Goal:
- 16TB mirrored on 2 drives (raid 1)
- Hardware raid?
- Immich, Jellyfin and Nextcloud. (All docker)
- N100, 8+ GB RAM
- 500gb boot drive ssd
- 4 HDD bays, start with using 2
Questions:
- Which os?
- My though was to use hardware raid, and just set that up for the 2 hdds, then boot off an ssd with Debian (very familiar, and use it for current server which has 30+ docker containers. Basically I like and am good at docker so would like to stick to Debian+docker. But if hardware raid isn’t the best option for HDDs now a days, I’ll learn the better thing)
- Which drives? Renewed or refurb are half the cost, so should I buy extra used ones, and just be ready to swap when the fail?
- Which motherboard?
- Which case?
ProxMox.
But also, in case if your only data backup plan for them is raid 1 - in such cases I prefer to have only one HDD in the machine & use the other one as a backup on a separate machine, preferably in another location. I find it that the missing 12h (or whatever) of the latest data overshadows the (lower) probability of losing all the data (fire, flood, burglary, weirdly specific accidents, etc).
And ofc you can select what to backup/rsync or not.
Eg Immich, after return to operation the apps will just resync any missing pics from the last backup.
Also with two systems you don’t have to care that much about drive quality. Im now buying Exos 22+TB bcs why not. But when I needed quiet drives I bought Red Plus (not the regular Red ones, nor the Pro ones), they are even quieter than Exos, but smol.