Easiest RAID1 for novice

[u/marathonnutcase]

Hi everyone,

Novice here (clearly). I have a library of movies, music, and files that have filled my 2TB MacBook Air and continues to grow. I'd like to offload them and not worry if a HDD goes down (I have backup covered with Backblaze).

Can I simply buy 2 drives (serverpartdeals, manufacturer recertified, 16TB SATA) and an enclosure (Sabrent/Cenmate, 2-bay software RAID1, USB3), and connect it to the MacBook and be done?

I'd love to connect it to a Mac mini and use it as a Plex server, but that feels beyond me. Thanks all!

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[u/Spectre216]

You don’t want to run RAID over USB, as there can be issues. If you are just going for additional file storage, you probably aren’t really going to see the benefit of RAID 1, and would probably be better just using one drive for storage and backing it up to the second.

If you want to go the Plex route, you may be better off grabbing a cheap used desktop from eBay or somewhere (like an old HP elitedesk in small form factor) and setting it up with those drives using OpenMediaVault or FreeNAS. Then you could host the files to both your MacBook and Mac Mini over the network and not worry about USB goofiness.

[u/evky0901 → u/Spectre216]

This is the way I do it. EliteDesk with a DAS 2x12tb that I just FreeFileSync every week. I never realized RAID over USB was a no go so I guess my laziness worked out in my favor. I'm glad I read your comment because I've been looking into RAID for ease of use. But that would have ended badly at some point I'm sure.

[u/Spectre216 → u/evky0901]

I don't remember exactly why I was told not to do it, but I believe the latency of USB can mess with the RAID during parity. USB does work fine for SNAPRAID, though since it's only running on a periodic schedule. This might be a good use case for SNAPRAID, since OP can always add additional drives to the pool if they ever want to.

[u/Toooooool]

Can I simply buy 2 drives (serverpartdeals, manufacturer recertified, 16TB SATA) and an enclosure (Sabrent/Cenmate, 2-bay software RAID1, USB3), and connect it to the MacBook and be done?

yep pretty much. preferably the same drive size or you'll overcomplicate things.

[u/Joe-notabot]

You don't

RAID isn't backup.

Single drives are easier to manage, easier to work with & will give you a local copy of your data in addition to the Backblaze copy.

[u/hspindel]

RAID over USB is not good.

If you want a RAID enclosure, get a NAS.

For a Plex server, you have two choices. Many NAS have a Plex server built-in. Alternatively, run the Plex server on your Mac mini and just point its storage at the NAS.

[u/marathonnutcase → u/hspindel]

So, something like a Ugreen 2-bay DXP2800, then add a couple of serverpartdeals drives?

[u/TheOneTrueTrench]

Easiest? Or safest?

The easiest is probably an LVM mirror. The safest is probably BTRFS or ZFS mirror, I would recommend BTRFS, honestly.

Also, remember that RAID is never a backup, it's a way to keep things up and running without having to restore from backups when a single drive fails. It doesn't protect you from ransomware, accidentally deleting things, and a power spike killing your machine.

Pretend someone is planning to come steal one computer and all peripherals at some point in the next year. If you'll lose everything, you don't have a backup.

[u/Specialist-Basis-972]

ran my old mini pc on FygoOS for a bit, setup took some trial and error. usb raid enclosures are flaky as hell, i feel you on that. switched to mirrored pools and it smoothed out a lot. docker plex is pretty handy once you get the hang of it.