Jump to content

I took the opportunity while replacing my failed drive to stick a power monitor on the storage server. I appreciate mine's probably an extreme case as it's a high powered virtualization system with virtual SAN/NAS, home automation VMs and a couple of heavy transcoding machines on it but the power draw was kinda shocking. I took the opportunity to play with the cpu and NB voltages. With an 8core AMD FX8320 @ 3.9 GHz and stock voltage (1.375v) the full system draw at idle was 278Watts, Still running all 8 cores with Turbo disabled and voltage at 1.225v I'm now drawing 192Watts idle at the wall and have at least a 12c reduction in package temp. I played with running it at 6 and 4 cores respectively but it didn't make very much difference and I couldn't take the performance hit. After a couple of hours playing with undervolting it I'm a little happier, has anyone else got the power draw statistics for their storage rigs?

I'm on a horse...


Gaming Rig | Storage Server | Virtual Server | HTPC

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

All this talk of dodgy Seagate drives... I was about to weigh in about how reliable mine have been over the last 4-5 years, especially given the unbelievable failure rate of the Samsung F3 and F4 series drives I've owned. I was about to attest that out of my 8x Seagate ST2000DM001 I've never had a failure...

 

 

 

Until today... failed last night at 03:48 apparently, during a nightly VM backup... bit miffed

It all just depends on how you use them. Mine were always on 24/7 since  I bought them. You have the 2TB model of the drives I had. Pull up the S.M.A.R.T. info from your remaining drives and check the Power On Hours. Should give you an idea of how long your drive lasted before it died. I'd be curious to see if it died right around the same time as mine did.

 

I took the opportunity while replacing my failed drive to stick a power monitor on the storage server. I appreciate mine's probably an extreme case as it's a high powered virtualization system with virtual SAN/NAS, home automation VMs and a couple of heavy transcoding machines on it but the power draw was kinda shocking. I took the opportunity to play with the cpu and NB voltages. With an 8core AMD FX8320 @ 3.9 GHz and stock voltage (1.375v) the full system draw at idle was 278Watts, Still running all 8 cores with Turbo disabled and voltage at 1.225v I'm now drawing 192Watts idle at the wall and have at least a 12c reduction in package temp. I played with running it at 6 and 4 cores respectively but it didn't make very much difference and I couldn't take the performance hit. After a couple of hours playing with undervolting it I'm a little happier, has anyone else got the power draw statistics for their storage rigs?

I don't overclock my server, everything is running on auto. I also don't have any meter to measure wattage at the wall. But I ran my system through a PSU calculator and at 100% load, it's saying the minimum PSU is 343W. I couldn't set the usage to 0%, so I used 50% CPU load and 60% system load and calculated a minimum of 181W. These things aren't accurate at all, but it should give you a general indication of my system vs yours. My mobo also has an EPU/TPU switch which I have turned on. So maybe it's lower. who knows lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

... has anyone else got the power draw statistics for their storage rigs?

 

I'm running an E5-1650 v3 with 16 HDDs. Power draw when mostly idle is a little less than 200W. This was provided by the motherboard IPMI so I'm not sure if it is accurate.

This system actually also has a dedicated graphics card because I pass it into a destktop VM but I don't think an idle GPU contributes too much to power draw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

 

(Warning: May or may not be some sarcasm. Don't judge me, I'm 18). 

 

Well the day has finally come! After Freenas has been yelling at me to upgrade because I'm over 80% usage (91% at time of upgrade), I finally bought 3x3TB hard drives to replace my existing 3x1Tb drives. That's right, you heard me! 3x3TB Drives! That's a whopping 9TB! Plus the additional 1TB drive I have in there for my time machine backups, that makes 10TB! Such huge amounts of storage space is practically un heard of! (Let me have this one, guys). 

 

Anyway, I decided to go with WD green drives over the reds, after extensive research. Fingers crossed I don't regret my decision. 

