How to proceed?

[Enquiries]

Hi! I run a PMS on my 2012 8 core Mac Pro and I usually have 4 drives in a non-RAID, but I do a 1 to 1 backup of each drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. I've planned for her eventual demise by picking up a DS920+ and I've loaded it up with 4-18 TB Exos drives (not Syn. supported, but functioning). Thing is, I'm so used to doing a 1-1 backup nightly, I'm not sure how to proceed in configuring the drives in the 920+. My library is sort of large (~2,000 movies, ~200 TV shows) and I'm adding more 4K titles slowly, but surely. What would be the most efficient and safe way to set up the unit? RAID5? This is my first NAS and I'm a complete noob, so bear with me. I can't quite find anything online to advise me, so I thought I'd see what you have to offer. Thanks, Bob

[ed]

Yes, the most popular choice is RAID5/SHR1. Those would need two drive redundancy go for RAID6/SHR2. Either way is fine.
People that are afraid of bitrot can create shared folder with the bitrot check activated. BTRFS file system allows this.
But you can still set up a backup plan in case of ire/flood/theft.
NAS allows simpler/automated ways of this doing this.


I hope this helps.

[Deckard]

Yes, the most popular choice is RAID5/SHR1. Those would need two drive redundancy go for RAID6/SHR2. Either way is fine.
People that are afraid of bitrot can create shared folder with the bitrot check activated. BTRFS file system allows this.
But you can still set up a backup plan in case of ire/flood/theft.
NAS allows simpler/automated ways of this doing this.


I hope this helps.

It does help a bit, although I feel like I'm walking through a mine field as I'm not familiar with Synology's DSM GUI and I'm taking baby steps as I learn so it's frustrating.  In playing with the setup initially, I only initialized two of the four (SHR1) and that took forever.  Copying my Plex movie library over took even longer over my ethernet network (is there a better way?).  Now bringing the other two drives into that storage pool looks like it's going to be another forever to wait.

I'm hoping that the Exos drives will last me awhile, but it's certainly possible that one or more of the four won't.  Since my Mac Pro setup had four drives, I had drive 1 backed up by 2 and 3 backed up by 4 using Carbon Copy.  That way I could always say that I was backed up.  

By using SHR1, it appears that I will have a pool that's 54 TB, but no real backup solution.  If that is the case, wouldn't it make more sense to use SHR2 with a total of 36 TB of storage?  At least that way if a drive fails, I don't have to scramble to find an additional 54 TB to backup with, correct?