I’m looking at different options for getting a NAS/RAID array system that is tolerant to not just hard drive failures but also to hardware/firmware and board failures. I’ve utilized a RAID array in the past that was built into the motherboard, which resulted in the motherboard failing and me having to ebay another one to get the RAID array back up and running. Then I bought a NAS 2 bay drive that was only compatible with drives up to 1.5TB. I’ve also used external drives for backup since I’ve been burned by hardware/firmware/software issues related to RAID arrays. Are there are any PCI RAID cards, NAS boxes or software RAID or other options where the hard drives would still be readable by other RAID cards if the boards failed? Maybe a software RAID solution? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Good point. I’m leaning toward running the RAID as part of the OS rather than having either a dedicated NAS OS like xigmaNAS or TrueNAS, since I’d like to still use the computer for things outside just the NAS specialty that those offer. I’m still looking into the snapRAID which is more of a backup rather than RAID option. I have 4 HDs right now and have room up to 6, and that’s all I really need. With btrfs RAID, if my motherboard fails or if I have to reinstall or change the OS, will any new system with a different motherboard and operating system that recognizes btrfs still be able to read the existing RAID array on the drives, without needing previous hardware/firmware/OS info?
The only thing you need to do if you run a standard Linux distro is to set up scheduled scrubbing and smart alerts. Nas OSes do that by default. But if you set it up as a cronjob or systemd timer you can achieve the same result.
The advantage of running a Linux distro over a Nas OS is that you could add virtual machines on top via kvm or run appliances via docker. It’s just a sever with a lot of storage added on top.
As for btrfs raid. Yes. If you motherboard fails or you have to reinstall the OS you can reimport it with no prior existing knowledge. It’s simple mounting it like a normal Linux file system because it is one. The kernel will locate all members of the raid pool.