 

Here's a pic of the drives I took when they arrived this morning! I do love ordering something and having it arrive the next day! (If you're wondering, I bought the drives from Computerlounge.co.nz and paid $159.95 NZD each. Combined with next day shipping upgrade of $2.75 the total was  $482.60 NZD (approx $352 USD and about $312 Euros). To help cover the cost, I asked some of the people I share my plex with to help towards the upgrade. Most people gave me $25, and one person gave me $100. it helped a lot. About $200 of the upgrade was covered by these people helping me out. 

 

New Drives

 
When I first built my server I used an old case I salvaged from someone's ancient computer. I ghetto drilled holes in the front for ventilation for the front fan. As pretty as that baby was, I decided to buy a new case. I got the Zalman Z1 for $40 NZD on boxing day. A nice cheapo that does the job. It had an annoyingly loud vibration noise from the side panel not shutting properly, but I dampened that with some bluetack #Ghetto. 
 

New Case Front

 

When I rebuilt the server, I made sure the wires were all nice and neatly managed ;) (This image is before I upgraded the drives). 

 

Before Upgrade - Side

 
 
Before I begun the upgrade, I ran the WDIdle utility to change the intellipark timer from the stock 8seconds to the maximum 300seconds. This should hopefully reduce the wear that leads these drives to fail in RAID situations. 
 

WDIdle

 

After that, I replaced the drives one by one and waited for them to resilver. Fortunately that only took about 3 hours per drive. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to screw up (Whenever I upgrade, there is always a screw up!) and accidentally removed the wrong drive in freeness, so I had to resilver one of the drives twice. Making 4 resilvers instead of only 3; an irritating additional 3 hours of waiting. It's still finishing up as I'm typing this. 

 

This is a picture of the server after I upgraded the drives. I had the intention of tidying up the cables.... But I was angry at the upgrade screwing up that I couldn't be bothered :D I've never been one for super clean cable management. 

 

After upgrade - Side

 

So my server specs are as follows:

 

Hardware

CASE: Zalman Z1
PSU: Some cheap thing I salvaged.
MB: Gigabyte B85M-D3H
CPU: Intel Core i3 4130 3.4Ghz
HS: Stock Intel heatsink
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333
Cache SSD: 64GB Adata Sata 3 SSD
HDD 1: 3x 3TB WD Green WD30EZRX (Main RAIDZ Array)
HDD 2: 1x1TB WD Green WD10EZRX (For Time machine backups)


Software, Configuration & Usage:
My server is running Freenas, with the 3x3TB drives in a RAIDZ array, with 5.4TB of usable storage, and is configured with a 64GB SSD cache. I then also have an additional 1TB drive from before I upgraded, which I've dedicated to using as a drive to store my time machine backups of both my 13" Macbook Pro Retina, and my Hackintosh. The server is running plex to manage all my media and lets me stream it throughout the house, and I also share it with a few of my friends. I've recently set up SickRage to automatically download my TV shows, and couch potato to download movies automatically for me. These download using transmission. I also have bittorrent Sync running to sync files locally to my laptop and hackintosh so I don't need to rely on always being connected to my network to access some of my important files. 

Backup:
No current backup. Once I get fibre installed, I am hoping to sign up with some sort of online provider to back up the entire server to the cloud. Freenas has a crash plan plugin, so it's likely I may go with them. 

Additional info:
When I first built this server 2 years ago, I had it running windows server, with 2x1TB drives in Raid 0. I was using some cheap ASrock board, and a pentium G2020. The server ran great, and the G2020 handled transcoding really well - I never noticed any hiccups. However when I upgraded, I wanted to replace the boot drive (an old 250GB drive I'd salvaged), with a 64GB SSD. When trying to clone the old drive to the new SSD, I accidentally wiped the boot drive, and had to figure something out. I decided to try Freenas. I installed windows 8, moved my data to an external, sourced an old 1TB green drive from an old external drive my dad no longer used, and set up freenas. I now had a 64GB SSD to do something with, so I decided to use it as a cache. Whether it does anything useful, I have no idea. So that's why I have the setup I do now. 

