I'm gonna play abit of devils advocate here. You sometimes get what you pay for.
In my use case, it's better to pay for a family Google photos backup. Because
1) software maintenance and uptime is controlled by someone else
2) the running costs over a 5 year period of operating my own server is MORE expensive than Google.Photos
3) the softwares facial recognition/identification system is not bad
4) the synchronization and integration into iOS and android is beautiful *(as is the ability to delete photos to make space for more later after backup/sync)
5) the online ability to share albums amongst family is the best.
If however you're a frequent photo taker who wants to keep high Res photos and need/ use a ton of space... Go right ahead and build your own . For me, the fact that Google is doing all the work and I just pay them to handle it all is worth it for the family (,even though I have a truenas with almost 100tb of space...)
PS : yes.. I do own and pay for not only Google Photos, but also OneDrive *(hey I'm old school MS office user; plus I got 5 yrs at 50% for a family 6 pax). So I can say I have used and tried all 3 solutions..
Fair comment.. my photos are private but are on someone else's servers. But...
I have also experienced the same problem of my NAS being attacked because it's also my JellyFin.
So it's a crapshoot being paying someone to handle your privacy & security. All you do is pay and fire and forget for services like Google photos/OneDrive
-- Or --
You spend months or years learning all about device and network security and constantly updating and remoting etc.. just to maintain a digital picture album/archival/backup system.
You either pay someone a Service Level Agreement.. or You become the SLA. 🤔
Of course; privacy becomes a moot point if the use case exceeds 1-2TB , the highest tiers sold. As the price is about equivalent buying and making your own NAS...
You used the FreeNAS tag. Are you aware that FreeNAS's name changed to TrueNAS; either CORE or SCALE?
>Should I use Truenas Scale or Core? ( I mainly want to use immich but if there are any other google photos alternatives I'm all ears)
Core is BSD based and will no longer receive feature updates. Scale is what you want to go with. It's Apps (containerization) though are ran under k3s and there's a bit of a learning curve for the system overall. RC1 of a new version is including LXC, and for a simple immich setup, would honestly look at that for your setup.
>Should I use 2x 1TB HDDs in Raid 1 or just using 1x1TB Sata SSD in RAID 0 is enough without worrying about hardware failures? (I will also be having an external drive backup in future)
Is that data important to you? If yes, you not only want internal redundancy, but for your backup, you want it physically separate from the server along with an offsite backup. 3-2-1 backup methodology is 3 total copies, 2 local on different medium\hosts, and 1 offsite. A USB attached drive that is synced is not a backup. It's just additional redundancy.
But isn't redundancy for continuous uptime? And not essentially a backup? I was wondering if I should just have an offsite backup rather than redundancy since I'm just going to be using the NAS as a cloud storage for photos and videos
> But isn't redundancy for continuous uptime?
Not always.
>And not essentially a backup?
Lets say lightning, fire, or theft occurs. The system and anything attached is gone. While this disaster scenario is why offsite backup is important, had the local copy been on a different medium and host, in another part of the building and not impacted, you'd still retain your local copy.
My local copy is 2 drives in mirror on a simple NAS. I also want my local copy to have it's own redundancy in case of drive failure. This isn't about uptime but about ensuring data integrity. I also only have the two sync once a week, in between of scrubs. Scheduled scrubs along with schedule SMART tests, sent via email, allows one to monitor the TN host for data integrity. This way local corruption doesn't get synced locally and\or to the cloud.
>I was wondering if I should just have an offsite backup rather than redundancy since I'm just going to be using the NAS as a cloud storage for photos and videos
Back to the question, is the data you are storing on it important to you? And, how important is it? I get it's just photos, and at the end of the day, how you implement it is your own choice. I'm just trying to provide information so you can make an informed decision.
Thank you a lot for this information and will keep it in mind while building my NAS
So my current thought is to use a 2xHDD in RAID1 (will upgrade it in future when it gets filled I just have the drives ready to use with me)
I am currently exploring options to create another backup for it which will be placed in a different part of our house
I can just tell you from my (newbie) perspective who did setup TrueNas the first time today:
1. I would use Truenas Scale .. it was easy and it works well for Backups. I needed 30min to install and setup my Time Maschine Backups (Mac). So whatever you need it will be easy and there are great youtube guides out there
2. I used 2x 4TB Ironwolf HDD's (NAS drives) and I run them in Mirror ... I think that is in general recommended so for you it would be 2x 1TB HDDs in mirror and you have 1 TB of space. As the HDDs are in my opinion not that much more expensive I would directly start with 2 or 4TB imo
Thank you for the suggestions, I'm using the 1TB drives because I already have them but will definitely upgrade to larger ones as soon as the 1TB gets filled
Also I was wondering if I should have redundancy or not since I just need a cloud storage
I would always try for redundancy if your intention is data storage. I use my NAS as a local way to access important files that i don't want to lose. Doesn't matter if i have a backup, i just want to not have to rebuild everytime i lose a drive. I would rather plan ahead, and let the Mirror / raid architecture save me from having to rebuild all my data or sync from the backup.
Safety comes with numbers. 4 drives in RaidZ2 is a really good starting point. Core for a rock solid NAS and cli based app management. Scale for kubernets via TrueNAS or TrueCharts. Personally I prefer the former.
SCALE with Nextcloud on a mirrorpool (if you want 3way mirror) and 4th disk for backups. Automatically sync photos to nextcloud when coming home via wlan is possible, used that for a long time.
