Help me choose. . .


Joseph

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Hi Guys,

 

My unRAID array is nearly full and I want to expand storage (see below.)

 

Parity (4TB)
Parity 2 (4TB)
Disk 1 4 TB
Disk 2 2 TB
Disk 3 4 TB
Disk 4 4 TB
Disk 5 3 TB
Disk 6 2 TB
Disk 7 4 TB
Disk 8 4 TB
Disk 9 4 TB
Disk 10 4 TB
Disk 11 4 TB

 

I've come to a crossroads and need some advice. The two options I'm considering are:

 

1) Purchase 3 8TB drives:

  • Replace the 2 Parity Drives with 2 8TBs
  • Pull an old 2TB HDD and replace with 1 8TB
  • Re-purpose the old 4TB parity HDDs as replacements for the 3TB & 2TB HDDs to increase storage

 

Pros:

Doesn't require too much interaction

Delays migrating to a larger, louder & ugly case

 

Cons:

Expensive initial purchase

As needed, replacing 4TBs with 8TB HDDs will also be expensive

The disk rearranging will take some time; so there's some risk of "Murphy" rearing his ugly head.

I only have 13 drive bays; so as storage fills up, I'll be faced with this dilemma again at some point in the future

What to do with all the old 4TBs once they're retired

 

2) Purchase a Norco 4224 Case

  • Migrate the existing unRAID hardware to the new case
  • Continue to add 4TB HDDs until the unit is full.

 

Pros:

Future 'Proof' in the sense I can upgrade to a bigger Mobo (ie dual core, Xeon CPUs, more RAM etc.)

24 Drive cages; instead of 13

Delays purchasing expensive 8TB HDDs; hopefully they will be more affordable once that becomes the next option.

 

Cons:

Expensive initial purchase

PSU requirements - I have no idea how much or what kind of PSU I would need to power 24HDDs, and a bigger Mobo as a future purchase, etc. (this is the main reason I'm posting)

Loud & Looks hideous (I don't have a server closet, so it will be in a shelf in my room)

Excessive heat build up

 

I'm open to other options too, so any thoughts and help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

Thanks,

 

Joseph

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Hi -

 

If you have other reasons to want to get the extended dual CPU motherboard, then clearly a larger case is the way to go.  But are you planning to run lots of CPU or memory intensive applications?  There's overhead to running those large setups including more SATA controllers in addition to what you listed, personally I'd rather go the 8TB route unless you have specific plans that require the multi-CPU setup.

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I'd suggest getting the 3 8T. Replace parity and parity2. With other 8T, replace 2T+2T+3T=7T. So you'd have 1T free. You now have 2 empty slots. Buy 8T drives to fill those as needed. Use the 4T drives as backups or spares.

 

This should keep you a while. 

 

If any of your 4T are showing their age (near 5 years power-on hours)  or have SMART issues, I'd look to swap them out 2 for 1 with 8T.

 

Recommend the best buy easystore 8T externals, which are easy to open and extract WD Red inside. Cheap and good option. HGST 8Ts are more expensive, but are an even better quality option IMO. But with a big price difference, I'd probably be leaning towards the harvested Reds.

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