Article: Reevaluating My Music Storage

[The Computer Audiophile]

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[Kal Rubinson]

Quote

 

As I wrote in the forum yesterday, my ten year old Synology DS1812+ died on Sunday. I accidentally flipped off the circuit breaker in my storage room, where much of my IT related equipment is housed. This usually isn't an issue for 99.9% of my gear. Power outages happen. However, the DS1812+ didn't come back to life and I wasn't able to resuscitate it. 

 

A power outage taking out a NAS isn't new to me. Like the DS1812+, my QNAP TVS-872XT also died a couple years ago in a similar way. I have friends in the industry who've experienced the same issue, multiple times. On the plus side, QNAP support was great to me and repaired my TVS-872XT, which has been my main NAS for years. 

 

This is a little tangential to your real subject but one simple fix for this specific weak spot is to have your NAS box on a UPS.  If I flip a breaker, the UPS beeps and I can (1) unflip the breaker, (2) tell the NAS to turn itself off gracefully or (3) fix the electrical problem with the time afforded by the UPS.   

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

This is a little tangential to your real subject but one simple fix for this specific weak spot is to have your NAS box on a UPS.  If I flip a breaker, the UPS beeps and I can (1) unflip the breaker, (2) tell the NAS to turn itself off gracefully or (3) fix the electrical problem with the time afforded by the UPS.   

Agree.

[AudioDoctor]

I have no complaints about the MiniXL's I am using now, other than at the moment I need to run Minimserver on a separate machine because I lack the knowledge to get it running on the TrueNAS device, and am already tired of dealing with Linux. Unfortunately, Linux seems to have taken hold in my system as the OS of choice for everything other than the Macs I use to do everything else. At the moment the 2011 mini is doing a fine job of running Ubuntu server and Minimserver, and the TrueNAS device is doing a fine job of being a backup. I should take the advice above and get them all on a UPS.

 

I do have a crazy idea about building a machine just to house my music files and serve them on my network, running Ubuntu Server and using ZFS for the music files. This of course cost money in upfront costs, energy to run, increases maintenance, etc... over running Minimserver just on the NAS. On top of that, network overhead starts to become an issue?  Maybe? not sure how saturated a Gig network can become with work from home/video conferencing, sending high res/DSD files around, kids on YouTube, etc... so perhaps an upgrade to a 10Gig home network adds even more cost.

it becomes a rabbit hole fast because Minimserver won't run on TrueNAS.

 

Of course, like you I come around to, well what's bad with local storage? Maybe I should just get an appliance music server and call it a day. But... a Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra costs more than all the above. A Taiko, even more than that. One of the new top of the line Aurender devices? Yep, more than a network build out. So is the increased cost worth the, ideally, fewer headaches? I would be locked to those devices and their designers wishes where as with open source and flexible software I have options.

 

I have no answers, only a rabbit hole of options.

 

I'll see you at Microcenter in the UPS aisle tho.  ;-)

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

I have no answers, only a rabbit hole of options.

That fells about right. 

[jrobbins50]

Chris, your tail scares the bejeebers out of me.  I have the same Synology 1812+ NAS, and it's now got but 516Gb of storage left, out of 43.2Tb!  The series of MKV, MKA and MLP files generated just to get to a single lossless 5.1.2 Atmos format album truly eats up a chunk of storage.  And I don't have any of it properly backed up, except for having the Synology set to have two of the eight 8Tb drives go bad simultaneously and still be able to hot swap replacement spinners.  Our power went out three times alone the week before last.  My UPS only holds out for about an hour and in each case, the outage was for several hours.  We do plan to install a whole house backup generator system in the spring, as have our neighbors on either side, but that still doesn't mean that my NAS couldn't nosedive at any point.

 

Backing up to the cloud is not cheap and would probably take weeks to complete, during which any power outage or other internet disruption could screw up.  I can imagine that I need to just buy 20Tb (or other size) drives and get underway to back up my entire NAS content for storage of the backup disks offsite at my wife's office, only five minutes from home.  Sounds like a good New Year's resolution.  If your research suggests a good drive to use for this, I'd appreciate the input.