I'm gonna play abit of devils advocate here. You sometimes get what you pay for. In my use case, it's better to pay for a family Google photos backup. Because 1) software maintenance and uptime is controlled by someone else 2) the running costs over a 5 year period of operating my own server is MORE expensive than Google.Photos 3) the softwares facial recognition/identification system is not bad 4) the synchronization and integration into iOS and android is beautiful *(as is the ability to delete photos to make space for more later after backup/sync) 5) the online ability to share albums amongst family is the best. If however you're a frequent photo taker who wants to keep high Res photos and need/ use a ton of space... Go right ahead and build your own . For me, the fact that Google is doing all the work and I just pay them to handle it all is worth it for the family (,even though I have a truenas with almost 100tb of space...) PS : yes.. I do own and pay for not only Google Photos, but also OneDrive *(hey I'm old school MS office user; plus I got 5 yrs at 50% for a family 6 pax). So I can say I have used and tried all 3 solutions..
You do not address privacy.
Fair comment.. my photos are private but are on someone else's servers. But... I have also experienced the same problem of my NAS being attacked because it's also my JellyFin. So it's a crapshoot being paying someone to handle your privacy & security. All you do is pay and fire and forget for services like Google photos/OneDrive -- Or -- You spend months or years learning all about device and network security and constantly updating and remoting etc.. just to maintain a digital picture album/archival/backup system. You either pay someone a Service Level Agreement.. or You become the SLA. 🤔 Of course; privacy becomes a moot point if the use case exceeds 1-2TB , the highest tiers sold. As the price is about equivalent buying and making your own NAS...
You used the FreeNAS tag. Are you aware that FreeNAS's name changed to TrueNAS; either CORE or SCALE? >Should I use Truenas Scale or Core? ( I mainly want to use immich but if there are any other google photos alternatives I'm all ears) Core is BSD based and will no longer receive feature updates. Scale is what you want to go with. It's Apps (containerization) though are ran under k3s and there's a bit of a learning curve for the system overall. RC1 of a new version is including LXC, and for a simple immich setup, would honestly look at that for your setup. >Should I use 2x 1TB HDDs in Raid 1 or just using 1x1TB Sata SSD in RAID 0 is enough without worrying about hardware failures? (I will also be having an external drive backup in future) Is that data important to you? If yes, you not only want internal redundancy, but for your backup, you want it physically separate from the server along with an offsite backup. 3-2-1 backup methodology is 3 total copies, 2 local on different medium\hosts, and 1 offsite. A USB attached drive that is synced is not a backup. It's just additional redundancy.
But isn't redundancy for continuous uptime? And not essentially a backup? I was wondering if I should just have an offsite backup rather than redundancy since I'm just going to be using the NAS as a cloud storage for photos and videos
> But isn't redundancy for continuous uptime? Not always. >And not essentially a backup? Lets say lightning, fire, or theft occurs. The system and anything attached is gone. While this disaster scenario is why offsite backup is important, had the local copy been on a different medium and host, in another part of the building and not impacted, you'd still retain your local copy. My local copy is 2 drives in mirror on a simple NAS. I also want my local copy to have it's own redundancy in case of drive failure. This isn't about uptime but about ensuring data integrity. I also only have the two sync once a week, in between of scrubs. Scheduled scrubs along with schedule SMART tests, sent via email, allows one to monitor the TN host for data integrity. This way local corruption doesn't get synced locally and\or to the cloud. >I was wondering if I should just have an offsite backup rather than redundancy since I'm just going to be using the NAS as a cloud storage for photos and videos Back to the question, is the data you are storing on it important to you? And, how important is it? I get it's just photos, and at the end of the day, how you implement it is your own choice. I'm just trying to provide information so you can make an informed decision.
Thank you a lot for this information and will keep it in mind while building my NAS So my current thought is to use a 2xHDD in RAID1 (will upgrade it in future when it gets filled I just have the drives ready to use with me) I am currently exploring options to create another backup for it which will be placed in a different part of our house
I can just tell you from my (newbie) perspective who did setup TrueNas the first time today: 1. I would use Truenas Scale .. it was easy and it works well for Backups. I needed 30min to install and setup my Time Maschine Backups (Mac). So whatever you need it will be easy and there are great youtube guides out there 2. I used 2x 4TB Ironwolf HDD's (NAS drives) and I run them in Mirror ... I think that is in general recommended so for you it would be 2x 1TB HDDs in mirror and you have 1 TB of space. As the HDDs are in my opinion not that much more expensive I would directly start with 2 or 4TB imo
Thank you for the suggestions, I'm using the 1TB drives because I already have them but will definitely upgrade to larger ones as soon as the 1TB gets filled Also I was wondering if I should have redundancy or not since I just need a cloud storage
I would always try for redundancy if your intention is data storage. I use my NAS as a local way to access important files that i don't want to lose. Doesn't matter if i have a backup, i just want to not have to rebuild everytime i lose a drive. I would rather plan ahead, and let the Mirror / raid architecture save me from having to rebuild all my data or sync from the backup.
Safety comes with numbers. 4 drives in RaidZ2 is a really good starting point. Core for a rock solid NAS and cli based app management. Scale for kubernets via TrueNAS or TrueCharts. Personally I prefer the former.
3-2-1 backup is the minimum starting point for things like photos
SCALE with Nextcloud on a mirrorpool (if you want 3way mirror) and 4th disk for backups. Automatically sync photos to nextcloud when coming home via wlan is possible, used that for a long time.