Re: Which RAID for home NAS? (a classic UKHA question...!)

["John Bent john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [ukha_d]" <ukha_d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tim,

I suspect there's no right or wrong answer, as every RAID level has its
benefits and drawbacks, but I've always stuck with RAID5. For me it offered
the right mix of capacity, redundancy and flexibility. My array has
actually grown as you describe over the years - it started out as 4 x 3TB
drives and is now 4 x 6TB drives as they have been gradually replaced over
the years.

All done while the array is online with no data loss - though as you know
RAID isn't an excuse for not having a proper backup. Also my experience is
with an actual Linux server rather than a NAS, but I presume that decent
NAS software should offer all the same bells and whistles as the Linux RAID
driver.

Regards,

John


On 02/12/2019 21:54, Tim Hawes timsyahoo@xxxxxxx [ukha_d] wrote: > I
have a 4-bay QNAP NAS box (TS-420) with 2x 4TB drives configured as a >
mirror (RAID 1). > This is now full (more or less).. > I thought I
would buy two more (but larger, 6TB) drives and add those as > a new
mirrored pair. I thought I could simply add them and the 4TBs > would
mirror each other, and the 6TBs would mirror each other too. After >
some reading this would be configured as two separate RAID groups and >
joined via a "storage pool", so not quite as simple, but pretty
much > what I thought. > Total nominal storage would be 10 TB. >
> However, RAID 5 would get me 12TB nominal (4x 4TB - 4TB) with the 6TB
> drives identifying as 4TBs within the array. Full 6TB capacity of the
> new drives would be realised when I replace the existing 4TB drives.
> > So it looks like RAID 5 is the way to go? > I like the fault
tolerance that RAID provides but recognise that in > itself it
's not a complete backup solutio
n. > > RAID 6 is higher fault tolerance but lower capacity. RAID 10
(or 01) is > pretty much the "storage pool" solution I was
originally planning. > > Is there something obvious that I've missed,
or is it RAID 5? > > Thanks, > Tim. > >


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Posted by: John Bent <john@xxxxxxx>
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