A mirror array is not a backup. So therefor I would use at least one of those extra drives for a weekly backup of your data. You want some sort of not real-time backup in case you get cryptoed for example
What if the cloud server corrupts your data in transfer or worse shuts down its server without notification. It can and has happened.
For example, I had a cloud backup went to get it and the server could no longer be found. That was with Dropbox mind you. I lost 10gb of important files because of it. Never trust just one source of backup. Always have a secondary just in case.
Excited for you! I’m going from 1x 12tb USB drive to 4x internal 18tb drives. I’m building the NAS from scratch and keeping my other server for its current services (mostly Plex). My parts have been defective though, so it’s all just sitting waiting for a replacement mobo.
It was similar for me. From a single USB 12TB drive, to an old Qnap with 4x4TB drives, to a (now) revived Synology NAS with 4x18TB drives. I have several “servers” but they are USFFs with no room for so many drives.
When initializing a new array, it’s a (usually optional) process of zeroing out the newly added disks. Sometimes it’s required as part of calculating parity across the array (redundancy data).
It’s a data maintenance feature that amends data in storage pools that are incorrect or incomplete. It works on BTRFS volumes or RAID 5/6 storage pools. It’s scheduled to run monthly on my NAS. I guess it started now as I upgraded my drives from 4x4TB to 4x18TB.
Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the US market, but in Europe we have sites like Geizhals (“Skinflint” in the UK) that are excellent at listing electronics, so you could source them for cheap: internal drives, external drives
As for what drives to use: If you don’t need redundancy/parity, then a single 12 (14, 16, 18, whatever you need) TB SATA drive will probably beat everything else pricewise. I’d say that leaves you with roughly $300 for the system itself, if you need to buy a new one.
but doesn’t have any way of adding a bunch of drives
Well, you only really need one or two drives. Are you sure it doesn’t offer any SATA connections?
What about PCIe? You could use a cheap HBA card then.
I’m sure plenty will disagree with me, but unless you have specific needs, I’d suggest spending more time sourcing your media rather than rely on transcoding. Most formats of popular stuff are available and Jellyfin will happily play it natively.
Also be aware that transcoding is VERY cpu intensive, unless you have a compatible gpu/transcoder. I run a ML110 with a 6-core Xeon (12 threads) and if Jellyfin needs to transcode something, it uses all of that and still stutters badly when seeking.
If you do need to transcode because you can’t source the media in a compatible way - you may want to use something like Tdarr to transcode it before you try to play it, so it’s ready when you are.
Personally I run 1 NUC with a 8TB USB-HDD and mirror it once a week to my other Pi4 with the same HDD.
Those were kinda cheap at 150€ each but the performance isnt very great.
For drives, Shuckstop has a table of current shuckable drive prices. Shucking is usually the cheapest way to get new drives, you just have to get them out of their external case (or in your case, leave them in and plug them into your pi, ideally with some sort of fan). There’s also ServerPartDeals for refurbished enterprise drives.
May I ask: are you sure you need a media center with transcoding? Because it may be totally sufficient for you to access files through a file explorer and play them with VLC/mpv or whatever else. Having a media center is only really useful if you need external access to your media. I set all that stuff up once, then realized i never watch shows/movies on the go. And if I do, i know beforehand and can copy the raw files to the device i plan to watch on.
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