[Sarge00]

I'm looking into expanding my home media server by purchasing a large multi-bay external drive enclosure and connecting it to a desktop server via USB/eSATA. I have two main issues I'm coming to this forum for help in resolving.

Issue 1: RAID v. JBOD
I intend to house 8 SATA drives in a single multi-bay enclosure (link: example). I intend 4 of those drives to hold active data and I intend the other 4 drives to back up that data on a daily basis. Given these needs, will I need to educate myself on RAID and JBOD technologies, or do these two acronyms address needs not mentioned above? I am wholly unfamiliar with both.

Issue 2: "Smart" Backup Drives
Since I only intend my 4 backup drives to be backing up data once a day, my hope is that for the rest of the day they may sleep. I want them to last as long as possible and my logic is that if they aren't running 24/7, but rather only when they are called to (once a day), they will last significantly longer than the other 4 'active' drives. Is this logic sound? How would I implement this type of "sleep" regime? Will it be handled at the hardware level (i.e., by purchasing a certain type of internal HDD) or will it be handled at the software level?

I realize that the two issues above are rather broad, so I am not looking for any all-encompassing answers. My hope is only that a few generous souls might lend a bit of direction so that I can spend my time productively looking into things that will help me accomplish my goals regarding this project.

Thank you!

 

[JimE]

Issue 1: JBOD simply allows multiple drives to be used as a single drive or as multiple drives on a RAID chipset. RAID itself, is for creating a single "disc" from multiple drives and/or as a means of data security. RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Issue 2: Aside from placing them into a second enclosure and power it off, I don't know that they will "sleep". Maybe some of the higher end NAS units support that feature, but none of the low end models...at least none that I've seen. In any case, even if they sleep, they will still be subjected to the heat inside the enclosure.


Personally, I'd go with a 4 or 5 bay model and use RAID5. RAID5 will create a single "disc" from all of the drives and you can suffer a single drive failure without data loss.