Migrating a 15TB NAS - On the cheap(ish)

High-Performance Computing Workstations & Servers
1

Iv been running a freeNAS box for a few years now. Mainly a media server but also used for backup and archival.

Current total capacity is 15TB. Two arrays of 4 x 3TB drives in Z1.

I was going to order another set of 4x3TB drives and just add it to the pool but then the redundancy gets well a bit redundant.

12 drives with three sets of 4, each set able to have a drive fail and keep functioning. Witch means three total redundant drives. If I was to create a new pool of 12 I would gain some storage space over 3 sets of 4.

The crux of this is I don’t have an extra 15TB of storage media kicking around. Nor the funds to build a second NAS to facilitate the move.

I’v been looking, with out success, for a company that rents storage solutions.

There is one. In the UK.
http://www.rentaraid.co.uk/rental_packages.php
But shipping would be prohibitive.

The Amazon snowball looks neat but I dont think they would send one for a local transfer. They probably want to leverage their cloud services.

Still a neat device.

So now I’m down to scrounging around to find a local company or enough spare storage media from friends to do a fragmented backup over X# of drives to do my migration.

I could do a cloud backup and then restore. But being in Canada slow up speeds and data caps, my ISP would throw a fit.

Any one have other ideas?

2

Maybe you should consider magnetic tape. It's about $20 for 1.5/3TB. Once your done transferring files, you have a cheep backup already made.

3

True tape is an option. Ill look into the costs associated with the drives and tapes.

4

right now the 2t refurb hitachis are on sale for 40$. you could get 10~ of them, stress test then back up your data. afterwords you have a ton of barely used drives you can sell or use for whatever afterwords.

1 Like
5

Where did you see them so cheap?

6

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822146134&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Hard+Drives-_-N82E16822146134&gclid=COL6krK74M4CFZGEaQodfaMDiQ&gclsrc=aw.ds
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