I just checked my box of old drives in the cellar:
Seagate barracuda 3TB
Hitachi 1TB
WD caviar 500GB
WD caviar 500GB
Hitachi LS1000 + enclosure 1TB x2
HGST touro desk dx3 4TB
Excellent. How many of them don't you want? 😁
I can definitely make use of the first and the last. I don't like Seagate but beggars and choosers and all that.
Some very useful advice and discussion on here. Thanks all.
@russell96 - current nas is pretty old/low performance CPU so it can only run EXT4 file system. That doesn't allow you to set quotas on shared folders like Time Machine. If I knew what I was doing when I set it up I'd have created a separate storage pool, but I'm not doing that now!
If the nas is that old & the plan is to migrate to a newer 4+ bay soon, might it not be better to get that nas now & plan a staged migration rather than increase the data footprint that you’ll have to migrate again in a few weeks-months?
You could then look at options to use the old nas as a simple backup jbod array if that helps
Oh yeah,
look at zfs-based NAS systems…it’s awesome!
I looked at ZFS a few years back, with a view to replacing a storage server that had fried its PSU. FreeNAS or OpenNAS or something? Maybe. It looked fantastic but it was massively RAM-hungry and I wasn't even remotely in the ballpark with the hardware I had to hand.
I think SHR is (or certainly was) the standard recommended by Synology. My ancient DS413j (still going strong after nearly 10 years) uses this, but no idea about partity drives etc?
Mine has 9tb of useable space across 4 disks (2 3tb and 2 4tb), using SHR.
(I also back up important stuff to an external HDD permanently plugged into the the synology, a separate 6tb ext HDD that is only switched on to back up to and check, plus various cloud services, which are more for convenience really, albeit offsite which helps.)
There's a 'creative space' near me that has a bar where I sometimes go for a drink. Sat there one evening, and a group come out and start loading a bunch of film making gear into a van. Part of it was a trolley with a stack of computery looking stuff on it. I asked one of the guys loading it what it was, and he told me it was a Raid 10 array they'd been using for shooting and editing. About a couple of dozen or more SDDs, 4Tb each apparently. Fast! Possibly a little overkill for most domestic use though.
How many of them don’t you want?
all of them. They’ve sat in that same box for at least a year. Longer for some of them.
I’ll need to scrub them I think - several just came out of a NAS at the time.
Well after much head scratching, gone for a 4 bay. Our current NAS decided to power itself off yesterday (probably in a fit of pique) just after I'd backed most of it up to an external disk! Probably a one off but decided we'll get a new one, use that for sharing/local backup/confidential stuff. Also run PI/DNS/DHCP/etc on it.
Old one can have the 'historical' hardly every changes data (for which I have an external backup as well- in the shed so not exactly off site but..) and all the GoPro renders/old iMovie libs.
Short term, going to do a cloud backup for share via OneDrive (there's an app in Synology that works well) and a weekly dump onto the external drive. I do kind of like the way you could go 'off net' with the Syntology, suite of office apps, viewers, chat server, mail, etc. I mean they aren't very good but you could!
So sorry @cougar keeping the original NAS drives as well...
It looked fantastic but it was massively RAM-hungry
Yeah - it uses RAM as a read-cache, and can use SSD as a write cache, although the defaults FreeNas/TrueNas implementations don't make best use of this. It does work best with a decent amount of RAM and also CPU, since it can use block-level compression to optimise storage usage, and given enough CPU performs better like this since disk writes are alway the bottleneck, but if you have enough cpu to compress the data on the fly you win on the reduced amount of data you need to read/write.
Essentially, it needs a bit of grunt behind it. I first used it on Sun's Thumper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Fire_X4500. This was pretty ground-breaking at the time for storage density as well as the cool zfs stuff attached to it.
Going for an Intel CPU with a RAM upgrade is worth it in a Synology NAS, being able to run Docker or VM's adds so much flexibility. I run Pi-Hole in Docker which helps with internet speed and security. Noting that depending on the CPU the Max RAM it can support.
