RAID1 a bad idea? Setting up OMV5

For the past few years I've been running my Plex server from my main desktop with 2xWD Red 2TB drives in a RAID1 as the main datastore.

I recently upgraded my desktop and moved the old board into the guest room and installed OMV5. I have a 320GB HDD as boot, and I'm going to once again use Plex (docker/portainer) and the 2x2TB drives as the datastore.

I'm just now setting it all up and I'm reading that a two-disk RAID mirror under OMV may not be worth it. I don't have another good backup solution. I do have a spare 1TB drive that's not doing anything. (WD Blue).

I won't really have anything on the datastore that's irreplaceable, just downloaded movies that I can re-download if the worst happened. I would probably keep a backup of my favorites on another drive somewhere.

Before I get into the setup (I literally just installed OMV5 and did updates and that's it), what do we think? I think i've answered my own question...

Zitat von Agricola

1. Buy two 32gig thumb drives and install OMV on one of them. SanDisk Ultra Fit is perfect.
2. As soon as you get a stable install make a backup using the second thumb drive. Test it by booting with it. Back up your system regularly.
3. Create all of your data shares on one disk.
4. Use Rsync to create a mirror image of your data disk with the second disk.

This guide beginning on page 58 will be the best advice you ever receive on this forum.

I like this idea. I'm assuming I can't backup the boot drive while it's running - I'll have to take it to my desktop and pull an iso. (not a big deal).

I like the idea of the scheduled job - although I would probably run the rsync weekly without --delete and then run another job with the --delete argument every couple months.

Thanks!

Side note: how does the NanoPi do with transcoding video for Plex?

Zitat von Agricola

That’s correct. Usually when there has been a major update I will shut down and back up the boot drive. I will save the three previous backups on my computer. I always clone the backup too and make it the boot drive until the next backup.

Scheduled jobs are great. Sounds like you understand how Rsync works. Good.

The NanoPi doesn’t have the muscle to do that. I transcode manually on my desktop machine. I like it that was because in my workflow I edit out commercials at the same time. In the opening chapters of guide I linked to there is a brief discussion of requirements for transcoding. I’m not sure but I think you might need an i3 or i5 intel processor to do that on the server.

Yeah, I'm getting some problems that I don't quite understand when trying to boot to my 320gb HDD, so I ordered 2x32GB SanDisk USB drives that will arrive tomorrow.

Is it common for OMV to have booting problems after a reboot? I shut down to move some things around, reconnected everything and am now getting an MBR error when I boot. If I don't have the drives hooked up to the exact same SATA ports they were on at first, will the OS lose them? I want to get all this business sorted out before I start putting media on it. I'm reading through the guide you linked, thanks for your help.