[RndTbl] USB3 to Ethernet, to make NAS

[Hartmut W Sager]

> John Lange> If I was setting this up today I'd go with a Raspberry Pi4

Thanks for your detailed Pi comments.  I would sure consider this, if I were in the right headspace.

> John Lange> My final comment is, no matter what else, just make sure that everything isn't stored on a single drive. That is a guarantee that you will lose everything eventually.

Agreed totally!  I failed to mention, both Lynn and I have the same model of external USB3 8TB HDD, and mine can be part of a backup regimen, at least initially.  Not sufficient though, and we're still working on what additional backup/syncing solution we might use (famous clouds are too expensive for, and/or don't offer, 5TB to accommodate her current data).  At the moment, her collection of old HDD's where the data all came from are a feeble backup too, but we have no intention of using those HDD's once we're into the whole re-organization.

> John Lange> Then one day the PC hard drive failed and .....

Agreed wholeheartedly again.

> John Lange> For pictures I backup the originals onto another drive, but I also replicate a lower quality version to the cloud which is free and unlimited so worse case I'll always have a copy.

Good point!  A lower quality picture in hand is worth much more than all the pictures in the (lost) bush.

> Trevor> Whatever the Seagate MTBF says, take it with a grain of salt.  Look carefully at the box/instructions/specs to see if it says "not for always-on use".

Indeed, I did conflate high-MTBF with "good for always-on".  Now if we do go for the extra computer or SBC on a LAN, we have noticed that this external USB3 8TB HDD connected to her current desktop computer does spin-down quite soon after last access, and her access pattern would be a few hours of almost continuous access followed by no access for the rest of the 24-hour day.

> Trevor> ..... make sure the NAS uses NTFS .....

Yes!

> Trevor> John and Adam are right: back the thing up.  Buy a 2nd 8TB USB drive, the cheapest one you can find

See somewhere above; for the moment, we have that 2nd HDD (mine), but we may get her something additional.  But question:  Are the cheap ones "reliable" if we operate such a HDD for very few hours, or are they junky all around, and prone to failure even with low usage?  I suspect the latter, and if so, I'll avoid the "cheapest one".

> Trevor>  Just do a byte-level copy of the whole thing, or a file-level backup, every few months

I *always* do file-level backups/copies.  I never want the reading of backups/copies to be dependent on any software.  Of course, if I have to image a partition, that's a different matter.

> Trevor> Also, John's Pi solution might be ideal if you don't want to wing it, and even better if someone makes some nice NAS OS images that you can just plop onto it??  For your use case, performance limitations won't be a big deal.

If we go Pi, I presume I could engage one of you MUUG folks here for payment?

Hartmut
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