Storage Solutions Hdd movement to NAS box

[nfsnfs]

Hi Team

Need some advice

Have a desktop with ,normal sata hdds, 2 tb each , it has data. And primary sata ssd for OS. This desktop I am thinking to retire. I got a laptop.

Thinking of NAS box , like Asustor , which has both hdd bay and nvme m.2 slots ( this will be for future ).

Questions

1. Can I straight away remove and move desktop hdss , 2TB each to NAS box ? Or does it need to prepared like wiped clean , then prepare and then move the data when put in the NAS box?

2. I have 2 more 500 GB SATA hdds lying around , I plan to connect and move some data from them or use these hdds as torrent dumps. Can I hot swap these hdds also in nas ?

3. Do NAS need special hdds ? Or does normal hdds also work ?

I will be using this as pure data backup box , 90 % of time switched off and accessed only by laptop or mobile.

 

[salman8506]

Hi Team

Need some advice

Have a desktop with ,normal sata hdds, 2 tb each , it has data. And primary sata ssd for OS. This desktop I am thinking to retire. I got a laptop.

Thinking of NAS box , like Asustor , which has both hdd bay and nvme m.2 slots ( this will be for future ).

Questions

1. Can I straight away remove and move desktop hdss , 2TB each to NAS box ? Or does it need to prepared like wiped clean , then prepare and then move the data when put in the NAS box?

2. I have 2 more 500 GB SATA hdds lying around , I plan to connect and move some data from them or use these hdds as torrent dumps. Can I hot swap these hdds also in nas ?

3. Do NAS need special hdds ? Or does normal hdds also work ?

I will be using this as pure data backup box , 90 % of time switched off and accessed only by laptop or mobile.

1. Can I straight away remove desktop hdss , 2TB each to NAS box ? Or does it need to prepared like wiped clean , then prepare and then move the data when put in the NAS box? - Nas os will most likely ask you what type of raid setup you want and clean the drive for you, so ensure to backup your data before you attempt this.

2. I have 2 more 500 GB SATA hdds lying around , I plan to connect and move some data from them or use these hdds as torrent dumps. Can I hot swap these hdds also in nas ? You can setup multiple seperate raids and jbos(sngle hdd) which should let you do what you want.

3. Do NAS need special hdds ? Or does normal hdds also work ? - Normal ones work, Enterprise hdd's are preferred due to their robust nature and more protection from vibrations of running multiple drives in close proximity.

 

[KAKAN]

To expand on #2 a bit more, hot swapping might not work if you're running RAID configuration, and for most normal cases, drives might need to be of similar sizes, so it might not be possible to use it along with the 2TB ones.

Also, it might be worthwhile to just use your PC as a NAS/storage solution instead of buying an ASUSTor or QNAP model, especially if one of your use cases includes data you're fine with losing (like popular movies or wikipedia backups, for example). Just keep Windows running on it and share your drives through the network.
Yes, it's not very flexible. Yes, you can do more NAS like stuff with a different OS. But, this would be a very simple way to have some network storage for the cheap. Even if you decide on getting a dedicated NAS, it might be worthwhile to use your desktop as one till your actual NAS is setup and working.

 

[guest_999]

Also, it might be worthwhile to just use your PC as a NAS/storage solution instead of buying an ASUSTor or QNAP model, especially if one of your use cases includes data you're fine with losing (like popular movies or wikipedia backups, for example). Just keep Windows running on it and share your drives through the network.
Yes, it's not very flexible. Yes, you can do more NAS like stuff with a different OS. But, this would be a very simple way to have some network storage for the cheap.

Correct but this is assuming the current pc doesn't draw too much power so something like core i3/ryzen 3 with integrated graphics is fine but running an i5/ryzen 5 with a 75w tdp (or higher) graphics card just for nas purpose is overkill & also costlier in the long run with increased electricity bill.

 

[nfsnfs]

The only person who will be using NAS would be me . This NAS will be used to archive to store photos and videos. Will be ON only when when i want to consume it or write photos to it. So this way I can retire my desktop which is very old and makes huge noise in quite setup compared to new laptop I have.

I think I need toback up all data before I move hdds to NAS .

Thanks for inputs. I thought moving to nas would be plug and play , or lift and shift , but this needs more planning.

One more important question , how do you protect NAS from viruses or ransomwares ?

Few years back Asus nas was hit by deadbolt ransomware and it encrypted all data and you had to pay Bitcoin to decrypt it.

 

[burntwingzZz]

Proxmox would be the correct way to go .You can install endless shit on it .Including NAS os of your choice Truenas / OMV etc within proxmox. And to backup proxmos baremetal installation use veeam

If you are purely thinking a network drive for dumping without raiding etc and zero planning just connect your old pc as is to network start sharing your partition and for remote access use MSTC . For remote Torrent adding use torrent client like mtorrent / qbitorrent for and you can access them using your local browser using Web gui .And to add magnet links from local computer to your remote machine use browser config like "torrent clipper"

And for critical folder/file backup you can always use "free file copy" which would sychronize network folder to local computer folder .

 

[guest_999]

Proxmox would be the correct way to go .You caan install endless shit on it .Including NAS os of your choice Truenas / OMV etc within proxmox. And to backup proxmos baremetal installation use veeam

True but that way is not for typical windows user, it requires at least an above average level of familiarity & understanding of linux based OS.

