8TB Drive Recommendation for Core

Keler Pierre posted:

Cbr600 posted:

As the owner and user of a core with the barracuda drive, I assure you the core is designed with a carrier to take a 3.5 hdd (or a smaller ssd).

having existing 18tb nas drives, I wanted as large a hdd as I could get, for future proofing 

ok, didn't know it would work, because naim recommends 2,5 . 

Sorry but you are misreading the Naim guidance. They recommend 2.5 SSD and 3.5HDD, and seagate is one of those recommended

jon honeyball posted:

A couple of replies in one here:

NAS -- any nas needs a second nas as a backup anyway.

Whats core good for? well it streams spdif into NDAC, which is what it is doing in my system. I'm not using it for rip or storage at present. 

Jon, yes in principle, a second back up should be used in case of total failure, but if using a nas with multi drives and depending on the Raid configuration, you can have a drive failure and the system will rebuild the drive, and also option of hot swappable drives. 

I have run a 6 bay nas with 3 tb drives and Raid 5 for some years now. I have had a single drive fail, and on replacement, system rebuilt data on new drive no issues.

Yes the NDX was using its DAC

Cbr600 posted:

jon honeyball posted:

A couple of replies in one here:

NAS -- any nas needs a second nas as a backup anyway.

Whats core good for? well it streams spdif into NDAC, which is what it is doing in my system. I'm not using it for rip or storage at present. 

Jon, yes in principle, a second back up should be used in case of total failure, but if using a nas with multi drives and depending on the Raid configuration, you can have a drive failure and the system will rebuild the drive, and also option of hot swappable drives. 

I have run a 6 bay nas with 3 tb drives and Raid 5 for some years now. I have had a single drive fail, and on replacement, system rebuilt data on new drive no issues.

So what happens when the psu dies and takes out the backplane?

Or there is a software fault which lunches the RAID? I well remember enterprise Dell raids where the act of plugging in a new drive to replace a dead one caused the raid controller to take out the entire raid. Ooops.

Mike-B posted:

jon honeyball posted:

NAS -- any nas needs a second nas as a backup anyway.

Not strictly true,  yes 100% a backup is very important & I would not risk being without,  but it hasn't got to be another NAS.  

it does if you want equal (or preferably larger) size in order to hold multiple versioned snapshots, and have the protection of raid

it does if you want equal (or preferably larger) size in order to hold multiple versioned snapshots, and have the protection of raid

RAID doesn't offer protection, it offers convenience in the case of a single point of failure i.e, a hard drive. It certainly doesn't provide backup if a controller or power supply failure wipes out both disks, or f the NAS is stolen or destroyed by fire.

I have a single disk NAS (an old mini PC actually) backed up to two different portable 4tb USB drives, one of which is always off site (in the server room at work). This gives at least 2 different snapshots and covers all scenarios apart from triple disk failure and disaster at both home and work.

Yes in the case of disk failure, I don't have the convenience of simply changing a disk, I have to leave a restore from backup running overnight.

Agree with all those points. Also, the RAID that Synology, QNap etc use is not a hardware based raid that is used in enterprise class servers. It is software mdadm Linux based raid. That is why they prompt to do manual scrubbings and the like to ensure integrity. There are so many ways for this to become corrupt of fail; it's generally reliable but it is not a backup and in fact not much less risky than a single drive scenario.

Bart posted:

intothevoid posted:

jon honeyball posted:

im not sure of the benefits of the internal drive -- you will need to back it up to an external anyway. It whacks up the power consumption. why not just use storage on an external nas?

so what's the point of Core in that use case? Struggling to understand its relevance.

1. You're not the first to question it's relevance.

2. Any hard drive needs to be backed up.  The relevance issue is unrelated to whether it's a device that needs to be backed up. 

OK - so the question has been asked ...

Remember that some users don't want to "mess around" (as they see it) with networks and NAS's - the thought scares them. For those users Core can be fitted with an internal hard disc and backed up to a USB attached hard disc which can be disconnected if they wish and put away in a drawer (or wherever) for safe keeping.

RAID on NASs is only a way of ensuring the best possible availability of data - it is not "Backup" - but in practical terms mirroring drives in a two bay NAS will generally cover most people's requirements as it is pretty rare for NASs themselves to fail (yes, I know it's not unknown but it is rare) and the only instance I've come across of a NetGear ReadyNAS Duo failing ended up with the ReadyNAS being replaced under warranty (it was only a week or so old) and the unit simply picked up the "old" drives from the failed unit when they were plugged into the new one.

Having said that - if you want to be properly covered then any repository of data should be backed up to a separate device - whether that's backing up your NAS to a USB hard disc or another NAS. How far you want to go with this is up to you to decide - myself I tend to work on the following schema (which I'm sure I have posted up here previously)...

For my media collections the movies NAS (8 x 6TB drives as RAID5) and the music NAS (4 x 4TB drives as RAID 5) are both snapshotted once a week to a 24-bay 4U rack mount server. That server is currently in my home (so if the place burns down then currently I will lose both) but usually the backup server lives in a shed on a programmed timer so that at least gives a measure of physical separation. For more personal data (photos and documents etc.) I have a reciprocal arrangement with a friend where we both have a couple of 8TB NASs that remotely sync between our respective homes and those NASs are expanded in capacity as need demands so I act as a remote backup for his data and he acts as a remote backup for mine.

Best

Phil

If indeed the Core is meant to offer an integrated a better audio dedicated ripping, storing and serving solution via S/PDIF, how can it do it better that the Serve that is recognized to offer a better SQ via network? Or in other terms what was wrong with the Serve S/PDIF connection in the first place except for its PSU? 

Chag -