I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
can't so far find any confirmation.

RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who do binary and those
who don't.

On 7 Jul 2023 at 23:47:52 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
wrote:

>
> I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
> that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
> can't so far find any confirmation.

Not necessarily the system, just that the four drives are all being used
as one concatenated big one. If quarter of your big drive dies, you do
indeed lose everything.

> RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
> fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?

Yep.

If there is going to be data on here that is *only* on here, remember
that RAID is not anything remotely like backup, so you should plan to
have another 4tb somewhere (or larger) that you can run backups of this
array off to, to prevent issues with accidental deletion or the chassis
dying or whatever.

You'll need another 4TB anyway to copy everything off and back on again.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Hell hath no fury like someone who is enraged that
someone else is getting away with something they're
scared to try. - lilairen, LJ

On 08/07/2023 02:12, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
> On 7 Jul 2023 at 23:47:52 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
>> that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
>> can't so far find any confirmation.
>
> Not necessarily the system, just that the four drives are all being used
> as one concatenated big one. If quarter of your big drive dies, you do
> indeed lose everything.
>
>> RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
>> fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?
>
> Yep.
>
> If there is going to be data on here that is *only* on here, remember
> that RAID is not anything remotely like backup, so you should plan to
> have another 4tb somewhere (or larger) that you can run backups of this
> array off to, to prevent issues with accidental deletion or the chassis
> dying or whatever.
>
> You'll need another 4TB anyway to copy everything off and back on again.
>
> Cheers - Jaimie

and also consider the CPU load caused by the NAS having to compute the
two sets of parity data for RAID 6.

RAID 5 involves the computing of one set of parity data but this will
only accommodate 1 drive failure instead of 2

NAS CPU's tend to be on the low power side and also not close to the
specs of todays desktops

You might want to consider a RAID 10 array which does not involve parity
calculations on the CPU, its essentially a mirrored AND a Striped array.
So those 4 x 2TB drives would then become a single 4TB array.

Echo the point made that RAID is NOT a backup. I once had a RAID
controller die on me and there were 4 drives attached to it. Lost ALL
the data on those drives even through all of teh drives themseves were
not faulty.

On 08/07/2023 in message <u8baov$1mvcr$1@dont-email.me> SH wrote:

>Echo the point made that RAID is NOT a backup. I once had a RAID
>controller die on me and there were 4 drives attached to it. Lost ALL the
>data on those drives even through all of teh drives themseves were not
>faulty.

Many thanks Jaimie & SH, food for thought as always :-)

I went ahead with RAID 6 earlier today and now the data is kept as follows
(or will be when it's all in place):

Original : Z620 NVMe
Backup 1: Z620 SSD
Backup 2: QNAP TS451 (RAID 6) also stream media from this
Backup 3: QNAP TS431 (RAID 6)
Backup4: USB connected 4 TB HD (laptop size) - my "grab it and run" drive.

No external backup but I am wary of the "Cloud" since Dropbox was hacked,
I probably ought to try and do something about this.

I have to admit using exFAT on the Z620, it's refreshing that it no longer
whines about permissions, I will re-think that once all is working though!

Thanks again for input.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day.
Tomorrow, isn't looking good either.

On 08/07/2023 11:09, Jeff Gaines wrote:
> On 08/07/2023 in message <u8baov$1mvcr$1@dont-email.me> SH wrote:
>
>> Echo the point made that RAID is NOT a backup. I once had a RAID
>> controller die on me and there were 4 drives attached to it. Lost ALL
>> the data on those drives even through all of teh drives themseves were
>> not faulty.
>
> Many thanks Jaimie & SH, food for thought as always :-)
>
> I went ahead with RAID 6 earlier today and now the data is kept as
> follows (or will be when it's all in place):
>
> Original : Z620 NVMe
> Backup 1: Z620 SSD
> Backup 2: QNAP TS451 (RAID 6) also stream media from this
> Backup 3: QNAP TS431 (RAID 6)
> Backup4: USB connected 4 TB HD (laptop size) - my "grab it and run" drive.
>
> No external backup but I am wary of the "Cloud" since Dropbox was
> hacked, I probably ought to try and do something about this.
>
> I have to admit using exFAT on the Z620, it's refreshing that it no
> longer whines about permissions, I will re-think that once all is
> working though!
>
> Thanks again for input.
>

one further point...

