Hi,
I'm looking to get some confirmation for my storage strategy from some of the experts here. I currently have the following setup:
- HP N54L Microserver (4 bays)
- 1TB + 2TB = 1TB RAID1 for data (mostly owncloud synced storage, personal photos, transmission downloads)
- 3TB for media (films and TV shows, music, no redundancy)
I've just ordered another 3Tb drive. My first intention was to set up a RAID5 array
- 2TB + 3TB + 3TB = 4TB RAID5 for data and media
- 1TB for backup
However, I've been reading about RAID5 and Snapraid and pooling, and have been thinking that RAID5 might not be a wise choice for redundancy.
Can I do something like this with Snapraid and Mergerfs ?
- 1TB + 2TB + 3TB as snapraid data disks/under mergerfs = a single 6TB pool
- 3TB snapraid parity disk
If I go this route, should I create the 6TB mergerfs pool first and then apply snapraid, or do I create the snapraid array first and then apply mergerfs to the data disks ?
Can I pool disks that already have data on them with mergerfs without losing the data, or does mergerfs wipe the drives ?
Will a 3TB parity disk be enough for the 6TB mergerfs pool ?
Will my data be recoverable if any of those drives dies?
Can I later grow the array by just sticking a new 3TB in place of the old 1TB drive?
Is the data easily readable on the individual data drives if the NAS dies and I want to just plug them individually into any old PC that doesn't have mergerfs and snapraid?
I plan to run the snapraid backup every night. Since snapraid is mostly for large multimedia files, should I exclude owncloud synced data and transmission temporary files from the snapraid backup, or will I just lose the latest non-backed-up versions of those files if something goes wrong with a drive (which is acceptable for me) ?
Thanks for the input.