Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Cheapest NAS

sigwait.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 308 posts

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#31

Post by theshrike79 »

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

Tailscale works perfectly for remote access, I do "backups" with rsync over VPN nightly to an offsite location.

Syncthing over Tailscale is running smoothly too, it doesn't matter where my machines move, they find each other using the same internal address every time.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#32

Post by theshrike79 »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for ECC.

I've had non-ECC NAS systems for over 20 years and I've had exactly zero cases where memory corruption was an issue.

It's OK for corporate systems, but complete overkill for personal setups.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#33

Post by aborsy »

sockaddr wrote: post #14
jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

> And how are you accessing it when away from home? I usually just use zerotier for this, it's extremely lightweight

I use Tailscale, but I’m amazed that the size of the ZeroTier app is 2.6 MB versus 23MB for Tailscale.

How come ZeroTier is 10X smaller?

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#35

Post by Dylan16807 »

jnovek wrote: post #16
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for ECC.

> so make sure to have backups Can you (or someone) suggest a backup scheme? I have a 28TB NAS. Almost everything I've looked into is expensive or intended more for enterprise tier. Are there options for backup in the "hobbyist" price range?

AWS, GCP, and Azure all offer cold storage for about $1 per TB per month. If you want any cheaper you need to build a second NAS.

You could also take the awkward route and add one or two large drives to your desktop, mirror there, and back that up to backblaze (not B2).

The other suggestions you got for hot storage strike me as the wrong way to handle this, if you're considering $80 per year per TB for backups then just make another NAS.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#36

Post by theshrike79 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #22
coconut08 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

been using zfs on my home nas without ecc for well over a decade and never had any problems. i've seen people claiming this since before i started using zfs and it seems so unnecessary for some random home project.

Unless you've verified hashes of your files over time you may be having problems and not realizing it.

If a single byte flips in a 4-10GB video file, nobody will ever notice it.

There aren't that many cases where it actually matters.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#37

Post by loeg »

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

I just use NFS on the LAN. No remote access.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#38

Post by loeg »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #22
coconut08 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

been using zfs on my home nas without ecc for well over a decade and never had any problems. i've seen people claiming this since before i started using zfs and it seems so unnecessary for some random home project.

Unless you've verified hashes of your files over time you may be having problems and not realizing it.

I believe ZFS does periodic checksuming (scrubbing).

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#39

Post by eric__cartman »

hitsurume wrote: post #17
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for ECC.

I know ECC is a special type of ram, but how does it help a NAS/Raid setup?

If you're unlucky enough to experience memory errors in one of the intermediate buffers files go through while being copied from one computer to another an incorrect copy of the file might get written to disk.

When running software RAID, memory errors could also cause data to be replicated erroneously and raise an error the next time it's read. That said if the memory is flaky enough that these errors are common it's highly likely that the operating system will crash very frequently and the user will know something is seriously wrong.

If you want to make sure that files have been copied correctly you can flush all kernel buffers and run diff -r between the source and destination directory to make sure that everything is the same.

It's probably way more likely to experience data loss due to human error or external factors such as a power surge than bad ram. I personally thoroughly test the memory before a computer gets put into service and assume it's okay until something fails or it gets replaced. The only machine I've ever seen that would corrupt random data on a disk was heavily and carelessly overclocked (teenage me cared about getting moar fps in games, and not having a reliable workstation lol)

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#40

Post by loeg »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #24

Is there any NAS software that just lets you add disks whenever you want, while using them for redundancy if they aren't full? I wish something was as easy as adding another disk and having the redundancy go up, then removing a disk and having the redundancy go down.

Windows Storage Spaces kinda works like this.
Post reply on HN