Shutdown NAS daily

[KOBOUWER]

Hi, I want to build a NAS for my video footage. Already got the drives but now looking into building a home NAS. Since the NAS will be in my bedroom it will be hard to keep it running at night due to the noise. I know it's not recommended to shutdown a spinning drive but how bad is it really? Will I be able to shutdown and boot the NAS 3-4 times a week?

 

[joeschmuck]

I know it's not recommended to shutdown a spinning drive but how bad is it really? Will I be able to shutdown and boot the NAS 3-4 times a week?

As you stated, it is not recommended. What make/model are the drives? This will let someone hopefully provide you some feedback on if these are problematic or should survive. In reality, you have a warranty on your drives. If you always plan for the drives to only live as long as the warranty, you will be safe because if the drive should fail before the warranty, you can get it replaced for free.

If you are going down this path I would recommend you have high redundancy.

Buy very good quality parts, Power Supply, Motherboard, RAM, you get the point. If you buy cheap you will likely pay the price later and pay it hard. Remember this one thing, your MB, RAM, CPU should last the lifetime of your system, well over 10 years. If you have an UPS, your power supply will likely last as well.

I do not know what your use case is for the this NAS but if you wanted a quiet system, that can be done using M.2 or SSDs vice spinners. If you have some case fans making too much noise, you can lower the voltage to the fans to slow them down. If you are using SSD/M.2 you might be able to get rid of most of the case fans. This means some good planning on your part.

No, you can power your system up and down every day if you like. It is not recommended but you have a warranty on the drives. Plan to replace them at the end of the warranty and if they last longer, BONUS POINTS!

Why may a drive die faster you ask, it's the current the spindle motor used to spin the platters up. Everytime you power up the drive it induces this extra stress. Now some people "sleep" their drives and are fine. It's basically the same thing as powering of the drive and back on. It's a way for them to use less power and in some places, that can make a big saving in power costs.

Good luck.

 

[KOBOUWER]

As you stated, it is not recommended. What make/model are the drives? This will let someone hopefully provide you some feedback on if these are problematic or should survive. In reality, you have a warranty on your drives. If you always plan for the drives to only live as long as the warranty, you will be safe because if the drive should fail before the warranty, you can get it replaced for free.

If you are going down this path I would recommend you have high redundancy.

Buy very good quality parts, Power Supply, Motherboard, RAM, you get the point. If you buy cheap you will likely pay the price later and pay it hard. Remember this one thing, your MB, RAM, CPU should last the lifetime of your system, well over 10 years. If you have an UPS, your power supply will likely last as well.

I do not know what your use case is for the this NAS but if you wanted a quiet system, that can be done using M.2 or SSDs vice spinners. If you have some case fans making too much noise, you can lower the voltage to the fans to slow them down. If you are using SSD/M.2 you might be able to get rid of most of the case fans. This means some good planning on your part.

No, you can power your system up and down every day if you like. It is not recommended but you have a warranty on the drives. Plan to replace them at the end of the warranty and if they last longer, BONUS POINTS!

Why may a drive die faster you ask, it's the current the spindle motor used to spin the platters up. Everytime you power up the drive it induces this extra stress. Now some people "sleep" their drives and are fine. It's basically the same thing as powering of the drive and back on. It's a way for them to use less power and in some places, that can make a big saving in power costs.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reaction! I will be using this NAS as a storage solution since I'm a filmmaker. The setup I will be running is the following:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
Asus Dark Hero
64GB RAM - 4x16, G.SKILL
750Watt PSU Be Quiet
4x Seagate Exos X20 20TB - Raid 5
1 Boot NVME.

As you mentioned, Probably I will not run the drives longer than the 5 years warranty since I'll be moving in a couple of years and will run a server in a side room. Now it is just not possible.. Since I need loads of storage it is hard to run SSD's since it will cost me a lot more. I'll also use Noctua fans to keep the noise of the system down.

 

[Arwen]

You mention RAID-5. ZFS does not support RAID-5 but something similar called RAID-Z1. Using RAID-Z1 is not recommended with larger disks, though with backups some people think it is okay. ZFS has RAID-Z2, with 2 disks of parity, (similar to RAID-6), but, with only 4 disks, you loose half your storage.

