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So I'm about to bite the bullet on new drives, But i need help

Alrit so I'm thinking about finally biting the bullet and getting 4 drives of ACTUAL useful storage capacity meaning 6-10tbs each. I've only had four 2tb drives so far and because Im not super committed yet I haven't' set them up in a raid I've literally just used them in parallel so that I KNOW my data won't get killed if a few die.

Anyways I've started to run out of space and I need more drives. So my thought was to get some more drives. But even with that solution I feel like when I get them I'm just gonna do the same thing. Set them in parallel and continue the same mess i've been doing.

 

Is there any easy raid u guys use I think its raid 5 or 6 that can lose 2 drives. Either way I need to figure that out because I should really set this up so I can just add to it instead of hoarding my data in a messy sloppy manner.

 

 

 

But I've run into some issues:

- Right now I have a 4 bay holder for my drives. Meaning I'm taking up 4 sata ports on my Personal PC which is NOT FUN. So I was thinking since I'm getting more drives now Maybe I should get a cheap storage rack plugged into a mini pc to manage my shit.

 

But when I looked into them they are ALL in the 300-400 range and they are SERVERS so there STILL LOUD for no reason there consumer drives I don't need massive cooling. So do u guys know of any quite options that are out there for cheaper. But also allow for upgradability and expandability in the future??

 

 

Also:

 

- While the size is great especially for the price, the fact that I could lose one drive and be out 160-190 bucks is HORRIFYING to say the least. So while its nice to ya have 4 of them the fact that I could LOSE 10tbs of data all at once plus the cost of the drive instantly is a little daunting and its holding me back from purchasing the drives.

 

- Another issue is that While I could use the 6tb drives aka the cheapest ones I won't really be thinking of the future me who wants to keep adding on with the same high 8-10tb drives.

But if I used 6tb ones now I could get 5 drives instead of the normal 4 with the 8-10tb drives but for the same price. I feel this is pretty worth it because I get one more drive as a safety net. But then I scold myself because I know I will add to this pool down the road.

You expect me to reply then you'd best QUOTE me so I can........thanks

 

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23 minutes ago, TheReal_ist said:

Alrit so I'm thinking about finally biting the bullet and getting 4 drives of ACTUAL useful storage capacity meaning 6-10tbs each. I've only had four 2tb drives so far and because Im not super committed yet I haven't' set them up in a raid I've literally just used them in parallel so that I KNOW my data won't get killed if a few die.

Anyways I've started to run out of space and I need more drives. So my thought was to get some more drives. But even with that solution I feel like when I get them I'm just gonna do the same thing. Set them in parallel and continue the same mess i've been doing.

 

Is there any easy raid u guys use I think its raid 5 or 6 that can lose 2 drives. Either way I need to figure that out because I should really set this up so I can just add to it instead of hoarding my data in a messy sloppy manner.

 

 

 

But I've run into some issues:

- Right now I have a 4 bay holder for my drives. Meaning I'm taking up 4 sata ports on my Personal PC which is NOT FUN. So I was thinking since I'm getting more drives now Maybe I should get a cheap storage rack plugged into a mini pc to manage my shit.

 

But when I looked into them they are ALL in the 300-400 range and they are SERVERS so there STILL LOUD for no reason there consumer drives I don't need massive cooling. So do u guys know of any quite options that are out there for cheaper. But also allow for upgradability and expandability in the future??

 

 

Also:

 

- While the size is great especially for the price, the fact that I could lose one drive and be out 160-190 bucks is HORRIFYING to say the least. So while its nice to ya have 4 of them the fact that I could LOSE 10tbs of data all at once plus the cost of the drive instantly is a little daunting and its holding me back from purchasing the drives.

 

- Another issue is that While I could use the 6tb drives aka the cheapest ones I won't really be thinking of the future me who wants to keep adding on with the same high 8-10tb drives.