Are the original and the 4 backups geolocated in the same location?

What happens if there is a gas blast, flooding, house fire etc.... all
your original and 4 backups are GONE!

Have some of them OFF-SITE and connected via the internet so you can do
backups online to save you tripping between the two locations

Either do this to the cloud, MS offer an encrypted folder if your data
is sensitive and will require a password to access, and if you forget
the password, MS cannot recover the data.

There is also googledrive, backblaze etc.

you are right to be worried/concerned about hacking, but if you can set
up a strong password, two factor authentication with either a smart
phone or a yubikey etc and ENCRYPT while the data is in flight AND is
ENCRYPTED at REST at teh remote location you should be pretty OK.

Or set up wireguard at both ends with static IPs and then you should be
able to rsync/timemachine/robocopy between the two locations. Teh
latter will require a co-operative friend/family member and fast
broadband both ways, preferably fibre to the home.

On 8 Jul 2023 at 11:09:18 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
wrote:

> No external backup but I am wary of the "Cloud" since Dropbox was hacked,
> I probably ought to try and do something about this.

There's no *the* cloud, just other people's computers. Dropbox fucked
up.

Backblaze encrypts at your end and only passes encrypted backups to
their datacentre. They're more tuned to local storage than remote
though; their cheap product is "all you can eat *on one personal
computer*" which doesn't include NASes :) For that you need to check out
volume-based pricing.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Is everyone acting like a solipsist in here, or is it just me?

On 08/07/2023 in message <u8beq8$1mvcr$2@dont-email.me> SH wrote:

>one further point...
>
>Are the original and the 4 backups geolocated in the same location?
>
>What happens if there is a gas blast, flooding, house fire etc.... all
>your original and 4 backups are GONE!
>
>Have some of them OFF-SITE and connected via the internet so you can do
>backups online to save you tripping between the two locations

They all sit together on the same desk!

As I said that is a vulnerability that I need to think about.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
I've been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It was a right bugger to get him back when he ran off.

On 09/07/2023 in message <kgub5pFe6orU1@mid.individual.net> Jaimie
Vandenbergh wrote:

>On 8 Jul 2023 at 11:09:18 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
>wrote:
>
>>No external backup but I am wary of the "Cloud" since Dropbox was hacked,
>>I probably ought to try and do something about this.
>
>There's no the cloud, just other people's computers. Dropbox fucked
>up.

Yes but the Dropbox screw up shows the vulnerability of the "Cloud"
generally.

>Backblaze encrypts at your end and only passes encrypted backups to
>their datacentre. They're more tuned to local storage than remote
>though; their cheap product is "all you can eat *on one personal
>computer*" which doesn't include NASes :) For that you need to check out
>volume-based pricing.

$7 a month and their speed test shows it would take 79.54 days to upload
3.5TB.

I have a Giganet fibre manhole right outside my house, been there about 3
weeks, don't know when it will go live. Could offer better upload speeds.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
Remember, the Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe.

