Re: Homebuilt NAS Advice
On 8/5/2020 11:13 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
- RAID would require extra hardware in my machines, for some of them
that would be a non-trivial constraint (e.g. my BananaPi servers and
my laptops).
How do you figure? Adding an external USB drive enclosure to
a laptop or a Banana Pi is pretty trivial.
Are you seriously suggesting a RAID setup where one half is the
SATA-connected drive inside the laptop and the other is an external
USB-connected drive?
It's not what I would do, probably, but it is possible. In fact, a
RAID 1 mirror with write-mostly enabled on the external drive is not a
terrible idea.
For better performance, more space, and higher throughput, I would
probably create a RAID 4 or RAID 6 array from the external enclosure and
use it as the data repository.
Sounds like a recipe for a world of pain for all the times that the
external drive gets disconnected (not to mention the performance impact
of having one half going over the slow USB2 connection, defeating the
benefits of the internal SSD).
Not on a RAID 1 mirror with write-mostly enabled on the external drive.
For the BananaPi, the suggestion is marginally less problematic but
still: a non-trivial constraint with significant immediate downsides.
Such as?
RAID is basically an insurance.
Not entirely. A RAID 5 or RAID 6 array is far, far faster than a
single hard drive. It is also much larger than a single hard drive,
sometimes at less expense than a single large hard drive. It is also
portable from one system to another. Unplug the array from the laptop,
plug it in to the Banana Pi, and presto! The array is now attached to
the Pi. It's really not any different logically than an external drive,
except it is faster, larger, and more robust.
Taking an insurance makes a lot of
sense when it's important to spread the cost of the impact of an
"event"
Or eliminate it entirely.
anyway (not to mention that RAID doesn't prevent me from losing work
when the OS or my editor crashes
Uh, yeah, it can. It definitely can be used to eliminate data loss
when the OS crashes, and with a little magic, even the loss of OS
related informatin (like /home) can be eliminated. The editor is a
little different matter, although the result of it's failure can also be
limited.
or when I make a mistake).
That is another matter. Indeed, it is probably the most likely reason
a need for a backup solution exists.
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