Hello,
I'm new here, and after few days of reading I feel that now I can ask some questions. But first the story.
Few days ago my Mac "informed me" that it will not be happy if I'll do another "vagrant up" on 128GB SSD. So I bought 256GB and I'll be moving soon.
I have 1TB drive also inside this machine and that's where I had 100GB partition for Windows 8.1 and 128GB for Carbon Copy Cloner and rest for DATA (movies ETC).
Now, when I have spare 128GB SSD I'll move Windows there and actually I can have free 1TB drive.
Because I don't mind to have my Mac/Laptop/Whatever unoperative for 1/2/8 hours I don't need bootable CCC copy on internal disk (or just can Buy cheap, used 250/320GB SATA for this).
That's where I started to think about NAS.
Firstly I've checked that 2-disk Synology/Qnap can be bougt in Poland for around $170 w/o drives but I realy like to play with software/hardware than I started thinking about something more.
I found HP N40L with 4GB ram for $110 and I think that this will be best buy.
What I'm planning to do is to buy 3TB drive and use 1TB as a backup one.
On my Mac I just want to have 256GB SSD and use it for Work/Programming/Photo editing (PHP/Symfony and multiple Vagrant boxes on this SSD for speed+NFS and using PHPStorm IDE locally) + have CaptureONE (something like Aperture/Lightroom but IMO better) installed.
Have additionaly a Windows 7 laptop, few android phones, iPad and planning to build OpenELEC HTPC in future.
- Now on 3TB drive I want to make a share for:
- Mac Time Machine,
- XBMC or just media Library (So Movies, TV Shows and Processed photos - mostly 3Mpix),
- Capture One library (RAW format photos + metadata),
- Documents for each Family Members
- Itunes library,
- Carbon Copy Cloner copy
Than I want to use 1TB "backup disk" to rsync (?) Time Machine data (for backup), Capture One Library (Raw) and Documents and Itunes. I don't mind to eventually lose Movies (no big deal so no backup there ;))
I don't want to use RAID because - as i said - I wouldn't mind to be unoperational for few hours when restoring backup and IMO RAID1/5 for home use is overkill.
Now the questions.
- If in the "future" I'll need to add another drive can it be merged with existing one so for example Media Share (Movies/Tv Shows/Photos in it) can grow to this new disk as it would be whole 6TB space? Is this easy to add JBOD (?) combined drive on the fly or is it as complicated as growing RAID 5 Matrix? I just want to grow in small steps when I need
- If answer for 1 is "Yes You can" combine new disks incrementally than if one fails I'll lose only it's data and rest is accesible?
- What's the best approach on OMV to have centralized iTunes library (music) - just make a share and copy/paste library? Or maybe something centralized? Streamed? (iPad/Mac and even Windows will like it).
- Does rsync is best approach to "cherry pick" things for backup on this 1TB? I need to make separate shares there or what's the advice?
- Does my idea to not have RAID and just use one drive for backuping important data can work? (When 1TB will be to small I'll just insert bigger one for this purpose)
- Does any share can be rsynced to backup drive (especially Time Machine may need some magic - rest is just files)
- Does HP N40L suit my needs as described above?
- Will such setup consume alot of power? (people reporting 30-35W avarage and it's OK IMO)
I think that's all for now.