 

This said, I'll take any good ideas that you've got on this one.  I feel your pain!  JCR

[doozer]

I'm new to this so excuse me if this is not feasible..

 

You could just build your own. Supermicro has many cases that support dual power supplies. Put in a comparable motherboard and such. It might be a little more expensive, but when one item breaks it doesn't need to be completely replaced. 

[jcbenten]

The QNAP Rackmount NAS units come with dual PS.  They do get pricey getting a decent processor and for the ZFS option.  QNAP also has the units with SSD slots as well as the 2.5/3.5 inch slots.  Falls somewhere in the middle of your first couple of options.

 

Personally I think your local storage idea of maxing the MBPro disk will not work unless you up to swapping files all the time.  You did 2TB last year...was that the whole year?  Are you on pace for 3-4 TB this year?  You MBPro is 5-6 years old...you are looking at 20TB of new files...that is a lot of swapping.  Just my 2 cents.

[The Computer Audiophile]

12 minutes ago, doozer said:

I'm new to this so excuse me if this is not feasible..

 

You could just build your own. Supermicro has many cases that support dual power supplies. Put in a comparable motherboard and such. It might be a little more expensive, but when one item breaks it doesn't need to be completely replaced. 

Absolutely an option. 

[KDinsmore]

Please keep us posted. I need to do something as well. I only have about 3TB and use three separate backup drives but pretty archaic.

[bobfa]

As you might guess I have thoughts!  I cannot count the number of drives and NAS devices that have failed on my watch.  Power Supplies, Remember Drobo???, the Wrong models of 3tb drives with infant mortality.  The UPS is but another thing in the chain to fail.  I have had three of them go belly up in the last two years.  They love to toast the stupid lead acid batteries and their terrible failure modes.  How many times has the UPS said the battery is good only to find out that it is actually dead and you get an extra 5 seconds of pain when the power goes out.  I know Annual Maintenance.    Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel–iron_battery for something a lot better. OR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery. We can do better folks!  Or different.

 

 

 

 

I am a firm believer in DAS (Direct Attached Storage).  Sprinkle in some U2 drives (NVME but removable) and you are talking real performance

 

Here is where I am going to lose 60% of the audience.  I use Macs!  I have to support windows and I hate it.  When I have to support linux I outsource it.  

 

I use a NAS for backup purposes only.  MY primary is a 5 bay Synology DS1019+ with five 8tb drives and 512GB of SSD cache.  The software is weird it, but it just keeps running.  In the next year or so I will replace it.  I do not trust the hardware any longer than about three years.  The NAS also runs minimserver for me.

 

I have two DAS solutions I want to talk about.  The OWC Thunderbay 8 and the OWC MiniStack STX. The Thunderbay 8 looks like a shrunk down Mac Pro of old.  It has eight drive bays and a spare expansion slot.  The top four drive bays can use U.2 drives AKA removable NVME at PCIE speed.  The bottom four bays are SATA. The MiniStack is a much simpler device with one m.2 NVME slot and one SATA slot.  it is a Thunderbolt 4 hub and the drives are basically running at SATA speeds.

 

We can jigger these up with TB to 10gig ethernet if you want..  Now I only have about 8TB of music files in my library!  The music system is a single M1 Mac mini with the STX attached and 18TB + 4Tb inside the STX.  The Mac mini backs up to the NAS and the system drive to the cloud.  I manually backup the NAS to 2.5 in portable drives for storage in my Safe Deposit Box.  Manual and a bad idea becuuse it does not get done often enough.

 

The systems (more about this later) are backed up offsite to iDrive.  This is my partially executed 3-2-1 backup system with a +1 helper. I am looking at cold storage in the cloud such as C2 or Glacier.

 

-----------------

 

Note that this design is not final and I am open to other ideas.

