RAID or JBOD?

[jwall]

I am about to build by first home NAS using the following:

FreeNAS, OpenFiler, or Synology DSM
Asus C60M1-I w/ AMD C-60 CPU
16GB RAM
2TB WD Red HDs

I have found a lot of info around on using FreeNAS, but a quick search the other day gave me some hope that I may be able to get Synology's DSM software going, which I think has more non-NAS features than FreeNAS does. Correct me if I'm wrong there.

I am wondering what RAID level other people use in thier home NAS devices, and specifically, why not just use JBOD when you need, should, have a full backup off all the data anyway? I mean why waste a drive doing RAIDZ1, I could use that drive for my backup.

Assuming I go with FreeNAS, which I am not totally familiar with yet, is there anything to speak against just doing JBOD with 2 * 2TB drive and using another 2 * 2TB drives to store my backups, which will be stored offsite.

Thanks for the help.

 

[thiggins]

Sure you can use JBOD.

Please explain how your backups to the drives on the same NAS will be stored offsite.

Since you are going to give up 50% of your capacity for "backup", why not run RAID 1. Or you could run RAID5 and lose less capacity.

 

[stevech]

I elected to use neither RAID or JBOD, but rather, setup drive 1 as volume 1 and drive 2 as volume 2.
Volume 2 is totally independent and has a Time Backup of what's on volume 1 (or at least, VIP folders).

This protects from accidental deletions, file system corruption, and drive failure. But external backup and take that drive off-site is needed too.

 

[jwall]

@thiggins, my plan for the offsite backup was to connect a single or duel drive external eSATA enclosure to my FreeNAS box every couple weeks and use whatever method FreeNAS provides to mirror the data to this external enclosure and then take it to the office for safekeeping. Does FreeNAS provide such a mechanism? Doesn't RAIDZ1 essentially accomplish the same thing as RAID5?

@stevech, I can see some reasons for using your method of using 1 drive to a volume, and it would be safer than JBOD, I'll have to think about that one.