Having gradually built up my media collection to near the capacity of my 16TB external HDD, I’ve reached the point where I’ll probably need to build a RAID array to keep the collection in one place. Assuming the RAID array will be at least 32TB, I have a few questions:

  1. From what I’ve read RAID arrays can help mitigate the risk of individual drives failing if extra space is allotted on the hard drives. Assuming a total capacity of 32TB, how much of that space would be reserved by the RAID array for data loss prevention?

  2. Is there a certain type of hard drive I would have to use? Aside from my 16TB drive, I also have two 2 8TB drives that I’d ideally like to be able to re-use in the RAID array, but have left them in their enclosures for the time being.

  3. If the hard drives in the array have different transfer speeds, does the array as a whole default to the slowest one?

  4. Whether the hard drives I already have are compatible or not, what RAID enclosure and hard drives would you recommend?

  • Nach [Ohio]English
    6·
    10 months ago

    Start googling. Hardware or Software based? How techy are you? RAID should not be considered for backup. Think of it as an individual drive. Still needs a backup. Personally I use a ZFS pool in my Linux homelab that’s been rock solid. However the pucker factor would be high if a drive fails.

    1. Depends on how you set them up. There are calculators online that can estimate this for you.

    2. I used NAS drives bc they’re expected to be spinning a lot.

    3. No. You will see better performance on average compared to your slowest drive.

    4. I have no relevant experience with specific hardware. For a general base of knowledge figure out what RAID type you want to use. Look at what ZFS or btrfs can do in this space. Same for unraid.

    • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      Personally I use a ZFS pool in my Linux homelab that’s been rock solid. However the pucker factor would be high if a drive fails.

      I use a ZFS pool for my home stuff too.
      To minimize the pucker factor, I have an extra drive of the same capacity and I rotate through them in the mirror pool.
      It makes good practice replacing and resilvering drives and since it’s a mirror it’s also kind of an offline backup.
      Also, I had bought the initial drives at the same time and figured rotating though them would minimize the odds of failing around the same time.
      I’m much less wary of the whole thing now that I’ve resilvered the drives several times.

      • Nach [Ohio]English
        1·
        10 months ago

        That’s a really great idea. I know at least 2 of the drives are from the same batch so it would be good to rotate things in and out. Thanks!

        • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Yea, if anything it makes good practice.
          Swapping hard drives in the larger data pool isn’t as daunting anymore.
          Although, I gotta be honest, swapping drives in the zpool from which proxmox boots itself is still a bit iffy to me.
          I had to set a reminder, because otherwise I won’t do it often enough.