On 09/07/2023 08:39, Jeff Gaines wrote:
> On 09/07/2023 in message <kgub5pFe6orU1@mid.individual.net> Jaimie
> Vandenbergh wrote:
>
>> On 8 Jul 2023 at 11:09:18 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> No external backup but I am wary of the "Cloud" since Dropbox was
>>> hacked,
>>> I probably ought to try and do something about this.
>>
>> There's no the cloud, just other people's computers. Dropbox fucked
>> up.
>
> Yes but the Dropbox screw up shows the vulnerability of the "Cloud"
> generally.
>
>
>> Backblaze encrypts at your end and only passes encrypted backups to
>> their datacentre. They're more tuned to local storage than remote
>> though; their cheap product is "all you can eat *on one personal
>> computer*" which doesn't include NASes :) For that you need to check out
>> volume-based pricing.
>
> $7 a month and their speed test shows it would take 79.54 days to upload
> 3.5TB.
>
> I have a Giganet fibre manhole right outside my house, been there about
> 3 weeks, don't know when it will go live. Could offer better upload speeds.
>

I used to be with Virginmedia..... I had 300 Mb/s download and just 30
Mb/s upload.

Mow switched to Vodafone FTTH, now get 500 Mb/s BOTH ways and I can
upgrade to 900 Mb/s BOTH ways if I wish.

Its worth checking what the cloud bandwidth is like as Microsfot
Onedrive does not use the full FTTH fibre bandwidth :-( so when opening
Camera roll, it takes ages to update between the cloud copy and the
local copy

On 09/07/2023 in message <u8dshh$23c99$1@dont-email.me> SH wrote:

>I used to be with Virginmedia..... I had 300 Mb/s download and just 30
>Mb/s upload.
>
>Mow switched to Vodafone FTTH, now get 500 Mb/s BOTH ways and I can
>upgrade to 900 Mb/s BOTH ways if I wish.
>
>Its worth checking what the cloud bandwidth is like as Microsfot Onedrive
>does not use the full FTTH fibre bandwidth :-( so when opening Camera
>roll, it takes ages to update between the cloud copy and the local copy

That's interesting, thank you :-)

I know what to ask Giganet when they start selling!

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
Those are my principles – and if you don’t like them, well, I have
others.
(Groucho Marx)

Jeff Gaines wrote:

> Its worth checking what the cloud bandwidth is like as Microsfot
> Onedrive does not use the full FTTH fibre bandwidth

When copying one humungous file, or thousands of tiddlers?

On 09/07/2023 in message <kgvgqhFjpejU2@mid.individual.net> Andy Burns
wrote:

>Jeff Gaines wrote:
>
>>Its worth checking what the cloud bandwidth is like as Microsfot Onedrive
>>does not use the full FTTH fibre bandwidth
>
>When copying one humungous file, or thousands of tiddlers?

I didn't, SH did, but it's a good point! I have FS2002 installed which has
5,013 scenery files < 4 KB.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who do binary and those
who don't.

In article <xn0o42lmh25zx53004@news.individual.net>, Jeff Gaines wrote...
>
> I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
> that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
> can't so far find any confirmation.
>
> RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
> fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?

It seems to me the RAID is often adopted for reasons that don't quite fit the
situation. People (reasonably) want to "protect" their data, but the various
flavours of RAID are really to enhance performance and/or resilience.
Resilience is about keeping a system going (or restoring it) with minimal
downtime. For many of us here, a bit of downtime isn't as big a deal as it
would be if a business had to suspend transaction processing, for example. And
as has been pointed out, RAID has its own risks, and costs. Mirroring (if
monitored) can give you early warning of disk failure, but a decent SMART
monitor can give you much earlier warning that this might happen. And a backup
strategy matched sensibly to the significant risks (including, say, fire, but
perhaps not comet impact)is worth more, if losing data altogether (rather than
time) is your main concern.

--

Phil, London

On 09/07/2023 in message
<MPG.3f1357a6a63bb1b5989a70@news.eternal-september.org> Philip Herlihy
wrote:

>In article <xn0o42lmh25zx53004@news.individual.net>, Jeff Gaines wrote...
>>
>>I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
>>that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
>>can't so far find any confirmation.
>>
>>RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
>>fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?
>
>It seems to me the RAID is often adopted for reasons that don't quite fit
>the
>situation. People (reasonably) want to "protect" their data, but the
>various
>flavours of RAID are really to enhance performance and/or resilience.
>Resilience is about keeping a system going (or restoring it) with minimal
>downtime. For many of us here, a bit of downtime isn't as big a deal as it
>would be if a business had to suspend transaction processing, for example.
> And
>as has been pointed out, RAID has its own risks, and costs. Mirroring (if
>monitored) can give you early warning of disk failure, but a decent SMART
>monitor can give you much earlier warning that this might happen. And a
>backup
>strategy matched sensibly to the significant risks (including, say, fire,
>but
>perhaps not comet impact)is worth more, if losing data altogether (rather
>than
>time) is your main concern.

