In today’s world, data storage is more important than ever. Every document, picture, and video need to be stored somewhere safe and accessible by all of my devices. Sure, I could have just stored all my data on an external hard drive like most people today but what if that drive fails? Mechanical drives are relatively safe but at the end of the day, they still die at an annual rate of 1.3%. Solid state drives feel like a safer bet, but they still have a failure rate of approximately 1.6%. Unless I want to have multiple hard drives laying around with redundant data storage, there is no protection for all of my digital life. This option for storage feels like an overwhelmingly risky choice.
Second option is to pay for cloud storage. Yes, I know, there is no such thing as cloud storage, you are just using someone else’s computer. This option comes at a different cost than the first. Local hard drive storage costs up to a couple hundred dollars for the initial cost of the drives, more if you need to have them in an external enclosure and not install them in a PC. Cloud storage has a monthly charge (unless you pay annually) and you better get used to it because as long as you have a need to store data, you will be paying someone else to manage that storage. At the time of writing this, Google offers cloud storage plans known as Google Drive for 100gb for $1.99/mo. up to 2tb for $9.99/mo. Now you need to decide how much storage space you really need and does the monthly cost seem like a better deal than buying multiple drives, keeping them synchronized, and replacing dying drives. Does $120 annually feel like a good deal? Forever?
What is so important that you need to hold on to it forever? If you had asked me this before I had a wife and kids, I’m not sure I could have come up with a decent answer. Growing up, my mom would take pictures of the family with her 35mm film camera. When the photos were developed, she was given the negatives and you could have any photo reprinted from those negatives so as long as you had secure, fire-proof storage and a decent filing system, you could easily preserve all of your families’ memories. Today, the game is a little different. Everyone has a cell phone in their pocket that can take pictures and capture those memories. What do you do with all of these photos? Send them to companies like Shutterfly and have photo albums printed? Or do you, like many today, transfer all of those photos and memories to a hard drive and never consider the possibility that the drive may fail, and you lose everything? I cannot imagine losing all of those memories. Every first step, lost tooth, birthday, holiday, vacation, the list goes on and on. My children are being raised in a digital world. It is my job to protect their sliver of that digital space while trying to protect them from the dangers that the same advantages that offer them a more convenient life.
This project of data storage and integrity started when I got tired of paying Apple $10 every month to safely store all of those memories. I’ve been using and learning with computers for most of my life, I told myself I can do this, I can create a data storage system on my own that is secure and local. Where to start though? There are commercial off-the-shelf options like Synology and Qnap that offer a plug and play NAS (Network Attached Storage), but for a model with 4 drive capabilities from Synology can run you anywhere from $600 to $2,500 depending on capabilities. In my research I found I wasn’t alone, there is a massive community of like-minded individuals out there that just wanted safe and local storage options without the worry of a drive dying and losing everything. This community uses older and technologically outdated PCs to run operating systems like Unraid and TrueNAS to host their own personal server in their house.
I chose to use Unraid. I liked the way that they went about parity using their non-ZFS Unraid parity-protected array and the options for future growth with virtual machines and Docker applications. The storage array with Unraid requires less thought than the other options. The only requirement for Unraid is that the parity drive is the same size, or bigger, than the largest hard drive in the storage array. I chose to go with the Western Digital Red 4tb drives for my server. I found the cost for these drives to be the sweet spot for me. I didn’t need hundreds of terabytes (yet) so the 4tb models would be plenty, the 2tb models would be quickly outgrown and the 8tb models just cost too much. As for the hardware that Unraid would be running on, I went to eBay and found a used MSI Z270 motherboard and an Intel i7-6700K CPU to power the project. I also added a 500gb m.2 pcie nvme drive as a cache drive to speed up file transfers over my network. Install of the hardware and software was relatively straight forward with no major speed bumps. I will write another post soon about the builds and revamps of my server over the past 3 years.
The option to build your own server vs options like multiple external hard drives or an annual subscription to a cloud storage service may seem like a little more expensive up front option, mostly because it is more expensive, but the benefits outweighed the cost for me, YMMV. I fell in love with the idea of actually owning all of my own data. How many times have you been notified by Apple or Google that your password or an account has been compromised and now you have to hope that you can change it all before the account gets hijacked by some ne’er do-well on the dark web? Do you remember all the times that a company got broken into digitally and had sensitive data stolen? I do. I wanted better for my data, my network, and my family. Years from now when my kids are getting married and need all those embarrassing photos from when they were kids, I have them. When they want to have the photos from that vacation we took to show to their friends or kids, I have them. If a file is a piece of their digital life and they need it for any reason in the future, I will have it stored on my server free from fear of some data center going up in flames or someone stealing anything from me.
If you want to own your own data or dive into the world of information technology, follow along with me here. I started this journey about 3 years ago now and have done some pretty cool things. Past the initial cost of startup, 99% of what I do on my network is open-source and free. Startup cost can be mitigated substantially also, it all depends on what you want to accomplish.
Final thing, a disclaimer. I am not an expert on this, I just like to research new things to do with computers and am working on getting some certifications for the next stage of my life. Feel free to read this blog site to get ideas of what you would like to learn and accomplish. Ask questions if you are lost, I may have experienced the same roadblock. You can either comment on the post or send me an email. My email address is on the contact page.
Thanks for taking the time to visit my new blog site and read all of this. I look forward to writing more in the future and helping others learn with me.
-Travis
Photo credit Technology Stock photos by Vecteezy
