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My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Show off your HTPC builds, NAS Servers, and any other hardware. Great place to ask for hardware help too.
Manni
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Manni » Fri Apr 15, 2022 1:20 pm

Glad you got your data back! :)

Jamie
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Jamie » Fri Apr 15, 2022 5:32 pm

Pauven wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 10:53 am Johnnie came through. The information wasn't deleted, merely hidden. He has made it visible again, yay!

First Time Setup Instructions to create a Removable Unassigned Devices BTRFS JBOD Drive Pool
  1. Install Unassigned Devices
  2. Install Unassigned Devices Plus
  3. Settings > Unassigned Devices > Destructive Mode: Enable
  4. Plugin/insert your drives for the pool, verify they are visible in UD
  5. With UD, Delete any partitions on those drives - click the X next to the partition name
    Note: If you don't see any partitions, click drive's Settings (gears icon) and make sure Show Partitions is Enabled
  6. With UD, Format the 1st drive using btrfs, choose a mount point name (i.e. BackupPool), enable Share
  7. With UD, Mount the 1st drive. It will be mounted at /mnt/disks/<mountpointname>, i.e. /mnt/disks/BackupPool
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  8. With UD, Format the 2nd drive with btrfs. Optionally change the mount point name for reference only (i.e. BackupPool_D2)
  9. Note the sdX (devid) in UD, then open a Console/SSH session, add the 2nd drive to the pool by typing:

    Code: Select all

    btrfs dev add -f /dev/sdX1 /mnt/disk/BackupPool
    Replace X with the correct identifier. Note the 1 at the end to specify the partition - for NVMe devs use p1, e.g. /dev/nvme0n1p1
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  10. Repeat 8 & 9 for any additional drives to add to the pool

NOTE: If you are adding additional drives to an existing JBOD pool at a later date, mount the pool and just follow steps 8-10.

NOTE: If you want instructions for creating a RAIDed pool, please refer to the link above, and follow the instructions for running a balance start.
Hi Paul,

I am a little confused by all of this now. If I follow the steps from scratch do I name the individual drives BackupPool or BackupPool_D2, BackPool_D3....

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Pauven
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Pauven » Fri Apr 15, 2022 5:37 pm

I'm a little confused too, because my end results don't 100% match the steps I took. But my best guess is this:

Name each drive uniquely, i.e. BackupPool_D2, BackupPool_D3.

After adding the drives to the pool (step 9) for all drives, then unplug them all, and clear them from UD's Historical Drives. Then plug them back in. So essentially the same instructions as before, just with the extra step of clearing them out of UD's drive history.

I'm pretty sure that's essentially what I did, but because I took a few extra turns to get there, it's possible your result may be slightly different. Regardless, it will work, it just may look like separate pools instead of the single pool I have now.
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Pauven
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Pauven » Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:50 am

I decided to upgrade the cooling on my DIY USB HDD caddy. Up until now I've been running with an old freebie Enermax 120mm fan - it was an emergency fix I had rigged up when I realized drive temps were too high during the original backup which ran constantly for over a week. I basically had just dangled the fan in front of the drives to get some air movement, and it worked well enough that I used this makeshift solution for a bit too long.

I'm a huge fan (haha) of Noctua fans, and originally planned to use a pair of them, but I couldn't find non-PWM 120mm Noctua fans in my desired RPM range that run on 12v. While looking, I came across these Pano-Mounts 120mm fans that run on 12v, spin at a nice 1600 RPM, use just a simple 2-wire connection, and are supposedly quiet. For under $14 for a 2-pack, they seemed perfect.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D4 ... =UTF8&th=1

These fans only draw 0.25A each, so 6W for the pair meant they wouldn't put much of a drain on my shared 12V power supply.

HDD Caddy Fans 1.jpg
HDD Caddy Fans 1.jpg (490.12 KiB) Viewed 12668 times

I spent a few minutes in Tinkercad and came up with a fan mount rail. 3 hours of printing later, and I was almost done. This is about $1.70 in plastic filament, so my total cooling upgrade cost is just under $16.

HDD Caddy Fans 2.jpg
HDD Caddy Fans 2.jpg (441.75 KiB) Viewed 12668 times

The rail pegs slot between the drives with a friction fit, so assembly was LEGO simple. I went ahead and sized it so that the fans will cool 6 drives, since I'll be adding a 6th drive in the coming months.

