Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459(humaidq.ae) |
Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459(humaidq.ae) |
Don't regret it! It allowed you to find a drive failure before a second drive failed, and allowed you to recover your data while it was still recoverable! This is a good thing!
Archival data is a tricky problem. If you don't regularly read it, you may find that when you do need to read it, that the sector has suffered some bit rot. What's one of the most likely cases where you have to read archived data? When a hard drive fails and RAID is doing a rebuild...
So, by all means, run a ClamAV scan! Or better yet, run a ZFS scrub monthly or so. I've been a huge fan of ZFS for my archive data, mostly historic photos and Google takeout data now, because it can detect silent corruption and can do scrubs to verify and repair any hard drives sectors that have problems.
That said, I'm surprised that they explicitly support installing Linux -- the post links a QNAP wiki page that explicitly uses the phrase "supported hardware" when describing which machines their guide to installing Debian works for. The case itself is pretty high quality for the purpose (no surprise), but I don't think I'd buy one just to wipe the custom OS and install my own on it. If it were me, I'd probably hop on over to r/DataHoarder, search there, and maybe make a "recommend me a case" post if I didn't find anything interesting.
I'd really love to do a NAS project with a Raspberry Pi, but the lack of SATA support really does it in as a base for a NAS system, IMO. If you're just going to connect everything over USB anyway, what's even the point of the Pi? Just buy one of those dumb external enclosures that holds 4+ drives.
Of course, the most recent was a 8TB server I built in 2011. So, take that as bad that I can't speak to any recent experience. But, good that it's still running with all of the original components 9 years later.
https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/servers/proliant-microserver/proli...
I should probably update the software, but I already broke it once trying that, so for now it's sitting happy as a dumping ground for files.
Although the drives come out the left side. So you would need to access that without moving the case for true hot swap.
The first time you find out your drive is dying, you really want it.
That Xpenology exists may explain why Synology don't license their OS.
I had trouble configuring parts of the cluster but overall XigmaNAS worked well.
I have a QNAP TS-251 (two drive bay model) that has been collecting dust for roughly two and a half years. Somebody was able to install a ransomware program on it, I suspect using the QSnatch[1] vulnerability. I triple pass zeroed the system storage and mothballed it.
Two months ago decided I wanted to do something with this machine again, so I bought two new Seagate IronWolf drives and installed FreeNAS (it can boot to and run from the USB 3.0 port on the back).
Is it the perfect hardware for FreeNAS? Nope - barely meets the minimum 8GB RAM requirements. But it's running as a media backup and Plex server, and doing a fantastic job at it. When I outgrow this hardware I'll certainly replace it with something I can also install FreeNAS on - consider me a happy convert.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/dvh7n2/qsnatch_malwar...
I have a TVS-471 that I run the default QNAP OS on. That said, I only use it for typical NAS workloads like:
- serving media - file storage - device backup - off-site backup
I recently started using the Hybrid Backup Station app and have been pretty impressed. I’ve got three jobs - Multimedia, Photos, and Archive backup. They all go to BackBlaze B2 on slightly different schedules.
Been really pleased with it. That said, I do find the UI a little clunky so I can see why the author chose an alternative for their use case.
I’ve got a cheap $150 NUC I use for more typical *nix server stuff that sits next to the NAS. It mostly runs an unbound DNS Forwarder for now but I plan to expand its usage further.
It's very neat for its low power usage and small form factor.
How did you layout the partitions?
What's on the 512m internal?
I have one in the basement I've tried to install one too many times and I need to remotivate.
Does it require a custom kernel?
With hotswap, it is up and running, you can start repair straight away.
Don't take this personally but this advice is fairly useless.
For every person like you, who has "found Hitachi to be the most reliable" and "had universally bad luck with Seagate", there's someone else who has the exact opposite advice.
Our opinions are shaped by our own experiences, of course, and (most of the tine) it's hard to change our minds or convince us otherwise.
The (unfortunate) truth is that there's no one brand of HDDs that really is "the best" -- especially for all use cases! If there were, well, we'd all be using them by now and all of the other manufacturers would have already went out of business.
Well, in any case now I bought 8 Toshiba N300 8TB (4 HDDs for a server and another 4 for a NAS, both used by a RaidZ1) and so far they worked (and they're not loud and don't vibrate like hell when the disk is spinning, unlike the WD Gold).
It's the first time that I buy Toshiba HDDs - I'm quite sure that if they would have been Seagate then at least 1 would have already failed.
I've had good luck with the few Toshiba drives I've had. That's what my storage system is running right now because it was the only thing I could find in 1TB laptop form factor when I bought them 6-7 years ago.
Thinking about it now, it might make sense.
On the other hand, nowadays there isn't a lot of choice (only 3 manufacturers? WD, Toshiba and Seagate? If yes, then it's quite sad...) and honestly for me it hasn't been easy to choose even just a single model (reading all user reviews, comparing prices, searching specs for e.g. operating temperature, mtbf, finding infos about SMR, etc...) => I felt exhausted after deciding for Toshiba/N300 and I didn't have any other good 2nd candidate... .
Let's see in another ~4 years, maybe I'll adopt this strategy. At least I ordered 2 groups of 4 HDDs from 2 different shops, so I should have at least a minimal amount of "mix" in it. And the ones used in the NAS host the backup of the ones used by the server, so I just hope that I don't have a 2+2 HDD failure in the two raidZ1 :P
Thanks for the enlightenment :)
25,000+ drives according to 2020 Q1 report in case anyone is wondering
But: in such a case, having a normal raid5/raidZ1 or even a raid6/raidZ2, etc..., you might still get scrd by just having 2/3/4 such HP-drives in such a raid (that might be composed of 8/9/10 drives), right?
That's true. Ah well, you know what people say: RAID is for high-availability, not a replacement for proper backups.