I tend to agree. Many moons ago I had a small PC that looked like a NAS in
that it had a row of drive carriers on the front. I used it as a home
server but it had power supply problems and so wasn't reliable, can't
remember the make. I just used NTFS on the drives which were standalone.

I use RAID6 on the NAS because it means two drives can fail before I lose
data, I appreciate RAID isn't a back up but my 2 x NAS are!

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
By the time you can make ends meet they move the ends

On 09/07/2023 09:53, SH wrote:
> Microsfot Onedrive does not use the full FTTH fibre bandwidth 🙁 so when
> opening Camera roll, it takes ages to update between the cloud copy and
> the local copy

can you please explain what you mean by "Microsfot Onedrive does not use
the full FTTH fibre bandwidth"

and tell me how MS can tell what the delivery medium is at the end of
the line ?

--
random signature text inserted here

On 09/07/2023 16:44, Abandoned_Trolley wrote:
> On 09/07/2023 09:53, SH wrote:
>> Microsfot Onedrive does not use the full FTTH fibre bandwidth 🙁 so
>> when opening Camera roll, it takes ages to update between the cloud
>> copy and the local copy
>
>
>
> can you please explain what you mean by "Microsfot Onedrive does not use
> the full FTTH fibre bandwidth"
>
> and tell me how MS can tell what the delivery medium is at the end of
> the line ?
>
>

When syncing a 1TB drive to Onedrive, the upload speed is LOWER than my
500 Mb/s fibre service

Ditto when Syncing onedrive's contents to a brand new SSD, the download
speed is lower than my 500 Mb's service.

Testing mt fibre with both Speedtest and fast.com shows that my fibre
really can do 500 Mb/s BOTH ways.

On 09/07/2023 14:46, Jeff Gaines wrote:
> On 09/07/2023 in message
> <MPG.3f1357a6a63bb1b5989a70@news.eternal-september.org> Philip Herlihy
> wrote:
>
>> In article <xn0o42lmh25zx53004@news.individual.net>, Jeff Gaines wrote...
>>>
>>> I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
>>> that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
>>> can't so far find any confirmation.
>>>
>>> RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
>>> fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?
>>
>> It seems to me the RAID is often adopted for reasons that don't quite
>> fit the
>> situation.  People (reasonably) want to "protect" their data, but the
>> various
>> flavours of RAID are really to enhance performance and/or resilience.
>> Resilience is about keeping a system going (or restoring it) with minimal
>> downtime.  For many of us here, a bit of downtime isn't as big a deal
>> as it
>> would be if a business had to suspend transaction processing, for
>> example.  And
>> as has been pointed out, RAID has its own risks, and costs.  Mirroring
>> (if
>> monitored) can give you early warning of disk failure, but a decent SMART
>> monitor can give you much earlier warning that this might happen.  And
>> a backup
>> strategy matched sensibly to the significant risks (including, say,
>> fire, but
>> perhaps not comet impact)is worth more, if losing data altogether
>> (rather than
>> time) is your main concern.
>
> I tend to agree. Many moons ago I had a small PC that looked like a NAS
> in that it had a row of drive carriers on the front. I used it as a home
> server but it had power supply problems and so wasn't reliable, can't
> remember the make. I just used NTFS on the drives which were standalone.
>
> I use RAID6 on the NAS because it means two drives can fail before I
> lose data, I appreciate RAID isn't a back up but my 2 x NAS are!
>

For 4 drives, both RAID 6 and RAID 10 means you have half the total
drive capacity. but there is no parity calculation overheard with 10
like there is with 6.

