Saving old Blu Ray discs

[AVSCraig]

Before I dive in to responding to Dave & Craig's "too much is never enough" reply - question for the NASers. Do you also run a backup device for your primary NAS? I've been meaning to set that up b/c as nice as RAID 5 (or SHR) are at allowing for 1 single drive to go bad and be replaced with no issue, if your NAS has a catastrophic failure you could be SOL in a big way. So an actual backup could be a life saver in that case. My old NAS went dark a few weeks ago and fortunately it ended up being a $30 PSU fix but I wasn't sure that would be the case at first.

So... I have an old 4 bay Synology DS916+ and just picked up the DS1525+, which is on sale. I've already received it but I suppose I could do a return. However, I also ordered 3x 18TB drives on sale. (Surveyed NAS drive prices and sorted by price using PCPartPicker and the WD Red Pro 18TB at $290 on Newegg is the cheapest $/GB among all NAS drives right now.) Per Synology's RAID calculator, using either SHR or Raid 5, that'll be 32TB and with adding a 4th and 5th, eventually 49 & 65 TB.

I don't have the enormous collection some here do. My Excel file shows this media type summary:



At an average of 60GB / 30GB, ripping every single 4K / BD shouldn't take much more than about 1/2 of that initial capacity. My pace of buying has slowed, too, so... I think I'm plenty good with 5 bays considering all that.

Now, if I follow the path of a couple of friends and start firing up torrents to download, it could get out of control lol.

No. I've heard of folks running the same Seagate Ironwolf drives I have for 5 years, 24/7, with zero failures. Seeing as I turn my NAS off when I don't use it, I doubt I'll ever have a drive go bad. But I have spare here in case one ever does ( they need to be identical drives ). 

[bmoney]

thats why i highly suggest unraid.  the drive your replacing only has to be the same size as the corrupt one (it can be bigger but not smaller)

and drives fail for random reasons they in fact can be DOA from the factory.  youd be better off keeping it on 24/7 than to keep starting and stopping the NAS tbh

[Paul Heroy]

I've had 1 drive fail in the nearly 10 years I've had my Synology, and it was an easy thing to replace it. Took at least a day for the NAS to rebuild everything and be "healthy" again but that was it. 

A catastrophic failure would be like a motherboard or critical component dying. I've had something like that happen on a PC but not a NAS, yet. In that scenario, you should be able to just take the drives and put them in a similar unit and have them be recognized. But when Synology rolled out their "only OUR brand drives can be used" with the 2025 models, I freaked out a bit b/c if that happened I'd only be able to use an older Synology NAS. Guess what happened to the prices on those. Fortunately they realized the enormous hostility and negative impact that move generated and walked it back.

[AVSCraig]

thats why i highly suggest unraid.  the drive your replacing only has to be the same size as the corrupt one (it can be bigger but not smaller)

and drives fail for random reasons they in fact can be DOA from the factory.  youd be better off keeping it on 24/7 than to keep starting and stopping the NAS tbh

There is debate on that and no consensus on that at all. Besides, I only use the NAS and theater 4 - 8 hours a week, and don't use it at all for 1 week at a time quite often, to as long as a month at a time when off camping. So I don't buy that at all. I certainly wouldn't leave it running when I go to Alaska for 3 months. I probably only average 250 hours a year in my theater currently. That's the equivalent of running the NAS a little over 10 days a year. No way running it another 355 days is better for it - or the power bill.   

[bmoney]

The power bill is peanuts. If you are worried about the power bill your in the WRONG hobby lol

But obviously if you’re gone for 3 months turn it off. I think that statement is a little obtuse. 

For once a week I wouldn’t keep cycling it on and off. But you do you. 

[AVSCraig]

The power bill is peanuts. If you are worried about the power bill your in the WRONG hobby lol

But obviously if you’re gone for 3 months turn it off. I think that statement is a little obtuse.

For once a week I wouldn’t keep cycling it on and off. But you do you.

Zappiti has real time online health monitoring of the hard drives in the NAS, including the drive temperature history. No problems in the last 6 years. Also from Reddit -

" On 20+ year old disks? Sure.

Modern disks? It doesn't matter.

25 disks in my array with a 1 hour spindown. A quick poll of one of those disks shows it with nearly 4300 start stop cycles with 5700 load unload cycles. That disk had 30k hours on it (used) when I put it in my server 5 years ago.

There is simply no data to support that spinning down a disk is any worse than letting it spin needlessly. Especially when we're talking twice a week. "

"Although general advice is that power cycling can affect disk life I haven't experienced it. I have some disks with almost 9K power cycles and haven't had a failure.
If you only use it for backups a couple of times a month it doesn't make sense to keep it running. There is the cost of the electricity and constantly running is going to cause some wear and tear when it isn't needed."

" It is fairly generally agreed that HDDs are better left on permanently as they are designed for. However they are the toughest part of any NAS. The rest of the hardware is where manufacturers save in components. And it's these that can suffer by being left on for ever. For instance, think of the power supply fans. A few dollars device that can fail and wreak havoc on the rest of hardware. Or think of dusty environments where it may deposit on the fans vanes and filters leading to inefficient cooling."

" It is definitely not agreed upon that HDDS are better left on. Some people belive that and some people don't.

This question has been asked countless times and there just isn't data to support either way. People have theories but the answer to the question depend upon the convictions of the person answering and not data.

It can probably be said that turning a drive on and off dozens or hundreds of time a day is worse than leaving it on full time. It beyond that is just conjecture."

Is it better to keep my nas on 24/7 or turn it on for backups twice a month? : r/HomeNAS

[Paul Heroy]

Well, it's probably irrational but I went ahead and RMA'd the 5 bay Synology and grabbed the 8 bay while great BF pricing is on. Chance of actually ever using the extra capacity it affords is probably under 1%. But as they say, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

[bmoney]

Zappiti has real time online health monitoring of the hard drives in the NAS, including the drive temperature history. No problems in the last 6 years. Also from Reddit -

" On 20+ year old disks? Sure.

Modern disks? It doesn't matter.

25 disks in my array with a 1 hour spindown. A quick poll of one of those disks shows it with nearly 4300 start stop cycles with 5700 load unload cycles. That disk had 30k hours on it (used) when I put it in my server 5 years ago.

There is simply no data to support that spinning down a disk is any worse than letting it spin needlessly. Especially when we're talking twice a week. "

"Although general advice is that power cycling can affect disk life I haven't experienced it. I have some disks with almost 9K power cycles and haven't had a failure.
If you only use it for backups a couple of times a month it doesn't make sense to keep it running. There is the cost of the electricity and constantly running is going to cause some wear and tear when it isn't needed."

" It is fairly generally agreed that HDDs are better left on permanently as they are designed for. However they are the toughest part of any NAS. The rest of the hardware is where manufacturers save in components. And it's these that can suffer by being left on for ever. For instance, think of the power supply fans. A few dollars device that can fail and wreak havoc on the rest of hardware. Or think of dusty environments where it may deposit on the fans vanes and filters leading to inefficient cooling."

" It is definitely not agreed upon that HDDS are better left on. Some people belive that and some people don't.

This question has been asked countless times and there just isn't data to support either way. People have theories but the answer to the question depend upon the convictions of the person answering and not data.

It can probably be said that turning a drive on and off dozens or hundreds of time a day is worse than leaving it on full time. It beyond that is just conjecture."

Is it better to keep my nas on 24/7 or turn it on for backups twice a month? : r/HomeNAS

As I said. You do you.