Drivepool

[VJ]

Hello,

I know Umfriend uses DrivePool.... I'm looking at StableBit DrivePool to finally properly organize my data. Does it support FTP out of the box or do you need the CloudDrive in addition to do this? CloudDrive might be interesting to store some very important data on a cloud (Box/dropbox), so maybe it is worth getting it.
Is there any point in getting the scanner? (although if getting DrivePool and Clouddrive, the package deal makes sense).

I have an old DLink NAS which is End Of Support. Its SMB version is obsolete (Windows automatically removes support for this version when you add it), so I use it only via FTP access as a manual target. It seems like an ideal candidate for storing duplicates of data using DrivePool... It is not very fast but as I understand that does not matter for DrivePool as it reads from the fastest disk. I also can repurpose an old router with a few USB harddisks to offer additional drives.

How does DrivePool/CloudDrive react if it e.g. an ftp target or other drive is not available? Does it copy data to it as soon as it comes online?

Up to know I was messing up with SnapRAID, but I need to safeguard my data better. Nothing happened (well, my phone died, I nearly lost all the photos on it), but I need to properly take care of my data. Currently thinking of a central computer with DrivePool/CloudDrive, every other computer (laptop/mobile) using Syncthing to synchronize important data with this central computer (and thus it gets duplicated over the drivepool).


Jörg

[Umfriend]

On holiday trekking, happy only incidental. So short.
DP only supports local drives unless you have clouddrive (which emulates a local NTFS drive afaik). I have no clouddrive but I seem to remember it took them some time to get it to work reliably.
My impression is, it is not a product to try and then at fail start to RTFM.
They have a board community.covecube.com I think to ask people, not sure how active it is now.
I do recommend Scanner if only because it will trigger evacuation.

Also, CD is not a Dropbox /cloyd replacement to which you can connect from various clients circ.

[UtwigMU]

The main thing to consider is file system.

NTFS is really old and does not support copy on write, scrubbing and resilvering. What you want is ZFS or BTRFS.

As for the box:
If you don't want to tinker get a Synology, does Linux mdraid and BTRFS. A 4-bay will cost you 400-500 EUR but you can also get a 2-bay for 200-300 and 2 large drives. Very long support with updates, great backup for Windows, VMware - restore entire VM or just some files. Online RAID level migration. Also many applications for streaming to TV, etc, can run containers and VMs although a bit wonky.

You can also install Linux on some NAS hardware, you will have more luck with x86 CPU.

If you do want to tinker:
You can get a case, PSU, CPU, mobo used for less than 4-bay Synology
You can reuse existing case or look into Jonsbo, Fractal, SuperChassis 721TQ-350B2

You want ECC, so Supermicro is the best choice for the motherboard, you can get mini ITX or mATX starting at 40 EUR. X9 Ivy Bridge, X10 Haswell, X11 for Intel 8-9 gen etc..
Until recently I had Ivy Bridge Pentium with 32GB ECC.
Bonus: a lot of Supermicros come with Matrox G200 for that nostalgia.
Asrock Rack and some other boards are good. Gaming board might not load SAS bios but if using truenas you will flash it in IT (through) mode anyway. Some AMD CPUs support ECC, so you can also get a Desktop/Gaming board.

If you want to transcode video for Jellyfin, Plex, etc,.. get newer Intel or Intel Arc GPU.

If you want quiet get bigger slower quieter fans and bigger CPU cooler.

If you need more drives than 4-6 that motherboard supports, get used SAS controller:

https://www.servethehome.com/buyers-guides/top-hardware-components-for-truenas-freenas-nas-servers/top-picks-truenas-freenas-hbas/

Starting at 30 EUR shipped

SATA SSDs are getting cheap so you might get away with 2.5" drives, otherwise Toshiba, ex Hitachi 3.5" drives have best reliability, check Backblaze blog. I had worse experience with WD Reds, 5400 RPM drives ran hotter than 7200 HGST.

