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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Snapshots on the file system are instant and can be rolled back or opened in read only mode if you need an older version of the file.

    Sending a snapshot through replication is also much faster as the system just sends the snapshot itself which updates the files system in one pass by sending all of the changes made rather than having to compare file by file.

    For comparison, using rsync to update my backup with 250,000 files might take 20-30 minutes because it has to check every file on the source and destination to see if it has been modified. Sending a zfs snapshot is 15 seconds because it just sends the differences in one pass.


  • I have a couple of 8TB Seagate SMR drives. They’re slow as sin but perfect for cold storage backups.

    One sits in a safe deposit box and the other is in my backup server and gets zfs snapshots replicated to it automatically with sanoid. I swap them out about every six months. My data is very safe.

    Main server zfs array with snapshots replicated hourly to backup zfs server, replicated weekly to HD swapped in SD box every 6 months.


  • I’ve been using renewed (refurbished) 8TB drives off of Ebay - SAS 8TB for $50-60 each. Not a single failure in over a year on the dozen or so drives I’m running right now. I’m running unRAID with a combination of unRAID’s native array drives (for media and “disposable” stuff) in a dual parity config, and ZFS (with snapshots replicated to a live backup on a secondary server) for important personal stuff (and backed-up off-site a few times a year).

    Even if something were to perish, I have enough spares to just chuck one in and let it resilver without worrying at all. I’m content with this as a homelabber and when I’m not supplying critical service for a business, etc.





  • I’m a big advocate of unraid servers. Mix And match any size of drives you have available into a single large NAS with protection against drive failures. You can use old pc hardware you might have lying around. It’s commercial software but you can demo it for free. It’s good enough that I own two full pro licenses.





  • I get what you’re proposing but I’d respectfully suggest looking into unRAID on basically any hardware that can boot an OS.

    It won’t necessarily be small and cute (though you can accomplish that if you wish), but you can make it do just about anything. I bought old enterprise hardware to run my main and backup servers on. I feel really comfortable with my data safety.