jfredson

The problem though is that all of the photos and videos we will be storing on the array are considered critical data. We don’t always need access to old shoots but it is my job to make sure that we don’t lose anything. I plan to backup the whole system on Backblaze B2 but I’d really like to avoid having to recover from the cloud of possible. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Do you remember what the motherboard was? I can't seem to find any cheaper ones on PC Part Picker that fit this case and support ECC RAM. Or should I consider going with non-ECC RAM too?

That’s amazing. Just the advice I was looking for. Thank you! That is great information thank you. I think I should be able to get the price into a range that is more palatable with all this great advice and this information should help too. Can’t wait to get started on this build! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Holy moly that is amazing. Thanks for the tip! How hard is it to add double parity down the road? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying, only problem is that I have been doing backups manually on a second external drive and in the cloud with Backblaze, so this system is more about making the process easier for me to manage. It’s a tough expense to justify for a non-technical partner who would rather spend this budget on other things [emoji32] Ahh interesting, I didn’t realize that was an option. How hard is it to add double parity after the raid is already loaded with data? Very cool, I didn’t realize that was an option either. Are there any downsides to using a a SATA card down the road vs. a more expensive motherboard with more onboard ports?

I’m working on putting together an Unraid NAS server for storing photos and videos in my small photography studio. We currently have 5TB of photos and video on a single drive and we’re growing at about 2-3TB per year. I would really like to upgrade to a NAS RAID system for some drive redundancy and to make it easier to scale our storage needs and keep it organized in a single array. We would only be using this system as an archive of photos and videos after we are done working on them, so we don’t need high speed read/write access. I’m trying to see what the cheapest build would be that meets our basic requirements: Small form factor that I can tuck away under a desk. Double drive redundancy. Hot-swappable drives for easy replacement in the event of drive failure. Silent operation so that it’s not noticeable in our studio. 6-8 drive bays so that we can grow from 5TB to 16-20TB in the next couple of years. Ability to run system checks and send status emails. Ability to backup to Backblaze or Amazon. Under $1k for the whole system. Case $150 - Silverstone DS380B https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Mini-ITX-Computer-DS380B/dp/B00IAELTAI I’m really liking this case for this system, although I have been reading that it does have problems keeping the drives cool. I’ve read about a few fixes that sound doable (drilling extra holes in the case) but maybe there is a better case out there that fits our needs? Motherboard $210 - ASRock - C236 WSI Mini-ITX LGA1151 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813599009 Only motherboard I could find that has 8 drive slots and fits in this case. CPU $70 - Intel Pentium G4500 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VPX190/ I’m thinking we don’t need a super fast CPU for this build but low wattage is a priority. Is this Pentium good enough? Could we save even more by going with a cheaper Celeron? Memory $110 - Kingston ValueRAM 2x4GB DDR4-2133 ECC https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=W4GE21K Data integrity is super important to us (more so than speed), so I would like to get ECC RAM. Am I better off going with a single 4GB stick to save money or is 8GB a better start these days? Is ECC overkill for our needs? If not ECC is there anything else I should pay attention to when selecting RAM? PSU $90 - Silverstone - Strider Gold 450W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008VQ2Y4K/ Storage $540 - 4x WD 4TB Red Drives ($135 each) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236599 Need four drives for double parity starting at 8TB of usable space. Total $1170 - This is a bit more than we want to spend on this build. My partner would rather keep buying external hard drives for now to save money so I’m struggling to justify the cost for this system. Any tips for how I could bring the cost of this system down? And generally speaking, any advice for convincing my partner why a $1k system like this is better than buying a series of external hard drives and trying to manually mirror them for redundancy? We would still need to pay for a cloud backup system like Backblaze and with a NAS the cost goes up from $5/month unlimited to $5/TB/month for B2. Not insignificant unfortunately.

I am a photographer attempting to find a file storage solution for our photo studio. We are a young studio with only 3TB of data, but we are growing at about 2TB per year. All of our data is currently stored on a single 5TB external drive backed up in the cloud to Backblaze. I would really like to get a more robust on-site backup solution that enables us to expand our storage seamlessly and recover from a drive failure without any data loss. I am trying to figure out the hardware costs of building my own system vs. buying something off the rack. Are you able to hot swap failed drives with unRAID like you can with Drobo? How easy is it to add new drives into the array, and how much space is available for data vs. redundancy? What is the file transfer like for users on OSX? Does the system mount like a single external drive or do I need some kind of file transfer software? What kind of hardware requirements do I need to worry about getting started with? Is 8GB of RAM enough? Do I need EEC RAM? What's the minimum CPU I can get away with if I'm just using this for archival photo storage and the occasional transfer? After setting up the system, can I just plug it into my router to get access to it over the network? Can I also plug into it directly for faster transfers? Is it possible to setup access via the internet so that I can access files remotely? Besides individual drive failures, is there anything else I need to worry about that could cause data loss? If one of the other components dies (motherboard, cpu, flash storage with OS), can I just rebuild the system without any data loss? Thanks so much for your help. I'm still pretty early in the process of trying to figure out which solution makes the most sense for our needs but from what I've been reading unRAID sounds like a pretty perfect fit. Any tips or advice is great appreciated!