 

PS 18TB spinning drives are $399. 

PS JBOD is your friend

https://www.arqbackup.com is a very very interesting core tool to try.

20TB of idrive space is about $300 for two years.

 

 

 

 

[Jud]

6 hours ago, jrobbins50 said:

Chris, your tail scares the bejeebers out of me.  I have the same Synology 1812+ NAS, and it's now got but 516Gb of storage left, out of 43.2Tb!  The series of MKV, MKA and MLP files generated just to get to a single lossless 5.1.2 Atmos format album truly eats up a chunk of storage.  And I don't have any of it properly backed up, except for having the Synology set to have two of the eight 8Tb drives go bad simultaneously and still be able to hot swap replacement spinners.  Our power went out three times alone the week before last.  My UPS only holds out for about an hour and in each case, the outage was for several hours.  We do plan to install a whole house backup generator system in the spring, as have our neighbors on either side, but that still doesn't mean that my NAS couldn't nosedive at any point.

 

Backing up to the cloud is not cheap and would probably take weeks to complete, during which any power outage or other internet disruption could screw up.  I can imagine that I need to just buy 20Tb (or other size) drives and get underway to back up my entire NAS content for storage of the backup disks offsite at my wife's office, only five minutes from home.  Sounds like a good New Year's resolution.  If your research suggests a good drive to use for this, I'd appreciate the input.

 

This said, I'll take any good ideas that you've got on this one.  I feel your pain!  JCR

 

As you know, RAID is not a backup plan. (Neither is ZFS, but it is more robust than RAID at avoiding errors.) I would not wait to implement an actual backup.  Have a look at Backblaze's drive reliability data, which is thorough and nicely presented, and get some reliable drives on which to back up your NAS. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 hours ago, bobfa said:

As you might guess I have thoughts!  I cannot count the number of drives and NAS devices that have failed on my watch.  Power Supplies, Remember Drobo???, the Wrong models of 3tb drives with infant mortality.  The UPS is but another thing in the chain to fail.  I have had three of them go belly up in the last two years.  They love to toast the stupid lead acid batteries and their terrible failure modes.  How many times has the UPS said the battery is good only to find out that it is actually dead and you get an extra 5 seconds of pain when the power goes out.  I know Annual Maintenance.    Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel–iron_battery for something a lot better. OR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery. We can do better folks!  Or different.

 

 

 

 

I am a firm believer in DAS (Direct Attached Storage).  Sprinkle in some U2 drives (NVME but removable) and you are talking real performance

 

Here is where I am going to lose 60% of the audience.  I use Macs!  I have to support windows and I hate it.  When I have to support linux I outsource it.  

 

I use a NAS for backup purposes only.  MY primary is a 5 bay Synology DS1019+ with five 8tb drives and 512GB of SSD cache.  The software is weird it, but it just keeps running.  In the next year or so I will replace it.  I do not trust the hardware any longer than about three years.  The NAS also runs minimserver for me.

 

I have two DAS solutions I want to talk about.  The OWC Thunderbay 8 and the OWC MiniStack STX. The Thunderbay 8 looks like a shrunk down Mac Pro of old.  It has eight drive bays and a spare expansion slot.  The top four drive bays can use U.2 drives AKA removable NVME at PCIE speed.  The bottom four bays are SATA. The MiniStack is a much simpler device with one m.2 NVME slot and one SATA slot.  it is a Thunderbolt 4 hub and the drives are basically running at SATA speeds.

 

We can jigger these up with TB to 10gig ethernet if you want..  Now I only have about 8TB of music files in my library!  The music system is a single M1 Mac mini with the STX attached and 18TB + 4Tb inside the STX.  The Mac mini backs up to the NAS and the system drive to the cloud.  I manually backup the NAS to 2.5 in portable drives for storage in my Safe Deposit Box.  Manual and a bad idea becuuse it does not get done often enough.

