Selfhosted

60409 readers

420 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

Be civil.
No spam.
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
Submission headline should match the article title.
No trolling.
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus

curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world

Raidz2 or btrfs for important document storage? (piefed.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I currently have a secondary pool (with raidz2) that I was originally going to use for my important documents, such as storage for Paperless-ngx, as raidz offers corruption detection and repair. The pool is encrypted.

However, I'm concerned about rebuild times (it's a pool of 4 22TB drives). Is btrfs a better choice for this use case, or should I just go with raidz like I originally planned?

Edit: I should have mentioned that I already have 4-3-2 backups configured - I'm primarily interested in the "self-healing" aspect of ZFS so that I don't have to recover from backups unless necessary, and to resolve corruption on the fly without me having to notice that a file is corrupt.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] zyberwoof@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

RAID is not a backup.

True

RAID is not for data safety.

Not true.

RAID helps prevent data loss in the event that a drive failure occurs before changes are replicated to backups. If you upload photos and then delete them from your camera, they will likely be stored in just one location for a period of time. If you have a drive failure without RAID, you could lose your only copy.
With ZFS, RAID can be used to protect against things like bitrot. Even data at rest can become corrupt over time. ZFS stores checksums of the files to know if corruption occurs. And with one or more parity drives, ZFS can automatically repair the corruption when detected. Without this, detecting and fixing these kinds of issues can be much more difficult.

I'm in 100% agreement that RAID is not essential, and that backups are a much higher priority. In fact, without backups in place, I'm not generally in favor of RAID. RAID adds additional complexity. That complexity can result in data loss. Especially due to user error. But once backups are part of the equation, RAID can add additional layers of security for your data.