Considering building 10TB+ NAS

I'm considering building a 10TB+ NAS for backing up my pictures as I'm getting tired of having external hard drives everywhere and I actually use two computers (one being a win7 PC and one a mac OSX system).

I'm going to be running this as RAID 5 system to prevent file corruption/loss and my friend has suggested running Solaris o/s based NAS instead of my original idea of the FreeNAS o/s.

This NAS would be holding other files besides photo backups, but is/are there problems or considerations that I should keep a look out for when dealing with photography backups that would differ from it being used as a giant network file dump? (sorry if my wording isn't correct or confusing, I'm still new to the NAS idea and still researching)

I actually got the idea from this forum thread: http://hardforum.com/s​howthread.php?t=139393​9 But I'm not going to go all hardware crazy.

A NAS generally isn't fast enough as a working drive, but is fine for an archive.

Consider how you're going to do your offsite backups. At 10TB you're going to need to split it among 2-5 disks, or use an expensive tape backup. That or another NAS which you carry around, the internet's too slow to back up online yet.

Or maybe you should just look harder at the delete button, unless you have a legitimate use for that much data

You should go with RAID6 this way you can lose 2 disks in the RAID group and not be totally f***ed. In RAID5 if you lose 2 disks at the same time, your data is gone.

No matter which RAID level you choose always remember this cardinal rule...RAID is NOT a backup. So whatever capacity you plan on, make sure you have the same capacity to back up to.

Mr. Plow wrote in post #13124611
No matter which RAID level you choose always remember this cardinal rule...RAID is NOT a backup. So whatever capacity you plan on, make sure you have the same capacity to back up to.

Exactly, can't stress this enough. Raid is no substitute for backup! RAID 5-6 should keep you up and running all the time but you don't forget to back it up

I do cd backups as well, but just wanted to know if there was anything I needed to know for streamlining my workflow.

Of course not all of the 10 TB will be dedicated to photos, it's also a file dump for all my music and and movies for an HTPC, etc.

Consider doing two backups.

I'm trying to setup my own backup solution, I'm thinking of putting a NAS on my home network for daily/weekly/monthly (depending on space) backups, and then a second NAS on my parents' home network (located ~250 miles away) for weekly/monthly backups. This way, short of a massive disaster, my data should be fairly safe.

And just have to agree that RAID 5 is no good for disks of that size, too much chance for an error to wipe everything out. I personally use 1TB RAID 1 on my Windows 7 desktop, and it's already had one drive fail 8 months after the system was built.

I never knew a raid 6 existed, thanks for the heads up.

But yes I want to have a smaller NAS available on my own home network for photography backups, but also store files for HTPC streaming. I think my friend is running a 20TB NAS a few states away and he said he would let me back up on his NAS just in case my house burns down, etc.

I was suggested running a Solaris based NAS, but I feel that FreeNAS would be easier to operate. I don't really know how I feel about the Win7 server o/s since it costs money, and I don't know how well it would mesh with my Mac o/s. Opinions, suggestions? Thanks in advance.

How much money do you want to spend? You may be better off going with a NAS box from synology or something like that.

Well the only things I would really need to invest in are the HDD's and a raid controller card thingie. I have a lot of spare parts from over the years of building computers, so it's not going to kill my wallet or anything like that. I have looked at synology boxes, and they were nice, but I couldn't remember why I was turned off by them except for the price, or the lack of running BT.