As for the OS:
Truenas Scale is Debian based, is ZFS native and has nice web UI to configure everything. With ZFS you cannot do mixed size pools (additional size beyond n x smallest drive will be ignored until smallest drive is upgraded) and you cannot do raid level migration or add a drive. You can also run containers, apps, VMs although Proxmox is much better for VMs. You can also run Truenas in VM provided you pass PCIe card with drives to it (no virtual drives for production).

If you want to mix drives, then look at Unraid which is Slackware Linux based. It has a parity drive + JBOD of mixed drives.

You can also consider Proxmox or plain Linux + Samba.

Microsoft is really poor OS choice for a NAS since for example Windows Defender will delete your crack for Unreal Tournament 1999. It also uses a lot more resources.

You can run FTP on all Linux based OS-es but I would use scp/winscp/rsync instead. FTP is security risk.

For cloud backup check Hetzner storage box 4 EUR / month for 1TB.

[VJ]

I want to tinker a bit... mainly to keep it affordable, but I don't want to too complicated as it should be reliable and manageable. The drivepool solution looks nice, and every now and then I look at it again... but now I'm thinking differently. I know a dedicated NAS would be the easiest, but feel I have too much hardware as it is and just need to get to it to configure it properly (and get rid of some hardware first).

My current HTPC is an Intel 4970k on an Z97 mainboard running Windows 10. Support for Windows 10 is ending next year, and while I know one can install Windows 11, the Windows 11 Insider Build 27686 (Canary) removed the possibility to use /product server to ignore the lack of TPM2.0. There are still other workarounds but if MS starts messing with that, it would be better to not plan around Windows 11 on an unsupported system.

As such, I'm playing with the idea of upgrading the HTPC to something newer, and repurposing the 4970k as a server. I have the case from my dual Xeon (I still did not get rid of it), which offers ample space: it is a LianLi PC-70 tower with 4x3.5" hotswap drivebays (+ 6 internal 3.5", 2 external 3.5" and 3 external 5.25"). My idea would be to use ProxMox and host a number of servers on it: NAS, but some others for experimenting. The mainboard supports 6 sata and one SSD, so for sure enough to get started.

I'm really just missing the time for everything as always things come up... :-/

[UtwigMU]

Unless you are subscribed to streams which degrade quality on Linux I don't see a reason for Windows on an HTPC. Install Debian or Fedora with KDE, install codecs and enable auto updates. Install Brave browser to get rid of ads, VLC player and you're set. Linux now has close to 5% desktop share which is more than Mac had in 2009 after Intel transition. Bluetooth, Steam games work, Bluetooth codec support is great, you can pick best codec for your headset from right-click in systray.

The Asus Z97 does not support ECC but if you only host multimedia and do backups it should be fine for a NAS. If you're really paranoid about data, get used Supermicro with ECC. 32GB is enough for TrueNAS, I had X9 series with Ivy Bridge Pentium (one year older than your Haswell) in my NAS until this year. I mainly upgraded because I want to run more VMs and maybe Jellyfin (media server) and want more cores.

Lian Li is perfect for a NAS as these days cases with lots of drive bays and airflow over HDDs are hard to find. I also still have Chieftec with 6 3.5" and 4 5.25 bays from the same period (all slot and bay covers, original keys, nothing broken). You can get 2.5 or NVMe cages for 5.25 bays. If case is made from aluminium you can add foam on the inside of panels to reduce vibration. Get some nice new quiet fans (Noctua is great) and you're good.

[VJ]

We also game on the HTPC (just finished Shadow of the Tombraider, now playing Sable), most games we have are not available on Linux.

I know the Z97 does not support ECC, but it should be enough to serve as a hom server-platform. I'd add memory to it (now it has 8 GB, can go up to 32 GB), install proxmox and then have VMs to play with. The main reason not use the dual Xeon any more is the noise (ok, mainly from the SCSI disks, so they could be disconnected; but also cpu coolers) and lack of support for most of its hardware: keeping the data is too critical for me to leave to a badly supported system - I don't want to tinker at that level any more.

But it is nice if you can tinker with something that is not immediately critical, so first I'll have to upgrade the z97 to free up a system to play with.