You can't tell from the picture, but the drive enclosures have air inlets in-line with the fans, just like the exhaust openings on the right side with the cables coming out. The fans are actually forcing air through the inside of each drive enclosure.

To power the fans, I simply connected them to the power distribution bus I used to share the 12V power with each of the drives. I have this bus mounted in a small 3D printed case on the top of the stack.

HDD Caddy Power Bus.jpg
HDD Caddy Power Bus.jpg (218.39 KiB) Viewed 12668 times

I'm incredibly impressed at the finished product. The fans are fairly quiet, and produce much stronger airflow than the low-end Enermax I was previously using. I'll need to observe temps on the next backup to see how much of an improvement these make, but I wouldn't be surprised to see 5-10 degree drops.

Since I have a 7-port USB hub, I've always planned to expand this drive pool to 7 drives. The current cooling solution would probably need revising to handle 7 drives properly. One thought is that I could upgrade to 140mm fans, which would easily handle 7 drives in height. Another idea I've been toying with is 3D printing an entire custom designed drive caddy that houses all electronics, fans, and drives, for which I would remove the drives and electronics from their external enclosures. This would probably improve cooling, as the fans would have direct access to the drives, instead of trying to force air through the small ventilation holes, and I could easily space the 7 drives for equal coverage with the two 120mm fans.

One reason I went with my original design was to preserve the factory warranty on these drives by leaving them in their original enclosure. That 1-year warranty is well expired by now, so I have little concern in de-casing the drives. Plus, this would probably allow me to re-use the USB controller with a different drive should one of these drives die. Basically, something like this 8-drive USB enclosure for a lot less money, and with much better cooling:

Syba 8 Bay USB Enclosure

image.png
image.png (447.78 KiB) Viewed 12668 times

That Syba unit above cost $245, and uses a pair of small 40mm fans. That's over $30 per drive, ouch. But I could probably 3D print my own enclosure for under $30. And when you buy external USB HDD's, you are typically getting the USB controller for next to nothing, as sometimes these are priced similarly to stand alone drives.

Though I will say that Syba unit has me questioning if I chose the right path. I can find stand-alone drives for about $25 less per drive, so it would have been about the same total cost but a lot less work...
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Manni
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Manni » Mon Apr 18, 2022 3:42 pm

I would definitely go for the Syba unit if I ever wanted to replace my NAS units as backup storage.
But I like your new fans and your 3D printing skills. I've always resisting getting a 3D printer, but when/if I have more free time one day I might, it's very tempting.

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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Pauven » Mon Apr 18, 2022 7:17 pm

3D printing's not for everyone. If you think you might want to play around with it, start off with one of the more affordable units. Some people love to print models the find or buy off the internet, but most of this just feels like wasting plastic to me. Most of my prints are functional, to address a specific need that I have, plus occasional movie props. For example, the hold-down bracket broke on my center console in my 24 year old car. For an hour of design effort and $0.50 in plastic, I had the replacement part the same day - I love that.

If I wasn't able to design my own parts, I'm not sure how much I would actually do with it. Note, one side effect of having a 3D printer is that you print a lot of parts for your 3D printer - it literally creates a need for itself. For a while I was frustrated that I was only printing parts for my printer, felt like a vicious cycle. But eventually I had all the upgrades I wanted, so I find it a lot more productive now.

Anyway, I couldn't help myself. I got curious what a 3D printed enclosure might look like, and if it would even be printable. I'm about halfway done with the design. Still have to figure out the top and back panels, plus ventilation.


image.png
image.png (388.68 KiB) Viewed 12662 times

It looks like it would be barely printable on my Prusa i3 Mk2.5, which has a max width of 250mm. I've designed it for 7 drives with 7mm of space between them, plus the two 120mm fans, and the front & back panels are 241mm high. If I squeeze an 8th drive in there, the space between would cut in half to about 3.5mm, which is a little skimpy for my preferences, plus I already have the 7-port USB hub. Air will flow on all 6 sides of each drive.

Currently the design is just 6 sides. The left/right sides would bolt to the HDD's, and the front/back/top/bottom would bolt to each other and to the sides. The sides/top/bottom are just 2mm thick, but they have 3 large ribs running through them for plenty of strength. I'm planning to put a carrying handle on the top, but I'll have to be careful about the design as the finished assembly should weigh around 15 lbs.