 

The systems (more about this later) are backed up offsite to iDrive.  This is my partially executed 3-2-1 backup system with a +1 helper. I am looking at cold storage in the cloud such as C2 or Glacier.

 

-----------------

 

Note that this design is not final and I am open to other ideas.

 

PS 18TB spinning drives are $399. 

PS JBOD is your friend

https://www.arqbackup.com is a very very interesting core tool to try.

20TB of idrive space is about $300 for two years.

 

 

 

 

Hi Bob, I’ve avoided a UPS ever since one took down the data center at the company I used to work for. Then, it nearly caught fire. The thing designed to save you, is the thing that takes you down. 
 

I hate them, but do admit they can and do work for many people. 

[botrytis]

Be careful with QNAP - the OS they are using still seems to be full of holes and the many security experts have been poo-pooing their products because of that.

[The Computer Audiophile]

58 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Be careful with QNAP - the OS they are using still seems to be full of holes and the many security experts have been poo-pooing their products because of that.

I don't disagree. 

[botrytis]

I have lost documents (like my Ph.D. thesis) to HD errors, and dead HD's. So, I am very anal about backups, etc.

[Priaptor]

Chris, 

 

As I indicated before, the more  "industrial" QNAP NAS at TS-h1090FU | Hardware Specs | QNAP (US) have dual power supplies and are also all FLASH with the same benefits of the TS-1290.  The h1090FU is their 1U rackmount but many other options. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, Priaptor said:

Chris, 

 

As I indicated before, the more  "industrial" QNAP NAS at TS-h1090FU | Hardware Specs | QNAP (US) have dual power supplies and are also all FLASH with the same benefits of the TS-1290.  The h1090FU is their 1U rackmount but many other options. 

That one has the perfect options. Even if a PSU fails, it's so easy to replace. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 hours ago, bobfa said:

As you might guess I have thoughts!  I cannot count the number of drives and NAS devices that have failed on my watch.  Power Supplies, Remember Drobo???, the Wrong models of 3tb drives with infant mortality.  The UPS is but another thing in the chain to fail.  I have had three of them go belly up in the last two years.  They love to toast the stupid lead acid batteries and their terrible failure modes.  How many times has the UPS said the battery is good only to find out that it is actually dead and you get an extra 5 seconds of pain when the power goes out.  I know Annual Maintenance.    Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel–iron_battery for something a lot better. OR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery. We can do better folks!  Or different.

 

 

 

 

I am a firm believer in DAS (Direct Attached Storage).  Sprinkle in some U2 drives (NVME but removable) and you are talking real performance

 

Here is where I am going to lose 60% of the audience.  I use Macs!  I have to support windows and I hate it.  When I have to support linux I outsource it.  

 

I use a NAS for backup purposes only.  MY primary is a 5 bay Synology DS1019+ with five 8tb drives and 512GB of SSD cache.  The software is weird it, but it just keeps running.  In the next year or so I will replace it.  I do not trust the hardware any longer than about three years.  The NAS also runs minimserver for me.

 

I have two DAS solutions I want to talk about.  The OWC Thunderbay 8 and the OWC MiniStack STX. The Thunderbay 8 looks like a shrunk down Mac Pro of old.  It has eight drive bays and a spare expansion slot.  The top four drive bays can use U.2 drives AKA removable NVME at PCIE speed.  The bottom four bays are SATA. The MiniStack is a much simpler device with one m.2 NVME slot and one SATA slot.  it is a Thunderbolt 4 hub and the drives are basically running at SATA speeds.

 

We can jigger these up with TB to 10gig ethernet if you want..  Now I only have about 8TB of music files in my library!  The music system is a single M1 Mac mini with the STX attached and 18TB + 4Tb inside the STX.  The Mac mini backs up to the NAS and the system drive to the cloud.  I manually backup the NAS to 2.5 in portable drives for storage in my Safe Deposit Box.  Manual and a bad idea becuuse it does not get done often enough.