I run Cloud Sync a little differently, my mobile devices sync to iCloud/Google directly, then Cloud Sync mirrors these back to the NAS, but with one difference I've set it up that if anything is deleted in the cloud it isn't deleted on the NAS, so even if a cloud provider has finger trouble, I retain it all.
Heaving drives out of an array is a great tool in your arsenal and I have – successfully – used it as disaster mitigation in a crisis. But it’s a bold move and by christ I wouldn’t want to rely on it.
The storage equivalent of go big or go home!
OP I'm using Toshiba drives in my NAS and they are quite a bit cheaper on Box.
@russell96 - yep bought an intel powered one. Can stick another 4 gig of memory in it if needed. I'm going to run a couple of things on my Pi in docker/VM. I did think I could move all of Home Assistant then realised I'd lose the bluetooth receiver I use for temp/humidity gauges etc.
Defo will be going full DMZ when we get fibre. Security stuff on the NAS seems pretty good. I've a few more videos to watch tho. I did a r/sync transfer between the old and new and it's fair to say the throughput on the new one is pretty impressive!
Oh and finally getting Syntology drive setup/working properly. Having multiple versions is great as we're terrible for over-writing each others work!
Can't beat an as-is schematic.
To-Be will finally give me a DMZ, but need fibre first.
That's excessive. 😁
What did you use do draw it?
@Alex you may already be aware but there was an update recently to HA/ESPhome so you can now use an ESP device as a Bluetooth proxy (relaying the data to HA via WiFi). Quite the game-changer! 😃I did think I could move all of Home Assistant then realised I’d lose the bluetooth receiver I use for temp/humidity gauges etc.
I've moved all my home-server stuff now including HA onto a Lenovo ThinkCentre mini PC (basically their cheaper version of an Intel NUC!) which is still pretty efficient energy wise but way more powerful than a Pi.
That’s excessive. 😁
I was waiting for a video to render last night. I used to love doing network drawing and then logical data models back in the day. It's almost therapeutic 🙂 @cougar - it's lucidchart. Can't run Visio on a MAC (No bad thing) and I use LC extensively for work stuff. It's like Visio should be and with it being web based, it's very easy to share/collaborate on stuff.
@zilog6128 - I have a couple of the USB powered ones from AliExpress but even tho I've programmed them with the TeleLink Flash web app I can't get them to actually work. I see them in the ESP console but they don't ever transmit any data. I'll have another go this weekend as I've got that PI in mind for running some DMZ stuff when we get fibre.
are you talking about ESP chips e.g. ESP32 or your actual BT sensors? No experience of the latter unfortunately!I have a couple of the USB powered ones from AliExpress but even tho I’ve programmed them with the TeleLink Flash web app I can’t get them to actually work.
I have an ESP in a box on a circuit board (so standard 'chip') that I use in the big shed. But I found basically what looks like a ESP32 that is powered by a USB-C that you can plug in anywhere and has same functionality. I'll dig out the link to aliexpress when I get a minute. A mate has some and his work fine!
@Alex ta, would be interested in the link. I normally buy this type with Micro-USB, usually try to buy the same type (WROOM DevKitC) as if you get different types sometimes the pinouts and/or number of pins are slightly different which gets confusing!)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08DXSMZSB/ref=pe_27063361_487055811_TE_dp_5?th=1
never had any problems & I usually get them from Amazon as I'm impatient & the price isn't that much more than AliExpress! 😃 (although I've also bought plenty of stuff from AE too with no problems)
The cool think about the above ESPs is they fit perfectly with the following which is ace for prototyping:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B092H9FM3R?ref_=pe_747761_41376721_dpLink
That’s excessive. 😁
I used to draw things like that, but eventually we discovered that keeping the working schema on a whiteboard worked best since it actually got updated to match reality...
[frequent photos required]
@zilog6128 - these are the ones: https://thepihut.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-kit
My current ESP32 is like the one you posted, on a board and in a box so I don't accidentally short it. Works great. These little ones should be perfect as 'bluetooth roamers' that connect back to HA via WiFi. I'm going to have another go today.
@jca - I'm just working on the future post fibre version. It's all the changes between now and then which won't make any documentation other than scribbled notes on random bits of paper!