NAS Migration Questions


Recommended Posts

Sorry if these questions have been asked / answered before, but I'm still deciding on what to do as a replacement for my current setup as well as trying to determine if I can reuse the current drives I have.   My current Synology NAS has four WD Red 3TB drives, is around 4 years old, has been trouble free thus far, but we're running out of space.   It's mainly used for media storage, photos and time machine backups.  Our photos are also stored on Amazon.   I'm hoping that I can set up a unRAID application server to take advantage of the various functions with an array of three to four 4TB drives, migrate the data and then add the four 3TB drives from the Synology to the array, after formatting / clearing them.  Based on what I've read thus far, this seems to be a possible migration path; however, since the drives are approximately 4 years old, I'm curious as to the community's thoughts on reusing these older drives or should I just starting with six 4TB drives and call it a day.  Is it possible to create a second array with these older drives and use them for less important data?

 

Thanks in advance for your help...

 

 

Edited by luisv
Link to comment

unRAID only supports a single array per machine, but with the significant advantage that you can add or upgrade drives at any time.  It doesn't have the fixed pool concept of FreeNAS.  That said, you should only put healthy drives into the array.  People don't always understand at first, but parity isn't a backup.  If you lose a drive you don't just need parity to recover - you need parity *plus all the other drives in the array* to rebuild the failed disk.  unRAID supports dual parity which tolerates the failure of two drives, but the same thing is true - you still need the rest of the array to be healthy in order to rebuild.  If the SHTF, of course, at least with unRAID all your disks have independently formatted file systems and your data will still be there on the remaining disks (unlike a striped pool like FreeNAS where you will lose everything).

 

I'd pull SMART reports for the older drives before adding them to the array.  I've had good luck with WD Reds, so I'd probably use them if they have good reports.  Your migration plan sounds good, though I'd consider buying larger disks (8TB Seagate Archive drives are the cheapest $/TB going).

 

By the way, mandatory PSA - RAID is not a backup strategy.  It doesn't matter what form of RAID - unRAID, FreeNAS, or Synology - it still isn't a backup strategy.  You should have a backup of all critical files.  Even something as simple as an 8TB drive in a USB3 enclosure stored offsite can be a critical part of your backup strategy, along with online options.

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks again for your reply and sorry for the delay in getting back to you... busy couple of days / weeks.   For sure, important data will be backed up to multiple locations as it is today, so I totally agree with your comments as this isn't the only backup strategy... it's part of the overall plan.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.