DIY: NAS, JBOD, etc.

The current time seems good for this, what with so much mention of various
storage methods/systems/media, and all which is a part of it.

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To specify for this thread: This is NOT the venue for promoting cloud storage.
This thread is for discussion of self-managed hardware storage, housed and maintained
within a user's home or other location accessable at any time to the user.
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PROs and CONs, for and against, either JBOD or NAS, post your experiences, thoughts, arguments.

When I make my own array, I never do just JBOD, as other forms of RAID can offer both more storage and other performance or redundancy benefits,. but there is certainly a place for JBOD for anyone with a bunch of mismatched disks.

I'd want to back that JBOD backed up for sure.


All my Data disks are mirrored live. (Not as "backup" but to maintain "up time" if one disk dies.) It's been helpful in the past.

Then it's just back up to other external drives.

I've made RAID boxes out of older smaller drives (raid 5) but in a short amount of time single HDs with larger capacities always seem more affordable.

For my current needs, a dedicated NAS seems rather spendy; a full-on current new PC
can easily cost as much or more after putting drives in a NAS.
JBOD(Just a Bunch Of Disks) seems a better option to me:
-I choose all hardware
-I configure it to my liking
-I change it as needed or budget allows
-FreeNAS and other OSes for such applications are free

I'm considering tossing together some unused but reasonably modern components to build a JBOD.
Namely, a motherboard/CPU/RAM combo pressed into service in a rackmount chassis.
The chassis may hold as many as 10 drives or as few as four. My choice.
The ability to use existing hardware to build JBOD is attractive to me, as my initial expense
would realistically be only the cost of drives. HDDs are still far less cost-to-capacity
than SSDs, so I'd start there.

I'd likely start with (2)10TB HD drives mirrored, which would allow me to image my
Windows OS drives, as well as pics, downloads, and a bunch of other stuff.

My recent loss of a 2TB HDD lost an awful of stuff, though my photos didn't
suffer a great loss in the grand orbit of my world.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18959789
When I make my own array, I never do just JBOD, as other forms of RAID can offer both more storage and other performance or redundancy benefits,. but there is certainly a place for JBOD for anyone with a bunch of mismatched disks.

I'd want to back that JBOD backed up for sure.

But one of the great features of FreeNAS and such is the ability to mirror and setup some sort
of RAID across matched-capacity drives.

My plan is to RAID or otherwise mirror a pair at a time, perhaps eventually moving on
to mirroring or RAID more, 2 drives at a time.

I have a Synology NAS RAID which I populated with a pair of same-model harddrives, set up as RAID 1 to mirror data which I wish to have copied to an 'archival' storage unit in my home. Since the Synology will let me know if one drive has failed, allowing me to insert a replacement drive and the Synology will automatically rebuild the newly inserted drive.

I have an older Lacie NAS unit, purchased off-the shelf with harddrive installed, not RAID configured, and which has data also stored on the Synology RAID unit...so I have 3 copies at all times, in addition to what is stored within the Desktop PC. I may retire this eventually, as it is not directly supported by Windows 10, and I need to make some mods myself to allow a Windows 10 PC to access this NAS.

I have a ready-to-use off the shelf Western Digital USB RAID unit, configured as RAID 1 mirrored unit, which is used for Windows System Image. It is plugged in and turned on only when I have a reason to Backup or Restore a Windows System Image from my desktop PC.

Lately I have also been plugging a USB 3 enclosure SSD for making Windows System Images, due to the faster acting hardware, greatly reducing the amount of time to make a copy of the Desktop PC harddrive. It is plugged into the USB 3 port only when I wish to backup/restore a System Image.

Lastly, I have a docking unit which plugs into a USB port of the PC, and for which I have numerous harddrives that I can put into the dock to copy newly added files from the NAS RAID to the docked harddrive, making a fourth copy of all data. This fourth copy can be (I don't currently do it) placed with a friend or relative in another location for backup insurance against catastrophic failure (e.g. total destruction due to fire)

In short, I have a combination of RAID 1 units which themselves copied on JBOD units. What I do not use is cloud backup, since it a recurring expense and slow way to save/retrieve data.

