Typical home NAS setup for family pictures/videos

[pdp1]

My wife and I currently store our family pictures/videos on our two separate desktops. Each desktop is setup with RAID1 for drive failure mitigation purposes. We have a 2 drive QNAP NAS box and have that setup as JBODs (no redundancy) and use it as a backup for both our desktops' pictures/videos, as well as our documents. We also have an external USB drive as a backup of the NAS. Currently, we typically backup to the NAS at most once a month, so the NAS is powered off most of the time. Also, we rarely read from those backups. I'm pretty happy with this setup, HOWEVER, I would really like to consolidate my and my wife's pictures/videos primary storage into a single location, mainly because 1) We're running out of space on our desktops and 2) I'm sick of searching on two different desktops for pictures/videos

My plan is to convert the 2 drive QNAP into a RAID1 and use that as primary storage for our pictures/videos. We will keep documents on our respective desktops and still use the NAS as backup for them. We would also continue using an external USB drive as backup for the NAS. So a few questions/solicitations for opinions:

1) Are my plans for the new setup pretty typical and safe for pictures/videos? I think my current setup is pretty secure, except missing an offsite backup, which I will consider implementing in the future.
2) I will need to buy some larger drives for the 2 bay QNAP and am considering buying some of those retired/refurbished enterprise HDDs. Since I'll be using them in RAID1, loss of data from drive failures should be mitigated pretty well. Any thoughts on this?
3) We would offload pictures/videos off our phones/cameras to the NAS only once or twice a month and would likely read/view pictures/videos at least a few times a month. Backing up documents to the NAS and making backups from the NAS to the external drive would also be a once or twice a month occurrence. I would like to start keeping the NAS on 24/7, but would anyone recommend spinning down the drives when idle based on my described use case?

 

[degrub]

2) no, no, no. You would likely be getting drives that are on the rising part of the statistical bathtub curve for failure - ie - end of life. That is one reason they get pulled from the data center. And common mode failure is more likely with the worn out drives, which negates the redundancy. Buy new drives, enterprise or not, and watch them for early failure in the first year. 5yr warranties used to be std for higher reliability drives.

Spinning rust likes constancy - spinning and temperature ( cool) and power.

Power reliability and quality for the NAS and PCs is as important as anything. Be sure you use a decent UPS to supply power to each with enough battery to allow you to shutdown. Most of the major brands include software that you can run for auto shutdown of NAS and PCs with a connected USB cable.

Two separate USB backup drives, rotated or a second NAS backing up the first ( backup for hardware failure as well as drive). If you can live with a long NAS outage, just get the USB drives.

If you are in an area with high chance of lightning ( like Florida or the Texas Gulf coast), consider a whole house surge arrestor installed at your breaker box. Reduces the chance of ground current surges as well as indirect strikes on outdoor cables causing damage to electronics in the house.

 

[bbunge]

As @degrub implied, the drives in a NAS are very important. And the type of drives also matter. I am on my second Synology two bay NAS. I upgraded a year ago to get the ability to add RAM which really helps with apps on the NAS. I also upgraded to 8 TB drives from 4 TB drives.

As for the drives, I use Western Digital Red Pro. There are three WD Red drive series advertised for NAS use. Stay away from the Red as they are "SMR" drives and can be trouble. Red Plus is a bit better but the Red Pro has a 5 year warranty. The Plus and Pro are "CMR" drives and will last and perform better. And I, too, believe that spinning drives last longer. I had to replace one of my 4 TB drives that failed just out of warranty. But, I have a WD Green drive in a USB3 enclosure that I use for video storage that is now 12 years old and it runs fine. Seagate Iron Wolf are supposed to be good NAS drives but I got turned off with Seagate some years ago with a bunch of desktop drive failures. My brand loyalty is with Western Digital for now.

AS for the NAS, if the QNAP is getting some age you might consider a newer one that has better features. My DS220+ has dual LAN ports and the ability to add RAM.

Best of luck with your choices...

 

[Tech9]

I would really like to consolidate my and my wife's pictures/videos primary storage into a single location, mainly because 1) We're running out of space on our desktops and 2) I'm sick of searching on two different desktops for pictures/videos

You just need to make classification system. Two PCs in sync or NAS with backup - all works well. What we do:

[year][month][country or event], with subfolders [place], with subfolders [John][Jane], etc.

This way you have folders sorted automatically on every device. We take pictures and videos using different devices. All are in one place, tells who took the pictures, in what country, in what place, etc. Make your own system and easy to use for both of you. There is no universal best way. Your way is the best way.

 

[L&LD]

If you're serious about having your data safe:

• Buy a NAS (QNAP is my choice) with 4 drives or more
• Use RAID 5 or better with the 4 drives
• New drives ONLY
• WD Red Plus is better than WD Pro for reliability and cheaper to boot
• The sweet spot for size vs performance/reliability today is the 14TB WD Red Plus drives
• Do NOT move any data to the new NAS/drives - COPY only and delete data from their present locations after a month or more of testing the new hardware
• A backup that you haven't tested isn't a backup (FYI)

When you're satisfied with the new hardware (re: reliability), use the old NAS to put your backups to (yes, you'll probably need new drives for that too, then).