 

Total Raw Capacity: 10TB

Total Formatted Capacity: 6.3TB

 

10TB.... You might as well just put me at the top of the list ;)

Knowing my luck, I finally get on the list, and you'll change the minimum to 20TB or something :D

 

(Will probably post a screenshot of freenas showing the capacities and whatnot when it's finished resilvering). 

CPU i5 4430 3Ghz | Ram: 16GB DDR3 1600 | GPU: GTX 650 Ti 1GB | Mobo: H87N-Wifi | Case: White Bitfenix Prodigy | Boot Drive: 120GB 840 Evo (Mac OS X) 120gb OCZ Vertex 3 (Windows) | Games Drive: 640GB WD Green | OS: Windows 8 & OS X 10.9.1

I love all technology. The perfection of macs for my designer side, and the hardware and fun of tinkering on the of the pc side. We can have it all, just not at the same time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Update:

 

The storage node now also has four 1TB Samsung 850 Pro's in RAID 10 for my ESX node.

The two nodes are now also connected with a 10Gbit NIC.

 

Listed storage is now 152TB

 

IMG_0551.JPG

 

 

IMG_0498.JPG

 

 

IMG_0511.JPG

 

 

IMG_0529.JPG

Respect the Code of Conduct!

>> Feel free to join the unofficial LTT teamspeak 3 server TS3.schnitzel.team <<

>>LTT 10TB+ Topic<< | >>FlexRAID Tutorial<<>>LTT Speed wave<< | >>LTT Communies and Servers<<

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

If i had lots (and lots) of money the attic would become a massive server/folding farm. 

Our Grace. The Feathered One. He shows us the way. His bob is majestic and shows us the path. Follow unto his guidance and His example. He knows the one true path. Our Saviour. Our Grace. Our Father Birb has taught us with His humble heart and gentle wing the way of the bob. Let us show Him our reverence and follow in His example. The True Path of the Feathered One. ~ Dimboble-dubabob III

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

 

 

Things weren't looking good for me. I nearly lost ALL my data, and the root cause of it all was my decision to use cheap consumer drives in an always on RAID environment. Heed my warning, STAY AWAY FROM SEAGATE ST3000DM001....

 

I can also sadly confirm that those drives are crap...

 

HGST or WD Red or dont bother! 

Main Rig : i7 5960X - 16GB DDR4 LPX 2400mhz - Asus Rampage V - 980GTX Ti - AX1200i - 650D - H110 - 1TB 840 EVO SSD - 30 inch HP 1600p IPS + 2xHP 20 inch 1600x1200 PLP setup! - Oculus DK2 - Logitech G502 - Corsair K70 RGB - Fanatec GT3 Wheel

i7 3930K - 16GB DDR3 2133mhz - Asus Rampage IV - 2 x 680GTX - AX850 - 550D - H100i - 256GB 830 Pro SSD - 2713HM 1440p IPS - G5 -

i5 3570K - MSI SLI Z87 motherboard - 4GB Corsair 1600mhz - Adaptec 31205 - Dell Perc 5/i - Intel Quad PT1000 Gigabit Network Card - Loads of 4TB RED's - +-70tb total storrage - HX850watts - Ri-Vier 24bay 4 U case

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I can also sadly confirm that those drives are crap...

HGST or WD Red or dont bother!

And in the meantime the largest system in this topic is running splendidly on seagate drives :P

I have never had any problems with them, and that goes for the 2tb and the 4tb model.

Respect the Code of Conduct!