So for a 4 drive set up, you'd actually gain going to RAID 10 rather
than RAID 6 as then the CPU inyour NAS is then freed up to do other stuff.

(For RAID 6, you lose two hard drives, for RAID 10, you lose half the
drives. so 4 drives is the mnimum no of drives and the breakeven point
of the two.

Obviousl if yoo have more than 6 drives, then RAID 10 is rather wasteful
of drive space than RAID 6 is.

On 9 Jul 2023 at 17:59:19 BST, "SH" <i.love@spam.com> wrote:

> On 09/07/2023 14:46, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>> On 09/07/2023 in message
>> <MPG.3f1357a6a63bb1b5989a70@news.eternal-september.org> Philip Herlihy
>> wrote:
>>
>> I tend to agree. Many moons ago I had a small PC that looked like a NAS
>> in that it had a row of drive carriers on the front. I used it as a home
>> server but it had power supply problems and so wasn't reliable, can't
>> remember the make. I just used NTFS on the drives which were standalone.
>>
>> I use RAID6 on the NAS because it means two drives can fail before I
>> lose data, I appreciate RAID isn't a back up but my 2 x NAS are!
>>
>
> For 4 drives, both RAID 6 and RAID 10 means you have half the total
> drive capacity. but there is no parity calculation overheard with 10
> like there is with 6.

While true, parity is basically negligible unless you're running on a 20
year old CPU or minimal (half gig) RAM in the NAS. Even if it is, it
really only affects rebuild speed after a drive fail.

A RAID10 can only safely have one drive die; a second failed drive might
be the mirror of the first, which would kill the array - you'd need do
to an offline restore from backup after replacing the deads. Very very
slow, no availability.

I wouldn't generally bother with RAID10 unless performance was more
important than redundancy and resilience and uptime - which it often is
for commercial use. For home though... well, since my own NAS with four
drives in RAID5 (or the ZFS equivalent, RAIDZ1) can fill a 10gigE
network pipe, turns out you can get plenty enough performance from
RAID5. It's a 2014 Dell server chassis (R420) that you can buy for about
£300 plus drives.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
The Daily Mail should be forced to print the words
'The Paper That Supported Hitler' on its masthead,
just so that there is something that's true on the
front page every day. -- Mark Thomas

On 2023-07-08, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
> On 7 Jul 2023 at 23:47:52 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
>> that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
>> can't so far find any confirmation.
>
> Not necessarily the system, just that the four drives are all being used
> as one concatenated big one. If quarter of your big drive dies, you do
> indeed lose everything.
>
>> RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
>> fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?
>
> Yep.
>
> If there is going to be data on here that is *only* on here, remember
> that RAID is not anything remotely like backup, so you should plan to
> have another 4tb somewhere (or larger) that you can run backups of this
> array off to, to prevent issues with accidental deletion or the chassis
> dying or whatever.
>
> You'll need another 4TB anyway to copy everything off and back on again.
>
> Cheers - Jaimie

There is also the point to remember that is one HD fails the chances are
high that another will fail sooner rather than later. Rebuilding the array
places a stress on the remaining disks.

As you need a backup of the data at any rate the RAID number will only come
into play if down time is of importance, cost or time.

As pointed out RAID is not a backup.