Use the USB drive for your offsite backup plan, at least for your most important files.

To keep your desktops in sync with the NAS, look at FreeFileSync to do so.

 

[eightiescalling]

Seagate Iron Wolf are supposed to be good NAS drives but I got turned off with Seagate some years ago with a bunch of desktop drive failures. My brand loyalty is with Western Digital for now.

I must admit, personally I think these days WD are trading more off brand loyalty and reputation of old than anything else.

The debacle as they quietly changed from CMR to SMR on their Red series did them no favors.

In terms of reliability, everyone's mileage varies but a friend has seen ~30% failure rate of WD Reds over a 8+ year period. Meanwhile I've had no failures with Ironwolfs over a similar window.

Raid5 can work but parity arrays can have their challenges with larger discs.

@pdp1 How much storage do you think you need? That may influence the better raid type for your needs.

 

[eightiescalling]

• A backup that you haven't tested isn't a backup (FYI)

This!

RAID is about data availability (how quickly you can get to your data), not data security (how sure are you it is safe when something goes wrong).

 

[RMerlin]

When dealing with arrays having disks above 10 TB, RAID5 is becoming less reliable due to the average non-correctable rates of HDDs, and also the insanely long rebuild time. Better have double redundancy at those capacities (like RAID 6), or RAID 10. You also want RAID scrubbing at those capacities, which also takes a long time.

 

[L&LD]

Yes, RAID5 or better.

 

[sfx2000]

When dealing with arrays having disks above 10 TB, RAID5 is becoming less reliable due to the average non-correctable rates of HDDs, and also the insanely long rebuild time. Better have double redundancy at those capacities (like RAID 6), or RAID 10. You also want RAID scrubbing at those capacities, which also takes a long time.

Agree - there is a limit to things like RAID5/6...

 

[pdp1]

I must admit, personally I think these days WD are trading more off brand loyalty and reputation of old than anything else.

The debacle as they quietly changed from CMR to SMR on their Red series did them no favors.

In terms of reliability, everyone's mileage varies but a friend has seen ~30% failure rate of WD Reds over a 8+ year period. Meanwhile I've had no failures with Ironwolfs over a similar window.

Raid5 can work but parity arrays can have their challenges with larger discs.

@pdp1 How much storage do you think you need? That may influence the better raid type for your needs.

I'm thinking minimum size for the upgrade in capacity should be 10TB right now. We are pushing the 4TB limit of our backup NAS capacity (2TB per desktop) and the rate of of data increase is getting faster as time goes on... so I estimate a 2.5x increase in capacity should last at least 4+ years before I need to increase again.

I have an older QNAP TS-231 and would be content with running RAID1. I'm familiar with the pros/cons of RAID1 vs RAID5/6 and am willing to take the capacity hit with RAID1 for the sake of simplicity.

Everyone here has convinced me to stay away from the refurbished enterprise drives, I'm hoping to be able to find some 10TBs for $140 or less. I'd have to buy more than 2 because my USB backup drives right now are also 4TB, which will not be enough anymore in the near future. Plus I'm considering a spare for one of the RAID1 drives in case of failure.

 

[stevenm]

Amazon has free unlimited photo storage with Prime, automatic and cheap. Sell the hardware

 

[ddaenen1]

Everyone here has convinced me to stay away from the refurbished enterprise drives

Honestly, i think that is rubbish. I have been running refurbished enterprise 2Tb SAS drives for years now. I bought a lot of 16 in total and over all those years, i have had one that failed gradually over all these years. If i can recall correctly i paid 15 USD a piece. Running TrueNAS with ZFS, i have no worries. I sold most of them afterwards and kept 2 as a back up as TrueNAS allows you to do a hot swap and resilvers the drives if you slide in a replacement.

Whilst i don't need to consider cost as i can buy new ones via my business at any time, i don't really see any reason to do so considering the above...

 

[ddaenen1]

Amazon has free unlimited photo storage with Prime, automatic and cheap. Sell the hardware

Yeah. Thanks but no thanks. Call me old fashioned but i want a local copy of my critical data so i have full access at any time even if the internet is down. A backup in the cloud on the other hand is a good thing.

 

[eightiescalling]

Amazon has free unlimited photo storage with Prime, automatic and cheap. Sell the hardware

Free and unlimited until it isn't. A bit like ad-free until it wasn't. (And don't get me started on TV shows/films randomly rotating between free and chargeable!)

I could possibly buy that argument as a reason not to invest in a NAS device but not to get rid of one - even then, I'd still go for the NAS just because it's more versatile on data types, access etc.

 

[stevenm]

yes, free until it isn't. Such is life. I sold my Synology NAS for pictures and videos and went the Amazon route. A 2tb ssd in the safe for important documents. Quieter, less maintenance, heat and electricy.
Hell, S3 will back everything up for 21 cents per month.