Redundant power supplies: overkill for the home user?

[Texandy]

This will be for a home server that mostly stores video, streams to one or two users, and serves as backup storage for other files. Storage around 12tb

That said, would a redundant power supply for this kind of NAS make sense?

I'm not terribly concerned about downtime, but I am more concerned about lost data from a power supply failure.

Will a power supply typically give warning signs before it fails? Or do they generally just fail without warning? If there's a grace period accompanied with clear signs of imminent failure, I'm ok with shutting the system down and leaving it off a few days while the replacement ships.

What I need is in the 350 to 450 watts range. So I'm not sure a redundant consumer class power supply would even be available in that range.

Or would I just be better served by making occasional backups of all the data to usb-enclosed hard drives that only get turned on for that purpose, say every other week?

 

[travanx]

Buy a UPS. They normally beep when power is lost. You can set the system up to shutdown on power loss after so many seconds/minutes, or shutdown manually if you are around.

I have my router, cable modem, and freenas server connected to the UPS.

 

[JDCynical]

...
Will a power supply typically give warning signs before it fails? Or do they generally just fail without warning? If there's a grace period accompanied with clear signs of imminent failure, I'm ok with shutting the system down and leaving it off a few days while the replacement ships.

What I need is in the 350 to 450 watts range. So I'm not sure a redundant consumer class power supply would even be available in that range.
...

In my experience, they usually just fail. You might see random strangeness, such as kernel panics or other odd failures, but usually they keep going, until they don't.

As for the supplies themselves, there isn't any 'consumer class' supplies made, they all tend to be 'enterprise grade', and they are not exactly cheap new, as seen on Newegg, and tend to be loud.

You might find a good price for one on ebay or one of the many server supply sites online.

Buy a UPS. They normally beep when power is lost. You can set the system up to shutdown on power loss after so many seconds/minutes, or shutdown manually if you are around.

OP was asking about the supply itself failing, not the power. :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Overkill for home use? Most likely.

 

[Texandy]

Ok, this is sort of a separate but related question.

How about using a dedicated hard drive/drives on your home office PC to back up the NAS? In other words, accept that there's no cost-effective (within my means anyways) way to safeguard that potential point of failure and instead figure out a way to cost effectively and safely keep a backup of the NAS.

Those backups won't use ECC (home office PC doesn't have ECC and isn't capable of using it), but if I periodically use rsync with checksum to update the backup drive from the NAS, then I should be fairly safe as far as data corruption goes, right?

Or are there some factors I'm unaware of that would make that unworkable?

 

[Darren Myers]

Ok, this is sort of a separate but related question.

How about using a dedicated hard drive/drives on your home office PC to back up the NAS? In other words, accept that there's no cost-effective (within my means anyways) way to safeguard that potential point of failure and instead figure out a way to cost effectively and safely keep a backup of the NAS.

Those backups won't use ECC (home office PC doesn't have ECC and isn't capable of using it), but if I periodically use rsync with checksum to update the backup drive from the NAS, then I should be fairly safe as far as data corruption goes, right?

Or are there some factors I'm unaware of that would make that unworkable?

Why not turn to the cloud? The crashplan pro subscription i have is 10$ a month for UNLIMITED backup...i have 27Tb of both active and archived items with them. Surely this is more cost effective, and of course doesnt need tinkering with rsync or anything. Other wise if you jut care about data you can use rsync or you can use windows robocopy to connect to the share, and then robocopy the data from the NAS share to a local drive.

 

[Texandy]

The cloud isn't a very good option for me. I'm on a data-metered wISP.

Also, I'm not a big fan of the cloud concept anyways, from a privacy standpoint.

 

[Darren Myers]

The cloud isn't a very good option for me. I'm on a data-metered wISP.

Also, I'm not a big fan of the cloud concept anyways, from a privacy standpoint.

No problem there, another option would be what i keep onsite at home for my immitaitly import shit, is a ioSafe, which is a fireproof/waterproof backup enclosure. Granted its USB, but it works. The guys are ioSafe have alot of fun :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kti45vCzvIM

 

[Black Ninja]

The cloud isn't a very good option for me. I'm on a data-metered wISP.

Also, I'm not a big fan of the cloud concept anyways, from a privacy standpoint.

Pretty much everybody is on metered internet, even those who think they have unlimited.
The term "unlimited" (at least here in US) means you don't have officially limit set, so any time when they decide is too much they just cut you off for breaking the terms of services. Customers think "unlimited" is actually unlimited and that works great for marketing $$