Yes, in my professional life I have run Raid 10 arrays for databases and storage enclosures.
At home, I simply don't have the need for that much storage, nor a need for faster performance. I have a small desktop that I use as a file server at home. My data drive is around 400GB. My data is mostly pictures that I have taken over the years, word documents, excel files, scanned in copies of receipts, some ripped MP3's from my own CD's, etc. Unlike a lot of people, I don't collect a bunch of media, i don't have movies and TV shows downloaded. I don't keep every ISO file that I have ever downloaded in my life. My VM's that I use are all short lived test things that I use to learn and I scribble down some notes...so I don't need to keep them long term.
For the safety of my data at home, i have a second physical hard drive in my box. I run a robocopy job each day of the week that keeps a 7 day rotation of my files. Since most of my data is historical, my rate of change is absolutely tiny, so my robocopy jobs usually finish in about 10 seconds. In addition, I take an occasional robocopy to an external hard drive that I keep offsite. And finally, I use Macrium and I backup my data drive about once per month.
I think the key here is that I don't really use my file server a whole lot anymore at home for new stuff. The ways I do things have changed over the years. For example,
- my email is all in Gmail. I don't use my ISP's email, and I don't use a mail client like Outlook to keep my email local on my machine anymore
- my web browser stores all of my bookmarks and such in my account, i haven't had a need to backup and restore this
- We have Office 365, and all 4 of my families cell phones automatically backup their pictures and movies to their OneDrive account. I haven't used my old DSLR camera in a long time for taking pictures.
- software that I buy I store in a folder in OneDrive along with my license keys. So, it's on my main desktop and in the cloud...not on my file server.
- The games I play all have my saved game data as part of my profile in my online account. No need to back any of that up anymore
- My music is all Amazon music these days. I pay the $149 a year for the family account and everybody in my family pretty much listens to music from their cell phones.
I think for me, since I have been a server engineer since around 1998 or so....and I have kids and other priorities at home..i just like to keep my home stuff simple. I work on, troubleshot and fix broken stuff all day at work. I'm at the point in my life, where I just don't want to come home and do the same sort of stuff at home. I'd rather play my guitar, hang out with my kids, chat with friends, sit around a fire, and just chillout and relax at home.
