The Lab · Storage

Storage

An Unraid array with an NVMe cache in front, a failing HGST off to one side, and encrypted backups at Wasabi.

All the bulk storage lives on wednesday. The Unraid array is four Seagate IronWolf NAS drives (three for data, one for parity), about 10TB usable, with a two-disk WD Black NVMe cache pool sitting in front of it. Off to the side is Dodo, a single failing HGST laptop drive that S.M.A.R.T. has been warning me about for a while; it holds only the kind of data I would not miss when it finally gives up. Plex is most of the read I/O, and the rest tracks whatever Docker container I'm tinkering with that week. Off-site is restic to Wasabi with client-side encryption, so the keys never leave the LAN and anything sitting in the bucket is ciphertext as far as Wasabi is concerned.

Storage · 4 items

Bulk storage (wednesday)Unraid array: Three Seagate IronWolf NAS drives for data (two 4TB, one 2TB) for ~10TB usable, with a fourth 4TB IronWolf as parity. Plex library and the Docker volumes that don't belong on the cache.
NVMe cache (wednesday)Cache pool: Two WD Black NVMe Gen4 drives pooled, a 1TB SN850X and a 1TB SN7100. Active workloads land here, Unraid moves them to the array on its schedule.
Failing-drive pool (wednesday)Dodo: A 1TB HGST 2.5-inch laptop drive that S.M.A.R.T. has been complaining about for a while. There's no parity and no replication. The pool exists for data I genuinely do not care about, and the day Dodo finally gives up I will simply lose what's on it.
Encrypted (Wasabi)Off-site backups: restic with client-side encryption pushing to Wasabi. The keys never leave the LAN, so anything sitting in the bucket is ciphertext as far as Wasabi's servers are concerned.

Last updated · April 28, 2026