>> Feel free to join the unofficial LTT teamspeak 3 server TS3.schnitzel.team <<

>>LTT 10TB+ Topic<< | >>FlexRAID Tutorial<<>>LTT Speed wave<< | >>LTT Communies and Servers<<

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hardware

CASE: Norco RPC-4224

PSU: Corsair CS850M

MB: ASRock E3C224

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220V3

RAM: Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 ECC SDRAM [KVR16E11K4/32]

HBA: 2x LSI 9211-8i (Flashed P16 IT Mode FW)

HDD: 12x WD Red 6TB

HDD: 1x WD Red 3TB

USB: 16 GB USB Flash Drive for FreeNAS Install

 

(Yes the PSU is overkill but I got a good deal on it.  Also, reverse breakout SFF-8087 cables are used to interface MB SATA with RPC-4224 front panel.)

 

Software and Configuration

Running FreeNAS 9.3

Main ZFS storage pool configured as two raidz2 vdevs striped together.

Last 3TB drive running in a pool by itself for misc/scratch storage.

 

Usage

Media server.  Running Plex, transmission, etc.

 

Pictures

post-34818-0-43272500-1428973004_thumb.j

post-34818-0-21995400-1425652887_thumb.j

post-34818-0-13758100-1425652889_thumb.j

post-34818-0-75178800-1425654054_thumb.p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey everyone,

 

I'm just posting this and marking it as best answer temporarily so that everybody can easily see it.

I'm currently only very rarely online due to bad health and it will be a while until I'm really back.

However, once I am, I will go through all new and updated entries and update the rankings accordingly.

 

So just keep posting your systems! :)

BUILD LOGS: HELIOS - Latest Update: 2015-SEP-06 ::: ZEUS - BOTW 2013-JUN-28 ::: APOLLO - Complete: 2014-MAY-10
OTHER STUFF: Cable Lacing Tutorial ::: What Is ZFS? ::: mincss Primer ::: LSI RAID Card Flashing Tutorial
FORUM INFO: Community Standards ::: The Moderating Team ::: 10TB+ Storage Showoff Topic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey everyone,

 

I'm just posting this and marking it as best answer temporarily so that everybody can easily see it.

I'm currently only very rarely online due to bad health and it will be a while until I'm really back.

However, once I am, I will go through all new and updated entries and update the rankings accordingly.

 

So just keep posting your systems! :)

 

And I have no idea how to update my own topic at this point as it is the most sophisticated topic on the forum that uses a few thousand lines of code to create the first two posts on every update :P

Respect the Code of Conduct!

>> Feel free to join the unofficial LTT teamspeak 3 server TS3.schnitzel.team <<

>>LTT 10TB+ Topic<< | >>FlexRAID Tutorial<<>>LTT Speed wave<< | >>LTT Communies and Servers<<

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

And I have no idea how to update my own topic at this point as it is the most sophisticated topic on the forum that uses a few thousand lines of code to create the first two posts on every update :P

Lol, sorry about that. :P

Once we update to IPB4 most of that code will need to be rewritten, and I'm not even sure if we'll be able to do things automatically there at all. Ah well, we shall see I suppose.

BUILD LOGS: HELIOS - Latest Update: 2015-SEP-06 ::: ZEUS - BOTW 2013-JUN-28 ::: APOLLO - Complete: 2014-MAY-10
OTHER STUFF: Cable Lacing Tutorial ::: What Is ZFS? ::: mincss Primer ::: LSI RAID Card Flashing Tutorial
FORUM INFO: Community Standards ::: The Moderating Team ::: 10TB+ Storage Showoff Topic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

-Snip-

 

I hope you get better soon :( We'll keep at it :)

 

Guys I have a serious question for you, I am buying 4 3TB Hard Drives, Which ones are the best budget ones (£80 Each). I've Seen Seagate 3TB Drives, WD Green Drives and Toshiba Drives. I'll link the three below:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Caviar-Cache-Internal-Drive-Green/dp/B004RORMF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772430&sr=8-1&keywords=3tb+hard+drive

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-7200RPM-Cache-SATA3-Drive/dp/B006KCX0UE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772430&sr=8-3&keywords=3tb+hard+drive

