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Need massive non-RAID storage. Any suggestions?

Yeah best bet is a macmini I find,

a pc box wont do **** all for a mac,


I may not be op but I am looking at a mini and a few drives for it, For hosting movies to play on my living room tv and also to backup for time macheen,

I was thinking a mini would be the best best.
 
Kurwenal said:
Is the server part necessary or important to provide JBOD access to other Macs on the network?
Click to expand...

Not necessary, especially for simple setups (where having complex access rights are needed). An old used Mini with at least FW800 would do fine. No concern about processor speed or even RAM.
 
talmy said:
Not necessary, especially for simple setups (where having complex access rights are needed). An old used Mini with at least FW800 would do fine. No concern about processor speed or even RAM.
Click to expand...

Great, thank you. I've been watching this thread since I have a similar need. I think I'm going to go with a Mac Mini with a bunch of Thunderbolt drives hanging off the back. I can put it on the shelf where my Drobos used to sit.....

Appreciate the tip.
 
One thing nice now, if you decide you want the extra server functionality, it's relatively inexpensive ($50 now, $500 2 years ago).
 
I'd recommend a DS1812+ NAS setup with 8 drives as RAID 5. You'll only lose n-1 in space and gain some peace of mind.

It's even expandable.
 
Honestly. Anyone who has more than a terabyte of data should be using raid 1 or better. Raid 0 is mostly pointless in this era of SSDs.
I have been running raid 1 "mirror" on my audio production machines for almost 15 years now. More recently I have begun to use raid 5, which is more expensive initially, but gives you more of the drivespace you paid for while maintaining fault tolerance.
What it boils down to is this. If you lost the data on these several terabytes, how much work would it take to get back? That is how expensive NOT having raid is.
 
calaverasgrande said:
Honestly. Anyone who has more than a terabyte of data should be using raid 1 or better. [...]
What it boils down to is this. If you lost the data on these several terabytes, how much work would it take to get back? That is how expensive NOT having raid is.
Click to expand...

I'm sure you realize since you refer to the "fault tolerance" of RAID, that RAID is not an alternative to keeping backups (and off site at that). If those terabytes of data are archival, then there is no reason for RAID unless you must be able to recover quickly from drive loss. If this isn't an issue, then having two backups, at least one off-site, will let you recover with little work and only a few hours of time, possibly minutes if all you have to do is swap a drive for a backup that is local.

As long as you have at least two copies of your data, only work in progress is at risk between backups. Even something as basic as Time Machine could be adequate to keep lost time down to an hour (the time between backups). It doesn't have to be RAID.

The real concern here is the value of time, not the quantity of the data.
 
talmy said:
I'm sure you realize since you refer to the "fault tolerance" of RAID, that RAID is not an alternative to keeping backups (and off site at that). If those terabytes of data are archival, then there is no reason for RAID unless you must be able to recover quickly from drive loss. If this isn't an issue, then having two backups, at least one off-site, will let you recover with little work and only a few hours of time, possibly minutes if all you have to do is swap a drive for a backup that is local.

As long as you have at least two copies of your data, only work in progress is at risk between backups. Even something as basic as Time Machine could be adequate to keep lost time down to an hour (the time between backups). It doesn't have to be RAID.

The real concern here is the value of time, not the quantity of the data.
Click to expand...
offsite data storage is what we usually call a disaster recovery measure. You would be surprised how many businesses have raid volumes, and maybe even tape based backup, but no DR.
Thing about raid 1, 10, 5 and 50 is that you dont have to drive to your storage locker, or swap out any drives. It just works (eh? eh?).
Raid 5 takes about 4 drives to build an array, but you get 3/4ths of that space to actually store things. With a 1 to 1 mirror, or duped drive backup you only get half the space.
But by all means, please reinvent the wheel.
 
Raid should only be used if you need the fault tolerance while you are working on large files.


Best bet is to go with a mini and just use it for archkival of your stuff.

It does not replace a backup plan

Invest in a bluray burner to have good backups then rent a bank box and store a usb drive there and some bluray backups.

Best thing you can do,

Blurays can hold up to 50gb at the moment but they can have up to 100gb of raw storage
 
calaverasgrande said:
offsite data storage is what we usually call a disaster recovery measure.
Click to expand...

The disaster being when the controller fails in your RAID array. :)

Actually had this happen at a place where I was working about 10 years ago. Took over a week to restore from our offsite backups during which time our entire department (Engineering) was non-functional since everything was saved on the server. Critical functions were back up in a day or two. And comments about failing Drobos are abundant, although those aren't technically RAID arrays.
 
Major.Robto said:
What os would you run on your nas? Free nas has so many dam problems with newer parts, Windows...Well then you need antivirus and keep a eye on the system, OSX on a pc, forget it, hackintosh is over rated.
Click to expand...

If you're building a cheap DIY NAS with a 4X USB/eSATA enclosure, I would opt for one of the following:

1: A Mac Mini with OSX
2: Windows

Since the technology that you will be using to manage and share your library will be iTunes, and since iTunes only runs (unemulated) on Windows and OSX, they are both a natural fit.

I'm a big fan of FreeNAS and linux, but dislike the overhead involved with mixing and matching technologies. If you've chosen iTunes as your media technology, stay with iTunes from the top to the bottom of the stack.

If you had an Android device, an Ubuntu powered PC, and a playstation3, FreeNAS would be a natural fit.

If you had a Windows PC and Windows phone, I would recommend a WMC based media server.

F
 
russofris said:
If you're building a cheap DIY NAS with a 4X USB/eSATA enclosure, I would opt for one of the following:

1: A Mac Mini with OSX
2: Windows

Since the technology that you will be using to manage and share your library will be iTunes, and since iTunes only runs (unemulated) on Windows and OSX, they are both a natural fit.

I'm a big fan of FreeNAS and linux, but dislike the overhead involved with mixing and matching technologies. If you've chosen iTunes as your media technology, stay with iTunes from the top to the bottom of the stack.

If you had an Android device, an Ubuntu powered PC, and a playstation3, FreeNAS would be a natural fit.

If you had a Windows PC and Windows phone, I would recommend a WMC based media server.

F
Click to expand...

A voice of reason in the wilderness... and spoken with the confidence that comes with experience.

/Jim
 
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