But if I used 6tb ones now I could get 5 drives instead of the normal 4 with the 8-10tb drives but for the same price. I feel this is pretty worth it because I get one more drive as a safety net. But then I scold myself because I know I will add to this pool down the road.

Which HD's  you want to get.  Company name and brand and all that jazz, so we can help you better.  Also if your getting external make sure it has power button and what not.

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Could I suggest archive drives to you? Awful writing speed but okay read speed. Depends on your usage.

 

 

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If you want to be able to add drives, and add mixed drives then maybe UnRAID might be the way to go for you. 

Your largest drive needs to be a parity drive, but all your other drives can be any size you want up to the size of the parity drive.

You can always swap out your parity drive later for a larger one if you need to add larger disks, and then make your old parity drive a data drive. 

It has a nice Web GUI. 

 

If you dont mind using all the same size of disk, then you could go a hardware RAID card - theres plenty of cheap LSI cards like the 9211-8i, and all the rebranded cards from Dell/IBM/Intel. You can use the MegaRaid Utility to add or remove drives. If you want to swap out drives for larger ones later (rather than adding more disks) then you need to replace and rebuild them all one at a time before you can expand the logical volume. 

 

You can use whatever hardware you like for these really, such as something second hand off eBay. 

You just need to make sure that you have enough hard drive slots in the case (or you could get a seperate case), and that you have enough SATA ports if its UnRAID (software), or a PCI-e slot for an extra SAS/SATA card. 

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RAID is a solution to prevent downtime but it sounds like you're using it to make sure you don't lose data if a disk dies. It's not about losing data, it's about losing time. In a business downtime = $$. Raid is all about availability. You should never think "I don't want to lose data if my array dies" because you should have a backup(s).

 

Keeping that in mind, for home storage anything you chose is fine so long as you have a backup solution in place. There's a LOT of recommendations on backup solutions, especially the classic 3-2-1. 

 

 

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You might consider adding a SAS card. One SAS slot can break out to 4 SATA drives. 


 

 

On 5/19/2019 at 12:06 AM, TheReal_ist said:

But I've run into some issues:

- Right now I have a 4 bay holder for my drives. Meaning I'm taking up 4 sata ports on my Personal PC which is NOT FUN. So I was thinking since I'm getting more drives now Maybe I should get a cheap storage rack plugged into a mini pc to manage my shit.

LSI SAS 9211-8i: $65

Mini SAS to 4x SATA cable: $15

4x SATA Power splitter cable: $8

 

If you can trade away a PCI slot you can get up to 8 SATA ports in exchange using these. 

 

On 5/19/2019 at 12:06 AM, TheReal_ist said:

- While the size is great especially for the price, the fact that I could lose one drive and be out 160-190 bucks is HORRIFYING to say the least. So while its nice to ya have 4 of them the fact that I could LOSE 10tbs of data all at once plus the cost of the drive instantly is a little daunting and its holding me back from purchasing the drives.

This is definitely a risk with higher density drives. You'll want to think about having backups if your data is important to you. 

RAID can save you from one or two failures, but you'll still be looking at UREs while your array is in a degraded state and you run the risk of the whole thing failing if you can't get a new drive installed before you go over your failure threshold. 

 

On 5/19/2019 at 12:06 AM, TheReal_ist said:

- Another issue is that While I could use the 6tb drives aka the cheapest ones I won't really be thinking of the future me who wants to keep adding on with the same high 8-10tb drives.

But if I used 6tb ones now I could get 5 drives instead of the normal 4 with the 8-10tb drives but for the same price. I feel this is pretty worth it because I get one more drive as a safety net. But then I scold myself because I know I will add to this pool down the road.

How much do you want to spend and in what interval can you spend it? 

How much data are you bringing in and are you going at a rate where you can afford your next expansion before you are full? 

Can you offload data to cold storage (such blurays or tape) or do you need your entire collection to be hot all the time?

 

This is the life of a storage administrator. You need to plan all of this out in advance. 

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