 

The systems (more about this later) are backed up offsite to iDrive.  This is my partially executed 3-2-1 backup system with a +1 helper. I am looking at cold storage in the cloud such as C2 or Glacier.

 

-----------------

 

Note that this design is not final and I am open to other ideas.

 

PS 18TB spinning drives are $399. 

PS JBOD is your friend

https://www.arqbackup.com is a very very interesting core tool to try.

20TB of idrive space is about $300 for two years.

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Bob, DAS is an attractive option. But, it forces me to think about the pros/cons of something like a Tunderbolt 3/4 attached NVMe vs. the internal NVMe. Yes, more options and questions and research. 

 

For example, the new MacBook Pro can hold 8TB of NVMe storage. I believe it's split between two internal chips, so it's even faster than a single internal 8TB NVMe. I could get an 8TB Thunderbolt NVMe from OWC for $1,399, with speed up to 1553 MB/s. 

 

I don't know if I'd notice the speed difference when playing 6GB files. In all likelihood, I wouldn't.

[Priaptor]

32 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

That one has the perfect options. Even if a PSU fails, it's so easy to replace. 

That would be my first choice, however, I don't know what the dBA rating is. My NAS in my office in my new home where I need quiet as I still work part time.  They don't list the dBA ratings of this unit as they do the deskmount. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Priaptor said:

That would be my first choice, however, I don't know what the dBA rating is. My NAS in my office in my new home where I need quiet as I still work part time.  They don't list the dBA ratings of this unit as they do the deskmount. 

I'm willing to bet, with the small fans on the PSU, the unit is pretty loud. Fortunately, I can place the NAS in the basement. This opens up my options :~)

[bobfa]

The scale of this data is daunting.  But streaming it should not be that intensive.  Twelve channels of TrueHD flow down a USB 2 port just fine in my system.  The buffering in JRiver and HLC add a good portion of the potential delays.  I mostly see this on first startup with when the HDD spins up and / or when I change what I am playing.  This is with the 770mb transfer rates on the OWC and the 18TB HD.  I also think that only 8GB of RAM may have an effect.  We have to identify the places where delays are introduced.

 

 I am very focused on economy so that impacts my thinking.  I dislike the fact that starting playback I loose the first few seconds of playback.  I have not tried to address that yet as there have been larger problems to address.  

 

Separating the playback from the backup and redundancy issues might help us think things through.

 

How to the production studios handle this?  They have the same set of problems at a much larger scale!  We might take some clues from them.

 

 

[bobfa]

Treating the digital stereo as an appliance that needs to be serviced with power, connectivity, data storage, backup helps the process.  Applying good IT practices make this pretty simple to think about.  In my case the compute side is a Mac Mini the external storage and the DAC.  In your case your core is the Merging gear with a laptop for compute.  Can you take the laptop out and use something headless or at least different?  A Mac Studio or a new M2 Pro Mac Mini as the core.  

 

I am getting pretty comfortable with Luna Display on my iPad Pro.  The Keyboard folio and Apple Pencil are pretty ideal.

 

[Rcanoe]

I have a hard time following this thread because of my lack of IT knowledge.    My expansion plan is simple.  When my 2T external drive (connected to digital player) is full I buy another and and start separating out genres and dedicating new 2T drives to that genre.    So If I feel like classical I plug the "classical" drive in etc.   This what I do with my GoPro 4k vids which fill drives up like crazy.   2T drives for $89.   Cheers!

[The Computer Audiophile]

18 minutes ago, Rcanoe said:

I have a hard time following this thread because of my lack of IT knowledge.    My expansion plan is simple.  When my 2T external drive (connected to digital player) is full I buy another and and start separating out genres and dedicating new 2T drives to that genre.    So If I feel like classical I plug the "classical" drive in etc.   This what I do with my GoPro 4k vids which fill drives up like crazy.   2T drives for $89.   Cheers!

I hear ya :~)

 

I'm happy you have a solution that works for you. What do you do if a 2TB drive fails?