Like many new users of TrueNAS or ZFS, we recommend reading some of the following. Others may suggest additional ones too.

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to...

www.truenas.com

Introduction to ZFS

This is a short introduction to ZFS. It is really only intended to convey the bare minimum knowledge needed to start diving into ZFS and is in no way meant to cut Michael W. Lucas' and Allan Jude's book income. It is a bit of a spiritual...

www.truenas.com

And since you have listed a consumer system board, over a server grade system board, which seems to use;

Intel® I211-AT
Realtek® RTL8125-CG 2.5G LAN

You may want to read this;

Is my Realtek ethernet really that bad?

One of the longest running issues faced here in the forums may be people who come to these forums, wanting to recycle an old PC into a NAS. In general, this is a bad idea because typical PC hardware isn't optimized towards the task. However...

www.truenas.com

 

[joeschmuck]

I will be using this NAS as a storage solution since I'm a filmmaker.

If this is for a business venture, spend the money for server grade hardware and 20TB hard drives take forever to resilver (replace). You might consider adding another one for a RAIDZ3 setup to enhance your redundancy. If this is for something that makes you money, it's worth the investment. Of course there are better ways to do this as well but it's late here and I would hate to give you advice while I'm tired.

 

[KOBOUWER]

If this is for a business venture, spend the money for server grade hardware and 20TB hard drives take forever to resilver (replace). You might consider adding another one for a RAIDZ3 setup to enhance your redundancy. If this is for something that makes you money, it's worth the investment. Of course there are better ways to do this as well but it's late here and I would hate to give you advice while I'm tired.

I had this hardware from a previous build that's why I would go with this kind of consumer hardware. Is there anywhere a RAIDZ Calculator I can use to calculate to redundancy? I was going with a compact build first on, but seems I will need more drives then? ;D

 

[KOBOUWER]

You mention RAID-5. ZFS does not support RAID-5 but something similar called RAID-Z1. Using RAID-Z1 is not recommended with larger disks, though with backups some people think it is okay. ZFS has RAID-Z2, with 2 disks of parity, (similar to RAID-6), but, with only 4 disks, you loose half your storage.

Like many new users of TrueNAS or ZFS, we recommend reading some of the following. Others may suggest additional ones too.

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to...

www.truenas.com

Introduction to ZFS

This is a short introduction to ZFS. It is really only intended to convey the bare minimum knowledge needed to start diving into ZFS and is in no way meant to cut Michael W. Lucas' and Allan Jude's book income. It is a bit of a spiritual...

www.truenas.com

And since you have listed a consumer system board, over a server grade system board, which seems to use;

You may want to read this;

Is my Realtek ethernet really that bad?

One of the longest running issues faced here in the forums may be people who come to these forums, wanting to recycle an old PC into a NAS. In general, this is a bad idea because typical PC hardware isn't optimized towards the task. However...

www.truenas.com

I forgot to mention I had a ASUS XG-C100C laying around which provides me a 10Gbit connection! Since I already have the disks laying around what do you recommend? Adding more 20TB drives to lower the redundancy?

 

[joeschmuck]

RAIDZ Calculator

Check my signature line for two different ones. They will get you in the ballpark.

 

[Arwen]

I forgot to mention I had a ASUS XG-C100C laying around which provides me a 10Gbit connection! Since I already have the disks laying around what do you recommend? Adding more 20TB drives to lower the redundancy?

The ASUS XG-C100C may not be supported. A quick glance could not find the chipset used. Some of the low end Ethernet chip vendors only make an effort for MS-Windows compatibility. Leaving FreeBSD and Linux to fumble through getting a working driver.

As for the disks, I can't advise except to say RAID-Z2 would give better redundancy at the cost of another disk.
Perhaps someone else will chime in with other comments.

 

[NugentS]

Its Aquantia (I think) - it works (for some definition of the word works) in Scale I believe
Wether it will work if you start loading up with bridges, vlans and complex network setups is another matter.