On 09/07/2023 21:02, Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
> On 9 Jul 2023 at 17:59:19 BST, "SH" <i.love@spam.com> wrote:
>
>> On 09/07/2023 14:46, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>>> On 09/07/2023 in message
>>> <MPG.3f1357a6a63bb1b5989a70@news.eternal-september.org> Philip Herlihy
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I tend to agree. Many moons ago I had a small PC that looked like a NAS
>>> in that it had a row of drive carriers on the front. I used it as a home
>>> server but it had power supply problems and so wasn't reliable, can't
>>> remember the make. I just used NTFS on the drives which were standalone.
>>>
>>> I use RAID6 on the NAS because it means two drives can fail before I
>>> lose data, I appreciate RAID isn't a back up but my 2 x NAS are!
>>>
>>
>> For 4 drives, both RAID 6 and RAID 10 means you have half the total
>> drive capacity. but there is no parity calculation overheard with 10
>> like there is with 6.
>
> While true, parity is basically negligible unless you're running on a 20
> year old CPU or minimal (half gig) RAM in the NAS. Even if it is, it
> really only affects rebuild speed after a drive fail.
>
> A RAID10 can only safely have one drive die; a second failed drive might
> be the mirror of the first, which would kill the array - you'd need do
> to an offline restore from backup after replacing the deads. Very very
> slow, no availability.
>
> I wouldn't generally bother with RAID10 unless performance was more
> important than redundancy and resilience and uptime - which it often is
> for commercial use. For home though... well, since my own NAS with four
> drives in RAID5 (or the ZFS equivalent, RAIDZ1) can fill a 10gigE
> network pipe, turns out you can get plenty enough performance from
> RAID5. It's a 2014 Dell server chassis (R420) that you can buy for about
> £300 plus drives.
>
> Cheers - Jaimie

I was thinking more of consumer grade NAS units like Synology, Buffalo,
AsusStor etc as they are well known for using low power CPUs,
particularly celeron or Atom processors and skimp on the memory too.

If they are haaving to calculate 2 lots of P & Q parity data on the fly,
that is going to impact on the data transfer rate to & from the RAID
array and also on other services like Plex, transcoding etc

In your case, it sounds like you've built your own NAS so you've had a
freer and wider choice of what hardware you're using plus you're
probably usign Freenas/Truenas/Nas4Free/OMV etc. So its no surprise your
home brewed NAS can saturate a 10 GbE pipe, it does rather sound like
you're using SSDs rather than HDDs though? :-)

On 10/07/2023 09:19, Gordon wrote:
> On 2023-07-08, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
>> On 7 Jul 2023 at 23:47:52 BST, ""Jeff Gaines"" <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
>>> that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
>>> can't so far find any confirmation.
>>
>> Not necessarily the system, just that the four drives are all being used
>> as one concatenated big one. If quarter of your big drive dies, you do
>> indeed lose everything.
>>
>>> RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
>>> fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?
>>
>> Yep.
>>
>> If there is going to be data on here that is *only* on here, remember
>> that RAID is not anything remotely like backup, so you should plan to
>> have another 4tb somewhere (or larger) that you can run backups of this
>> array off to, to prevent issues with accidental deletion or the chassis
>> dying or whatever.
>>
>> You'll need another 4TB anyway to copy everything off and back on again.
>>
>> Cheers - Jaimie
>
> There is also the point to remember that is one HD fails the chances are
> high that another will fail sooner rather than later. Rebuilding the array
> places a stress on the remaining disks.
>
> As you need a backup of the data at any rate the RAID number will only come
> into play if down time is of importance, cost or time.
>
> As pointed out RAID is not a backup.

yes, totally agreed with!

particularly if all the HDDs in use are all the same date of
manufacture, same make, same model and have the same number of hours
running time.

Look up Bathtub curve!

Some peopel routinely replace all the NAS drives onces they get to a
certain age or certain number of running hours.....

S.

> When syncing a 1TB drive to Onedrive, the upload speed is LOWER than my
> 500 Mb/s fibre service
>
> Ditto when Syncing onedrive's contents to a brand new SSD, the download
> speed is lower than my 500 Mb's service.
>
> Testing mt fibre with both Speedtest and fast.com shows that my fibre
> really can do 500 Mb/s BOTH ways.

