# BD backup storage



## ghost rider (Dec 29, 2010)

I've grown tired of my method of storage/playback. This looks good, any thoughts
Will one of these work http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-My-Book-Studio/dp/B004PNXR44/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top


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## Mopar_Mudder (Nov 8, 2010)

I guess it all depends on how much storage you will need. If 6TB is all you will ever need then yes it would work, no protection against a failed disk however.

Now if you collection is going to continue to grow (most do) I would go right to building a serve of some sort. My choice would be a server that will run UnRaid which is a software based raid system. You should beable to build the basic server for $400-500 plus what ever drives you want to put in it. This way when you run out of space you just plug in another driver. UnRaid also protects you again a hard drive failure, if one drive fails you just put a new one in its place and it rebuilds it, no loss of data.

This would also run over your home network so you don't have to have it tied to one PC.


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## ghost rider (Dec 29, 2010)

I ordered the WD drive. 

Pardon me but I have never been able wrap my mind around just how a server will always have everything backed up in the event of a drive failure. I have always chosen the simplest solution. As it is now I will have one 6tb drive with everything on it and my 6 1tb drives as backup that for the most part would remain unplugged except when I copied the new backups on one of the 1tb drives.

Another reason I never set up a server, I thought it would be a waste of power having those drives spinning 24/7. I sometime won’t watch a movie for weeks and then I could spend a whole day watching stuff. It kinda sucked having everything spread out over 6 drives. Now everything will be on the one drive and at the rate I’m getting new stuff will last a least a couple of years.


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## Mopar_Mudder (Nov 8, 2010)

ghost rider said:


> I ordered the WD drive.
> 
> Pardon me but I have never been able wrap my mind around just how a server will always have everything backed up in the event of a drive failure. I have always chosen the simplest solution. As it is now I will have one 6tb drive with everything on it and my 6 1tb drives as backup that for the most part would remain unplugged except when I copied the new backups on one of the 1tb drives.
> 
> Another reason I never set up a server, I thought it would be a waste of power having those drives spinning 24/7. I sometime won’t watch a movie for weeks and then I could spend a whole day watching stuff. It kinda sucked having everything spread out over 6 drives. Now everything will be on the one drive and at the rate I’m getting new stuff will last a least a couple of years.


As far as a failed drive goes it is like this. You have one drive that is called a parity drive and is not used for data. I am not sure of the exact how it does it, but basically if you lose a drive and put a new one in, based on what is on the parity drive and on the remaining good drives it can tell what is missing and replace it.

As far as drive spinning goes that is not an issue, you can set it to spin down drives after they have not been used for X perior of time. When you are using it only the drive that has the data on it is spun up, not all the drives. I checked power use on mine with all the drives spun down and it didn't amount to much. You can shut it down if not in use, I think you can even set it to shut down automaticaly if you wanted. Power up is really fast, just push the power button and that is it.

Also with unraid you can see your entire server as one big dive if you want, you could have 15 drives but it would all look like one big drive to windows.

Just to be clear UnRaid will protect against a drive failure but is not a true back up. A real back up would have to be stored off site some where. For instance UnRaid will not help if your house burns down.


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## ghost rider (Dec 29, 2010)

Thanks for clarifying that. You have me interested but is there a system set up for USB drives? I have 12 tb worth of drives. I’m not starting over.


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## Mopar_Mudder (Nov 8, 2010)

You should beable to just pull the drives out of the enclosers. Should be just standard SATA dives in them, maybe IDE if they are a few years old. But either way they just use standard drives with a card in the case to alow them to be used over USB.

Here is the UnRaid site http://lime-technology.com/
UnRaid Forum http://lime-technology.com/forum/


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## ghost rider (Dec 29, 2010)

yes I'm aware of that fact. Today I just removed the sata drive from a Seagate usb drive that has been acting up. One time before the usb interface went bad and I removed the IDE drive and it's still working today. Time will tell if the Seagate is ok.

Pulling the drives will be my option but for now I'm going to stick with plan A. I just got permission to buy the 6tb drive.

By the way nice home theater:4stars:. I think when I die and go to heaven it still may not be as nice as yours.:unbelievable:


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## Mopar_Mudder (Nov 8, 2010)

I am sure it will work good for you. When you fill it up you can look back into the raid option again, trust me you will fill it


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## ghost rider (Dec 29, 2010)

Yes it works very well. I'm not having any of the problems some Mac users were having. I think the big problem was the drive going to sleep and if I'm watching a movie the drive is always working.

I think as I guessed I will have about another year before the drive is full. The unraid option looks good but I still am unable to fully understand how it works (it may be futile to try and explain) 

As it is now I am 100% backed up and I have the originals. All 3 are at the same location so in the event of a fire I will lose it all. What we are talking about is HD failure and it took me a full 9 hours to copy a 1tb drive via usb. In the event of a total drive failure failing in a very short time frame there is no way the system will fully retrieve all files.

What types of failures actually happen? I have had 2 that I can remember both were usb interface to the drive, both drives are still working. My guess is that it is actually very rare that a drive completely instantly fails and the unraid system is seldom put to the test.


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## Twin_Rotor (Jan 1, 2012)

The RAID wiki will help you out.. What Mopar is refering to is RAID 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_5 Simply put, a piece of control data is put on everydrive. The fith "parity" drive keeps them in order. If one drive, including the parity drive, fails, the controller(or software) can rebuild the failed drive with the pieces from each other drive.

I would, however, spend the extra dough on a hardware based NAS RAID enclosure, if you do decide to go that route. 

If the Network Attached SATA enclosure is too pricey, there are some SAS enclousers a bit cheaper, but require direct control from a computer(SCSI adapter).


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## Mopar_Mudder (Nov 8, 2010)

I have actually have 3 hard drive just up and quit on me in the last 5 years. None of course were on me server, they were all single hard drives in desktops. Just wouldn't boot up one moring, even sent one in to a recovery service and they couldn't get anything off it. So it does happen.


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## Twin_Rotor (Jan 1, 2012)

Its always the luck of the draw with harddisk. A 3 month old 2.5" 500GB WD crapped out on me; no spindle motor. But I also have four SCSI Atlas V 10,000RPM drives that have run 24/7 since late 2001. The only drives I've had real trouble out of are SCSI class Fujitsu. Bought 10 37GB 10,000RPM drives 2 years ago and have one left.. They were 6 years old when I bought them.


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