
Things like .kdbx files from KeePass should be fine, the application takes care of encryption for you, otherwise you should look for ways to encrypt each file or the storage device itself.I personally have one 2TB external HDD and a RAID0 pair of 1TB HDDs, which I don't use exclusively as backup, and if an airplane crashes on my house then gg bb; cloud storage solutions are way more reliable than handling storage yourself, but then you'd be entrusting third parties with your stuff.
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Removable storage isn't NAS, it's just good ol' storage, but a valid backup option nonetheless.
Removable HDDs and SSDs tend to be less reliable than their internal counterparts, I don't know to what degree, but if you make backups reasonably frequently, your OS will PROBABLY detect failures and point them out.If you have extremely important data (like $9B worth of Bitcoin or something) you would need:
- more than one off-site backup;
- to know how to properly encrypt them and keep them safe;
- a more reliable source of advice than some shmuck on Lemmy.
Speaking of encryption: do NOT store unencrypted sensitive data on removable storage.
Things like .kdbx files from KeePass should be fine, the application takes care of encryption for you, otherwise you should look for ways to encrypt each file or the storage device itself.I personally have one 2TB external HDD and a RAID0 pair of 1TB HDDs, which I don't use exclusively as backup, and if an airplane crashes on my house then gg bb; cloud storage solutions are way more reliable than handling storage yourself, but then you'd be entrusting third parties with your stuff.
That is quite the education I just got. Thank you !
I am a bozo when it comes to these things
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That is quite the education I just got. Thank you !
I am a bozo when it comes to these things
No problem, this stuff can get very complicated if you want system-wide backups, but honestly if you just have media to keep safe simply copying stuff to an external HDD every now and then is enough.