RAID protects against hard drive failure. To help with this, ideally you use disks from different manufacturers, rather than two identical disks purchased at the same time, which may have similar failure modes. RAID is used when you can't tolerate downtime, IE in servers that can't stop, or workstations that are in heavy use. RAID is not a backup.

JBOD is just a central place to hold your disks, often used by people who don't have computers that take internal disks. It might be network, it might be SATA / USB / Thunderbolt, but it's effectively the same as having internal disks.

NAS systems are a small computer that makes your storage available on a network. Useful if you have multiple people accessing files, but beware unless you have 10Gbps ethernet your network will slow things down. Useful for companies where people are processing things at the same time, or for times you need your storage "always on", like media servers. I looked into a NAS but decided it was just a small computer, and my large computer can do that job fine.

Backups are separate again. JBOD, RAID systems, NAS, and single disks all need backups.

IMHO internal storage with backups is sufficient for most people, or JBOD if you can't put disks into your computer.

I agree with Tim that for most folks, the USB disk is more than enough for a backup...plug it in, copy the data to it, unplug it and store it off site.

Since we have more than one computer on our home network, and we want the data available to all the computers on the network, the NAS-connected hard drive system meets our needs.
Via the RAID configuration I have two copies... data redundancy, too.

I have a third copy of data of the data also via a separate USB drive...if I move it off-site, I have it as a backup!

SkedAddled wrote in post #18959787
The current time seems good for this, what with so much mention of various
storage methods/systems/media, and all which is a part of it.

***************
To specify for this thread: This is NOT the venue for promoting cloud storage.
This thread is for discussion of self-managed hardware storage, housed and maintained
within a user's home or other location accessable at any time to the user.
***************

PROs and CONs, for and against, either JBOD or NAS, post your experiences, thoughts, arguments.

I've run both RAID and JBOD and, in my opinion if you are using an off-the-shelf NAS device, JBOD wins out if:

1. You have at least one other copy of the data that you can restore from (ie, the original data lives elsewhere and/or a backup of the NAS also exists) and are comfortable with the possibility of that other device going down during the restore
   
2. You can afford the downtime to restore from backup if you lose a drive in the JBOD
   
3. You don't benefit from the increased read/write of a RAID. The vast majority of folk would not.
   

Just to break a lance for the off-the-shelf NAS. I am running a QNAP 4 bay NAS at home in a RAID 5 configuration. There is a lot to nag and complain about the QNAP, but fundamentally it is really a fast and easy setup and management is fairly straight forward. The savings over a self-built is marginal as the cost of HD are really dominant. However, I do regret going with RAID 5. As Bcaps said, now I definitely would go with JBOD and complement with cloud backup solution.

Heya,

I've been doing JBOD, RAID and NAS since the 90's and these days, for storage handling, the capacity of modern drives... it's frankly more simple to just get a bigger drive and just make copies and set them aside like huge floppies. Do what you wish from there (off site, etc). Because they are mechanical, they can fail, so they're not truly backups, but there is some redundancy to having several copies on mechanical drives. Capacity is huge these days and affordable. You can put them USB, or eSATA, or other bus handled controllers and copy data to/from and set them aside without needing a big box or a bunch of cables. Frankly it's just more simple. No software or arrays to maintain and worry over. No lost equipment to redundancy measures. Unless you're working with massive 20Gb video files, most everything is broken up into smaller files, so there shouldn't be a file you cannot store on a single drive really.

So I would say that it comes down to what kind of files you're dealing with. If it's photos and smaller individual files like that, does it really outgrow a single 8TB or larger drive that you can just copy twice on two drives? Does anyone have a single video file that is in excess of 8~12TB that needs multiple discs in an array to handle?

If you really want a simple, DIY storage solution (not backup, but just storage), the simplest and least expensive is to just get big capacity drives and not need enclosures, no need a box, not need a bunch of extra components, certainly not an entire extra computer to handle it all, and just use eSATA/USB to dock, copy, undock and store away. No software to fiddle with. No arrays to maintain. No juggling of redundancy drives. No issues when you need to expand, no rebuilding. Just literally copy what you want to a big drive and put it away. You don't even need enclosures for them if you're using eSATA.

Even if you mounted several 12TB drives in your computer, without making an array of any kind, the only difference is you'd have different drive letters to access, a handful, instead of one pool.

Very best,