3.5_HDD_Caddy_2022-Apr-18_10-17-55PM-000_CustomizedView27837146769.jpg
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I'm hoping to get most of the wiring inside the enclosure. I'll have to disassemble one of my current USB drives to figure out how much space the internal circuitry consumes. Still trying to decide if I actually want to print this before disassembling one of the enclosures.

The front panel would take 3 hours to print and cost $1.65. The bottom will take 5 hours to print and cost $2.60, and I figure the top will be the same. Each side will take 10 hours to print and cost $5.00. I'm guessing the back will take around 4 hours to print and cost around $2.00. All together I'm looking at about $18-$20 in cost and about 37 hours of printing. Of course, design mistakes and failed prints will further drive up the costs.

But for less than $25, I'm seriously thinking of doing it. It should provide significantly better cooling, and a smaller overall size compared to my current stack.
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 20, 2022 7:32 pm

I decided to keep pursuing designing my own backup pool HDD caddy, so I went ahead and decased (aka "shucked") one of my Seagate USB drives. It was a little tough to open, but with enough prying I succeeded. My first surprise what that the USB adapter extends beneath the drive - that's the coppery triangle PCB in the pic below:

Seagate HDD 1.jpg
Seagate HDD 1.jpg (218.64 KiB) Viewed 12656 times

It makes sense now that I see it, but I had been doing all my design work assuming the drive height was the standard 26.1mm, and this little board adds another 1.5mm of thickness. This solidified my choice to only do 7 drives with 7mm spacing between them, instead of 8 drives with 3.5mm of spacing, as that 3.5mm gap would get reduced to just 2mm because of this board. As-is, I don't actually have 7mm of spacing for air to flow, this adapter board reduces it to 5.5mm.

My second surprise is that the drive is an Exos Enterprise model, very similar to the 8TB drives I've been using recently in my Unraid server. I was expecting 5400RPM desktop class drives, amazingly these are 7200. I guess this explains the excessive heat output.

Seagate HDD 2.jpg
Seagate HDD 2.jpg (360.98 KiB) Viewed 12656 times

Those little blue feet are the silicone-like mounting pads, which absorb some vibration, and the drive simply rests freely inside the enclosure. My caddy design doesn't permit using these, such a shame, because I need the securely mount the caddy panels to the drives in an exoskeleton style assembly. But none of my Unraid server's drives have vibration mounts, so I'm not too concerned about losing them here.

While trying to fit everything inside the caddy, some of the panels ended up growing in size. At one point, some of them were actually too big to print on my printer. So I had to resize a few parts to make it printable again. I also had to get a right-angle adapter for the power supply brick so that the power cord connects from the back, as there just wasn't enough room otherwise.

Here's a render of the current design, about 97% done. I'm actually thinking of printing in these colors, black and silver, as it looks spiffy to me in the render:

3.5_HDD_Caddy_Almost_Done.jpg
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I calculated the open area of the two 120mm intake fans (18,260mm2), and then added 181 little 11mm exhaust holes all over the opposite end of the case, on the top, bottom, both sides and the back. By adding up all the openings, and reducing for blockage, I figure that exhaust openings total the same 18,260mm2, so exhaust shouldn't be a bottleneck.

Not sure that this matters, though, as I also added up the air passages around the drives, and that's only around 4,700mm2, just 25% of the inlet/exhaust openings. I never did make it through fluid dynamics in college, and don't have the software needed to model the airflow behavior, but I think the air will speed up as it squeezes through the drives, then slow down again upon exit.

Regardless, this is significantly better than trying to blow air through the USB enclosures, as there is only about 600mm2 worth of intake/exhaust openings on those little plastic boxes.

All that remains to be done on the design is to add a handle on top, and some screw mounts to connect the silver cover to the rest of the caddy.

I'm still not sure if I'm going to really attempt to print this - I typically have struggles printing near the max size of my printer's bed, and this is bigger than anything I've ever tried before. And it's not just 1 part that's big, it's all 6 sides, so it kinda feels like asking for trouble. I'll probably print at least one of the biggest sides just to see if it's even possible. If I have a guess, I'll probably end up abandoning this project, or at least postponing it until some point in the future when I get a bigger and better printer.

