jimzak wrote:
> I'm currently using a laptop with 4 external 2 TB drives for storage of
> 215,000 Flac and MP3 files.
>
> Things are a bit unwieldy and backup is time consuming. Each drive
> takes 12-24 hours to backup over USB 2.0.
>
> I need to add another drive soon as I am running over about 7 TB of
> actual files.
>
> Any ideas as to what would be a more efficient system for storage and
> backup (and possibly the server)???
>
Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but my general thoughts are that you
should separate:
1. LMS server
2. Storage
3. Backup
These three things have very different needs.
For LMS server, you want to use a computer for best performance. It can
be a small, silent computer or a old used cheap computer, both these
alternatives are generally significantly better than running LMS on a
NAS. Even if the NAS is powerful today, you will eventually end up in a
situation where you need to purchase a complete new NAS just because you
need more CPU or memory and this gets expensive.
For storage, a NAS is perfect, it's extensible and it's easy to add more
storage when you need it. Just make sure you select one with enough
drive slots so it's easy to extend it with more storage as you need. I
would personally warn you a bit regarding using RAID, with RAID you
typically need exactly the same hard drives in all slots and while this
is easy when you initially set it up, it can be hard to purchase new
drives later since the ones you purchased initially might no longer be
sold at that time. Look for JBOD support, which most NAS boxes support,
that makes it possible to expose the drives as individual drives and you
can add drives of different types to the NAS box when you need more
storage. RAID sounds good, but it does NOT replace backup as some people
seems to think. Also, pretty much all times I've been involved in a
setup with RAID where a disk has crashed it has result in that the
system has become more or less useless during the time it takes to
re-build the RAID when you replace a crashed disk. It might be that the
setups I've seen has been setup the wrong way or have incapable RAID
support, but I just want to warn you a bit about it so you don't think
RAID solves all the problems. If you are willing to purchase all the
storage initially, using RAID can make a bit more sense because then you
can always make sure to purchase exactly the same drives, just be a
aware that you have to be a bit selective when you select the hard
drives because some have issues in RAID setups.
For backup you want to use something different than the original NAS.
Main reason for this is that you don't want the backup to be in the same
box as you main storage in case of fire or power malfunctions as it can
easily destroy both your main storage and your backup at the same time.
It can be a good idea to use a NAS also for backup if you need a lot of
storage, but separate USB/e-SATA drives is also a solution. It's
important that you have an incremental backup scheme so you don't need
to backup everything every time, backing up just the changes will be a
lot faster and then it's also feasible to do the backup over the network
or a slower USB connection.
My personal setup consists of:
- A Linux based server computer running LMS in a VirtualBox virtual
machine
- A QNAP 409 Pro NAS storing the music files, drives configured as
single drives (JBOD), mounted via NFS
- An external USB drive where the music files are backed up using an
rsync based backup solution(dirvish) automatically every night
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets (both free and commercial)'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland).
If you like to encourage future presence on this forum and/or third
party plugin/applet development, 'consider purchasing some plugins'
(http://license.isaksson.info))
You may also want to try my Android apps 'Squeeze Display'
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.isaksson.squeezedisplay)
and 'RSS Photo Show'
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.isaksson.rssphotoshow)
*Interested in the future of music streaming ? 'ickStream - A world of
music at your fingertips'
(http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?98467-Pre-Announcement-ickStream&p=743516)*.
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