One more important question , how do you protect NAS from viruses or ransomwares ?

By not exposing your NAS to internet/outside of your home network. If someone has already breached your home network then NAS will be the least of your worries. Almost all the cases of NAS breach I have seen online happened because of NAS being accessible over internet from outside home network. If you do need NAS accessibility over internet then do proper research about how to set it up correctly.

 

[burntwingzZz]

i am g

True but that way is not for typical windows user, it requires at least an above average level of familiarity & understanding of linux based OS.


By not exposing your NAS to internet/outside of your home network. If someone has already breached your home network then NAS will be the least of your worries. Almost all the cases of NAS breach I have seen online happened because of NAS being accessible over internet from outside home network. If you do need NAS accessibility over internet then do proper research about how to set it up correctly.

i am ok with tech but not with linux but i got my way around it and running it .Some of the learnings worries /learnings

1) Proxmox bloody hell hammers your sata SSDS .On sat/sunday i intend to move proxmox baremetal from SSD to a traditional HDD.
2) Proxmox itself doesn't inherently do snapshotting to .Have to install veeam to achieve the same .Those are two gripes that i have.

 

[guest_999]

1) Proxmox bloody hell hammers your sata SSDS .On sat/sunday i intend to move proxmox baremetal from SSD to a traditional HDD.

Really?
@rsaeon

 

[rsaeon]

I've heard those stories and I have seen higher wear (writes) on my SSDs but not something that would be unreasonable (maybe, see below). Possibly because I've taken steps to reduce writes:

1. If you've configured ZFS on your host drive, then ZFS copy-on-write will increase writes. I don't use ZFS on my nodes, just a simple single-disk SSD.
2. If you over-commit your ram, the writes go up on the SSD. I have the swap partition as zero, so it's effectively disabled on all of my nodes.
3. Every VM/container you run will have log files that add up the writes, so I have logging disabled almost everywhere.

With all of that, I still change out my SSDs every few years because of wear, but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

Here's my oldest ssd in a node:

431TB written in 963 days, or about 440GB a day. This is a 512GB Samsung PM961 drive at 255% wearout (this number hasn't gone up in months, it's probably maxed out for the field type). These drives don't have a TBW rating, but the 512GB 960 EVO has a rating of 200TB. This drive was put into use before most of my optimizations.

And my newest SSD in a node:

15TB written in 65 days, or about 230GB a day. This is a 1TB Western Digital SN770 at 1% wearout (probably incorrect as well, this drive has a TBW rating of 600TB).

And something from in-between:

129TB written in 435 days, or about 295GB a day. This is a 512GB Kingston KC3000 drive at 35% wearout (probably accurate as this drive has a TBW rating of 400TB).

All three drives are in systems with identical workloads, a few thousand docker containers each that scrape the web.

2) Proxmox itself doesn't inherently do snapshotting to .Have to install veeam to achieve the same .Those are two gripes that i have.

Proxmox Backup Server should make that easier, but I haven't yet gotten around to trying it out. Instead, I made my VMs such that they can be easily rebuilt and the data that I do care about is on redundant storage (at least two full, disconnected copies with daily backups).

 

[superczar]

1) Proxmox bloody hell hammers your sata SSDS .On sat/sunday i intend to move proxmox baremetal from SSD to a traditional HDD.

Not unless you overcommit resources.
Also needless to say, use a decent SSD and not a super low end one for a PC that is going to host multiple machines

This is a 1TB 980 Pro (nvme) running 4VMs and 4 CTs in full cycle duty. This particular SSD has been in use since around mid 2022 so I dont really think I have to worry about any longevity issues here

 

[KAKAN]

Disabling logging is not something I prefer doing, so instead I just store them in RAM and it gets discarded after some time automatically, or after restarts. That's kinda custom and hard to maintain, but here's an alternative

https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

It's used for Raspberry Pis to make sure the SD Card is not hammered with logs, but it should work on your Proxmox VMs too. That being said, I just use HDDs for most tasks and SSDs for workstation tasks. One of my cheap SSDs without SMART support has probably gone 10x it's TBW probably, with around 0.6 drive writes per day since the last year, and it's still working. I'll probably lose data on it if I switch the server off for a couple days tho, so it's used more like a temporary drive for testing and some light working purposes now


That being said, I would NOT recommend setting up Proxmox with TrueNAS/OMV etc for someone who's looking to buy a ready made NAS

1. It's too high of a technical jump
2. For most of them, just using the Windows network share should be "good enough", although not reliable in the long term and they've to manage backups manually.

 

[ibose]

The OP's use case appears to be just file sharing. If that is the case stick to Windows shares or any easy to use lightweight Linux distro with Samba.
OMV is also easy enough to install and use, if other NAS functionalities are needed.
Else if there is some familiarity with Linux fu, then even this will suffice -

File Server | TurnKey GNU/Linux

An easy to use file server that combines Windows-compatible network file sharing with a web based file manager. TurnKey File Server includes support for SMB, SFTP, NFS, WebDAV and rsync file transfer protocols. The server is configured to allow server users to manage files in private or public...

www.turnkeylinux.org