Which probably means that one of the links on the route has either
reached its capacity limit, or is being deliberately throttled - and 500
Mb/S is quite a lot for a single user

I dont see any conclusive proof that its MS doing the throttling

--
random signature text inserted here

On 07/07/2023 in message <xn0o42lmh25zx53004@news.individual.net> Jeff
Gaines wrote:

>
>I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
>that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
>can't so far find any confirmation.
>
>RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
>fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?

Can I come back on this as it there have been some interesting comments
and I'd like to try and be clear.

I think I understand the statement "RAID is not a substitute for a back
up" - don't use RAID on a PC instead of making proper back ups. Is that
correct?

Assuming it is then having original data plus a back up on the computer
then 2 x back ups to 2 separate NAS's plus 1 x backup to an external USB
connected (spinning) drive seems to overcome that objection.

When it comes to the NAS I can:

Run it as 4 x separate drives (I'm not sure this is JBOD as they are
entirely independent of each other) when I will lose data if the system
drive fails. This means the drives will be formatted to whatever the NAS
uses so I can't pull them out of the NAS and read them by putting them in
a Windows PC.

Run some version of RAID. RAID 6 having the advantage that it can tolerate
2 x drives failing. Does that depend on which 2 drives or is it any two
drives? Still can't pull them out of the NAS and read them by putting them
in a Windows PC.

Alternatively I could set up a Windows box as a server with lots of drives
running as individual drives that could be pulled out and read on another
Windows box. To me there would be no benefit in using a Linux box over
using a NAS.

Do I seem to be following OK?

I am getting itchy fingers and thinking about another visit to Bargain
Hardware so I need to get myself under control!

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
I take full responsibility for what happened - that is why the person that
was responsible went immediately.
(Gordon Brown, April 2009)

Jeff Gaines wrote:

> I'm not sure this is JBOD as they are entirely independent of each other

That *is* JBOD ... just a bunch of disks.

In article <xn0o469hs5pc58100c@news.individual.net>, Jeff Gaines wrote...
>
> On 07/07/2023 in message <xn0o42lmh25zx53004@news.individual.net> Jeff
> Gaines wrote:
>
> >
> >I have a QNAP TS431 running 4 x 2TB as JBOD. Read somewhere that since
> >that means the system is on one of the drives if that goes all is lost,
> >can't so far find any confirmation.
> >
> >RAID 6 would give me 4 TB usable and 2 drive failure tolerance. 4 TB is
> >fine for me. does that sound like a good plan?
>
>
> Can I come back on this as it there have been some interesting comments
> and I'd like to try and be clear.
>
> I think I understand the statement "RAID is not a substitute for a back
> up" - don't use RAID on a PC instead of making proper back ups. Is that
> correct?
>
> Assuming it is then having original data plus a back up on the computer
> then 2 x back ups to 2 separate NAS's plus 1 x backup to an external USB
> connected (spinning) drive seems to overcome that objection.
>
> When it comes to the NAS I can:
>
> Run it as 4 x separate drives (I'm not sure this is JBOD as they are
> entirely independent of each other) when I will lose data if the system
> drive fails. This means the drives will be formatted to whatever the NAS
> uses so I can't pull them out of the NAS and read them by putting them in
> a Windows PC.
>
> Run some version of RAID. RAID 6 having the advantage that it can tolerate
> 2 x drives failing. Does that depend on which 2 drives or is it any two
> drives? Still can't pull them out of the NAS and read them by putting them
> in a Windows PC.
>
> Alternatively I could set up a Windows box as a server with lots of drives
> running as individual drives that could be pulled out and read on another
> Windows box. To me there would be no benefit in using a Linux box over
> using a NAS.
>
> Do I seem to be following OK?
>
> I am getting itchy fingers and thinking about another visit to Bargain
> Hardware so I need to get myself under control!

I am wondering exactly what you want to achieve. Unless performance or real-
time resilience are particularly important, you have data on your working
machine, and (presumably) a properly versioned backup on your NAS. (You don't
mention a cloud or offsite copy - three copies is the gold standard.) What's
missing?

--

Phil, London