More than once I've had a second disk fail during a RAID 5 rebuild losing the entire raid. I now use RAID 10 more often because of the lighter rebuild load compared to RAID 5.
1 Like
It doesn't matter if the rebuild fails raid 5 can run a disk down so you put in another disk and restart the rebuild. Not site what your problem was maybe old obsolete raid 5 s/w
if a second disk dies during the restore yes you are sol .. for important stuff like that i run raid 5 with a hot spare so you can have up to 3 disks fail. as long as you replace the one while it is rebuilding.
I can’t agree more about the value of off-site backups. Fifteen years ago, the office next to mine had an electrical fire in the ceiling on a Friday night. The firewalls held, but water from the fire hoses destroyed everything (good filing cabinets preserved most papers, but furniture and electronics were lost). Off-site backup DAT tapes saved all data, we were back up and operating on Monday morning with new computers, server, etc.; tapes restored everything, no data lost. It’s not a question of if it will happen to you, but when.
2 Likes
If your comfortable building a machine take a look at unraid.
I have an old synology DS411 with 4 drives using synology hybrid raid(SHR). I had a failure after the drives were 3 years old. Two of them failed within a week of each other. I was able to rebuild and restore all my data though. I have found the software easy to use and the NAS rock solid. I have a large movie collection that I play smoothly using an Nvidia Shield Pro and Plex media server.
Great, I am glad to hear that you restored all of your data. I just hope I have as good an experience as you have had. If I may ask, what brand of drives crapped out after just 3 years?
Synology NAS. Love it. Use it for Docker too.
2 Likes
I seem to be the only one in this thread so far using TrueNAS Core, which most people probably know as FreeNAS (the name for the same product in version 11 and before; 12 was just released). My reasons are mostly philosophical, preferring open-source software and my own hardware instead of potentially being locked into one particular vendor. Along those lines, I also looked at OpenMediaVault but went with TrueNAS Core just because some features I wanted were more easily accessible there.
I also tried a bit of an even-more DIY approach with Debian or Ubuntu Server and just something to make it easier like Webmin running on top, but something dedicated to NAS usage was a bit easier for me to manage. Neither is particularly easy as all require a bit of management, and honestly it's a bit tricky for me sometimes with TrueNAS because it's FreeBSD-based and not Linux-based like I'm used to (and like OpenMediaVault is), but I've managed to learn. 
If I didn't want to do quite as much of this myself, I'd probably get something like Synology (which it seems like lots of people above are using) or QNAP. FreeNAS/TrueNAS is probably a bit overkill for home use, but it's definitely meets my requirements (aside from still trying to figure out how to get a good backup it--most of the users in their forums don't seem to be using it in small environments with backup methods practical for home users, like an external drive you could connect, perhaps then moving off site, at will). But on the bright side, to run it within the recommended specs, I got a cheap and yet pretty powerful HPE server that I'm also using (via FreeBSD jails or TrueNAS plugins) to run other things I used to do in a Pi or VM, like Home Assistant, my UniFi controller software, my home VPN server, my Plex Server (also using TrueNAS for storage), NodeRED (trying to learn, though still haven't found a good use for it), and pretty much anything that's either already available to me in plug-in form or that I can figure out how to use on BSD in a world where almost all instructions assume Debian or at least Linux.
Synology... Been with them for years, never lost a byte, easy to set up and use, tons of features.
For a truly useful Synology forum go here:
3 Likes
I have 4 Synology NAS units (2 primary ds15xx's and 2 secondary (dx15xx). Total 100 tb and growing. Virtually unstoppable as long as i stay off them.
Alan
1 Like
Thanks for the reply. It looks like you have it all figured out. My knowledge of NAS is not quite as extensive as yours. I think Synology is going to be my choice.
Thanks for the link to synoforum. I did not know there was another forum for Synology. As I said, I got no replies from the Synology community. I guess I thought all forums would be as helpful as this one. I was wrong.
I think you have a lot more data than I ever will. Good luck.
There are nice helpful people there, like there are here. If you ask them for help on deciding on a model and amount of storage, type of RAID, how to migrate to the NAS, etc., they will assist you.
Thanks, I will give them a shot.
I use unraid as my main file server. And back it up to a synology nas (and select stuff to the cloud - a TB or so to google drive).
If I were to go traditional nas only (aka no Unraid), it would be synology.
1 Like
I have used various commercial Nas devices. The issue is always that you are at the mercy of the oem for updates. What I'm moving towards is truenas. I currently have it set up to do backups on all my computers using urbackup. I plan to set up another data pool for my media files and user shares.
TrueNAS is good too. I never liked FreeNAS, as BSD based systems always seem to be a thorn in my side in terms of drivers and support.
But TrueNAS being Debian based is right up my alley.
1 Like
Truenas is still FreeBSD based. You are thinking of SCALE which is currently in development.
I never had issues with Truenas/Freenas support, I have been using Freenas for over 10 years at this point and its been pretty stable for the most part.
I found the jails one of the best things about Freenas, mainly that they were so much lighter then running a dedicated VM.
1 Like
