Tag: storage

Backup patterns that survive disasters: snapshot, replication, off-site. Retention, safety, and the 3-2-1 model done right.

The kernel docs still warn about it. The Btrfs wiki still warns about it. People still build it and lose data. Here's the write hole, why RAID 1/10 are fine, and what to use instead.

SnapRAID calculates parity on a schedule instead of in real time, so it mixes drive sizes and pairs with MergerFS. Best fit for media that rarely changes.

Creating a RAID array is the easy part. The drama starts six months later when one drive starts dying. Here's the survival guide for everything that happens after mdadm --create.

Hardware RAID controllers used to be necessary. Now they're often a liability. Here's when to flash that LSI card to IT mode, when to keep it, and why ZFS specifically refuses to share.

RAID-Z isn't just RAID 5 with a new name. Variable stripe widths, no write hole, and dRAID's distributed spares change the rebuild math entirely.

RAID 5 and 6 don't scale gracefully past 8 drives. RAID 50 and RAID 60 stripe across multiple parity sub-arrays so rebuilds only stress one group. Here's when nesting actually pays off.

Three popular NAS operating systems compared: TrueNAS's ZFS, OMV's flexibility, and Unraid's mixed-disk magic. Which is right for your home lab?

Two ways to give your K8s cluster persistent block storage, Longhorn for simplicity, Rook-Ceph for scale. Real homelab tradeoffs, not vendor marketing slides.

Build a proper DIY NAS in 2026: case selection, CPU choice, drives, HBA card, ZFS pool layout, UPS sizing, and a real power budget that will not fail you.

NVMe drives throttle hard at 70-85C. Here is how to monitor temps, intentionally trigger throttling to confirm it, and pick a heatsink that fixes the issue.

SAS drives are not dead, they are cheap on eBay right now. Here is exactly when used SAS3 hardware beats SATA for home lab storage builds on a budget.