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-DT01ACA300-inch-SATAIII-Drive/dp/B009AYWYOC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772491&sr=8-6&keywords=3tb+hard+drive+toshiba

 

I see the reviews and I would like to have the opinions on these drives off people who use them! Thanks :)

Main Machine:  16 inch MacBook Pro (2021), Apple M1 Pro (10 CPU, 16 GPU Core), 512GB SDD, 16GB RAM

Gaming Machine:  Acer Nitro 5, Core i7 10750H, RTX 3060 (L) 6GB, 1TB SSD (Boot), 2TB SSD (Storage), 32GB DDR4 RAM

Other Tech: iPhone 15 Pro Max, Series 6 Apple Watch (LTE), AirPods Max, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS3, Xbox 360

Network Gear:  TP Link Gigabit 24 Port Switch, TP-Link Deco M4 Mesh Wi-Fi, M1 MacMini File & Media Server with 8TB of RAID 1 Storage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey everyone,

 

I'm just posting this and marking it as best answer temporarily so that everybody can easily see it.

I'm currently only very rarely online due to bad health and it will be a while until I'm really back.

However, once I am, I will go through all new and updated entries and update the rankings accordingly.

 

So just keep posting your systems! :)

Get well soon!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I hope you get better soon :( We'll keep at it :)

 

Guys I have a serious question for you, I am buying 4 3TB Hard Drives, Which ones are the best budget ones (£80 Each). I've Seen Seagate 3TB Drives, WD Green Drives and Toshiba Drives. I'll link the three below:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Caviar-Cache-Internal-Drive-Green/dp/B004RORMF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772430&sr=8-1&keywords=3tb+hard+drive

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-7200RPM-Cache-SATA3-Drive/dp/B006KCX0UE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772430&sr=8-3&keywords=3tb+hard+drive

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-DT01ACA300-inch-SATAIII-Drive/dp/B009AYWYOC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772491&sr=8-6&keywords=3tb+hard+drive+toshiba

 

I see the reviews and I would like to have the opinions on these drives off people who use them! Thanks :)

 

Well I can't speak for the Toshiba drives, But as for the seagates, they seem to be relatively unreliable. Although they are fast.

The greens would work fine, as long as you research how to use WDidle to change the head park time to reduce the wear in a RAID situation. I feel like it's become common place to just instantly shame the WD green drives when it comes to RAIDs, but they work fine when you set them up properly. I just bought 3x3TB greens and they've been great so far. Though to be fair, I've only had them for nearly 2 weeks. That's just my 2 cents :)

CPU i5 4430 3Ghz | Ram: 16GB DDR3 1600 | GPU: GTX 650 Ti 1GB | Mobo: H87N-Wifi | Case: White Bitfenix Prodigy | Boot Drive: 120GB 840 Evo (Mac OS X) 120gb OCZ Vertex 3 (Windows) | Games Drive: 640GB WD Green | OS: Windows 8 & OS X 10.9.1

I love all technology. The perfection of macs for my designer side, and the hardware and fun of tinkering on the of the pc side. We can have it all, just not at the same time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Well I can't speak for the Toshiba drives, But as for the seagates, they seem to be relatively unreliable. Although they are fast.

The greens would work fine, as long as you research how to use WDidle to change the head park time to reduce the wear in a RAID situation. I feel like it's become common place to just instantly shame the WD green drives when it comes to RAIDs, but they work fine when you set them up properly. I just bought 3x3TB greens and they've been great so far. Though to be fair, I've only had them for nearly 2 weeks. That's just my 2 cents :)

 

Sounds good! How hard is it to deal with the WDidle thing? I have a .... budget RAID Controler so I don't know what settings are on it.

