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(agk) Links – 2020 November

An old friend told me he has strong opinions about NAS’s. I continue to fail at setting up a cobbled-together solution, and continue looking for something I can just use. I’m writing this blog post in hopes of hearing his opinions about my ideas.

Rejected solution

I previously tried to use a Pioneer Freedombox (debian pureblend on an Olimex Lime2 SBC). (¹) I could not get it to recognize either of my 1tb external hdds. I’m not sure it’s designed for what I’m trying to do (except maybe git). Solved with btrfs replace?

Problem

I work on projects from a rotating cast of obsolete/damaged laptops running debian, or occasionally qubes. They fail suddenly and unpredictably. Sometimes I can fix them. I want to be able to pick up where I left off when one fails. My projects are mostly directories of text and image files (<1GB).

My fiancee uses a 4-year old Dell Latitude running Windows 10. Her 500GB HDD is full. She needs to offload/backup movies now and everything else before she graduates. Her school wipes computers at graduation and installs Windows independent of the campus network.

I also need to offload everything in $HOME (~200GB) from my 4-year old school Dell Latitude running Windows 10 so that I can continue several big projects on debian machines and let the school wipe my school laptop. I want to give it to a high school student I know who is struggling in school because she doesn’t have a laptop. $HOME on my school laptop mostly contains microsoft office files, text files, image files, and movies.

Idea

I think I need samba for the windows machines, rsync (or nfs) for the debian machines, and git for my projects. I want some kind of regular deduplicating backup (borgbackup or something), with backup files mirrored to somewhere offsite (tarsnap, backblaze, or similar).

I want the simplest, easiest to maintain solution that meets most of my needs. I’d love for it to be small, fanless, and low-power. I have limited money. I’d like to have something running for under $200, but could possibly spend up to $300 on hardware if needed?

I think two disk mirrored? RAID with 2TB of storage in dual SATA bays should be fine? (²)

I read that I should stick with CMR HDDs. (³, ⁴)

Drives

Maybe two new 2TB WD CMR Red Pluses ($83 x 2)? (⁵)

Maybe two open-box 6TB IronWolfs ($180)? (⁶)

Dual SATA dock

Maybe an ODROID-HC4 (2 3.5in sata bays, runs ubuntu by default (⁷), $75)? (⁸, ⁹, ¹⁰)

Maybe 2 of the older, but stackable and more protected from dust HC1 (1x2.5in sata bay, $50) (¹¹) or HC2 (1x3.5in sata bay, $55)? (¹²)

UPS?

Should I look for a power supply? I read that a cheap UPS might be worse than none at all? (¹³)