Even if I don't end up printing it, I've enjoyed a few days of design work, honing my CAD skills. I've been doing the design in Fusion 360, and I've learned a few new skills on this little project. I even modelled the 7-port USB hub in realistic detail just for practice - it was hard work but I really like the result. The extra detail did come in handy on a few parts, especially the HDD's when I added the USB connector - it was only then I realized I had the power supply on the wrong side blocking cable access.
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 27, 2022 1:57 pm

I went ahead and printed one of the large sides, to see if this project even seemed feasible. As you can see, this panel takes up almost the entirety of the available space on the build plate:

HDD Caddy Side Print.jpg
HDD Caddy Side Print.jpg (522.88 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

I was really worried about warping for such a large print, but was pleasantly surprised when it finished nearly perfectly. I was game to try more.

All the rest of the panels printed fine too, until I got to the last one. The back panel was not only long, but taller than the others, which caused more warping effect (normal when hot plastic cools), so the first try failed. But the second attempt was near perfect and more than good enough:

HDD Caddy Back Print.jpg
HDD Caddy Back Print.jpg (462.98 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

I may have over-engineered this case. I was expecting it to feel flimsy, but this feels like a solid, commercial product once assembled. Here in this assembly test, you can see it securely supporting all of the HDD's even with one side removed:

HDD Caddy Assembly Test.jpg
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The original Seagate drive enclosures have a status light on the side, for which a simple light pipe transmits the blue LED light from the USB adapter board. I scavenged these light pipes and re-used them with a few dabs of hot glue:

HDD Caddy Light Pipes.jpg
HDD Caddy Light Pipes.jpg (504.1 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

The light pipes work perfectly, just as well as in the original Seagate enclosures, but my extra cooling holes create a much more dramatic light show. Additionally, I leaned a new printing trick to print a logo in a different color - in this case a Frankenstein's Monster icon so I will remember this is my Frankenstore pool:

HDD Caddy Light Pipe Test.jpg
HDD Caddy Light Pipe Test.jpg (351.88 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

The wiring is easier than before - I just remove the back cover and have easy access to wire up the 12v power plugs and plug in the USB cables. Here you can also see the heat-set brass inserts I used - you use a soldering iron to melt these into printed holes, and they make for a super strong and reliable screw mount:

HDD Caddy Wiring.jpg
HDD Caddy Wiring.jpg (369.51 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

I didn't actually model the feet. I use PrusaSlicer to prepare all my prints, and it has built-in capability to create simple shapes. So I created a simple cylinder, and then configured a filament color change 3mm from the top. When the printer prompted for the next color, I swapped in some TPU flexible filament to act as vibration absorbing pads. This is one of my favorite tricks with 3D printing, to combine different materials into a cohesive part:

HDD Caddy Feet with TPU pads.jpg
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All done, it was about 70 hours of constant printing, though because everything printed so well I didn't have to baby sit it. Total cost for plastic was around $25, and the various screws (70) and heat-set inserts (28) added another $15 to the bill, so this is a $40 case.

I did use hot-glue for some of the assembly. In addition to the light pipes, the feet, rear USB hub, and power supply are all hot-glued into place. Fingers crossed none of those parts fail.

A couple times in project I had minor regrets, as it started to feel like a lot of effort for what would ultimately be very similar to my existing caddy stack. But with the project now complete, I'm ecstatic on the final result:

HDD Caddy Final Back.jpg
HDD Caddy Final Back.jpg (364.76 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

One of my favorite features is the handle. I was finding my previous HDD stack a chore to move around. This new handle solution is super strong and makes moving the array around a breeze. I'd estimate it currently weighs around 15-20 lbs, and will gain another 3 pounds when the final two drives are added.

HDD Caddy Final Front.jpg
HDD Caddy Final Front.jpg (489.12 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

But the best part is the enhanced cooling. With my original stack of these HDD's in the stock enclosure, temps quickly climbed towards 60°C. The cheap Enermax fan I used to keep temps somewhat in check could only manage 45-48°C. I never tested the new dual Pana-Mount fans that I added a week ago, but was expecting them to keep temps in the 30's.

But in this new chassis, temps are staying basically at ambient, 24°C, during an entire backup. I never even saw it rise a single degree! Amazing.
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Manni
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Manni » Wed Apr 27, 2022 2:05 pm

Congrats on finishing this project, it looks great!

I would still go for a ready-made solution due to the amount of time needed to produce this, but I admire your dedication.

You should publish a link to the reference of the printer used, as well as the design files, so that people can reproduce your design.

Unless you plan to mass-produce it and sell it! :)

Jamie
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Re: My Unraid NAS Backup Solution

Post by Jamie » Wed Apr 27, 2022 6:32 pm

You're quite talanted, Paul

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