Main Machine:  16 inch MacBook Pro (2021), Apple M1 Pro (10 CPU, 16 GPU Core), 512GB SDD, 16GB RAM

Gaming Machine:  Acer Nitro 5, Core i7 10750H, RTX 3060 (L) 6GB, 1TB SSD (Boot), 2TB SSD (Storage), 32GB DDR4 RAM

Other Tech: iPhone 15 Pro Max, Series 6 Apple Watch (LTE), AirPods Max, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS3, Xbox 360

Network Gear:  TP Link Gigabit 24 Port Switch, TP-Link Deco M4 Mesh Wi-Fi, M1 MacMini File & Media Server with 8TB of RAID 1 Storage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Sounds good! How hard is it to deal with the WDidle thing? I have a .... budget RAID Controler so I don't know what settings are on it.

Pretty easy. Basically just unplug all drives in the computer. Boot off of a Flash drive, have only a WD green plugged into sata, run 1 simple command and it's done. It's super well written up online or in youtube videos so there's nothing to worry about. 

CPU i5 4430 3Ghz | Ram: 16GB DDR3 1600 | GPU: GTX 650 Ti 1GB | Mobo: H87N-Wifi | Case: White Bitfenix Prodigy | Boot Drive: 120GB 840 Evo (Mac OS X) 120gb OCZ Vertex 3 (Windows) | Games Drive: 640GB WD Green | OS: Windows 8 & OS X 10.9.1

I love all technology. The perfection of macs for my designer side, and the hardware and fun of tinkering on the of the pc side. We can have it all, just not at the same time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Pretty easy. Basically just unplug all drives in the computer. Boot off of a Flash drive, have only a WD green plugged into sata, run 1 simple command and it's done. It's super well written up online or in youtube videos so there's nothing to worry about. 

 

Nice, Thanks :) I would love to get a RED Drive but they are super expensive and even though I am a Mac Guy I'm not loaded :lol:

Main Machine:  16 inch MacBook Pro (2021), Apple M1 Pro (10 CPU, 16 GPU Core), 512GB SDD, 16GB RAM

Gaming Machine:  Acer Nitro 5, Core i7 10750H, RTX 3060 (L) 6GB, 1TB SSD (Boot), 2TB SSD (Storage), 32GB DDR4 RAM

Other Tech: iPhone 15 Pro Max, Series 6 Apple Watch (LTE), AirPods Max, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS3, Xbox 360

Network Gear:  TP Link Gigabit 24 Port Switch, TP-Link Deco M4 Mesh Wi-Fi, M1 MacMini File & Media Server with 8TB of RAID 1 Storage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I hope you get better soon :( We'll keep at it :)

 

Guys I have a serious question for you, I am buying 4 3TB Hard Drives, Which ones are the best budget ones (£80 Each). I've Seen Seagate 3TB Drives, WD Green Drives and Toshiba Drives. I'll link the three below:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Caviar-Cache-Internal-Drive-Green/dp/B004RORMF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772430&sr=8-1&keywords=3tb+hard+drive

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-7200RPM-Cache-SATA3-Drive/dp/B006KCX0UE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772430&sr=8-3&keywords=3tb+hard+drive

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-DT01ACA300-inch-SATAIII-Drive/dp/B009AYWYOC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1425772491&sr=8-6&keywords=3tb+hard+drive+toshiba

 

I see the reviews and I would like to have the opinions on these drives off people who use them! Thanks :)

 

Stay away from the seagate drives, especially the STX000 Series, if you want more detail on why, refer to my post here

 

I was also on a budget when I first built my server, and I skimped a little and bought some cheaper drives. For the first 2 years it was great. But I found out the hard way not to make that mistake ever again. I really really regret my decision to do so, and it ended up costing me significantly more in the long run.

 

I also suggest you avoid WD Greens as well. You may be able to tweak them to work fine in RAID, but I wouldn't want to take any additional unnecessary risks concerning my data. In my mind, the WDIdle, and WDTLER, modifications are no different than overclocking really. 99% of the time your overclock will be stable and not case any problems, but there will always be that chance.

 

Depending on your target storage size, and RAID method, you can use RAID 5 initially, and upgrade to RAID 6 as you expand past the 12TB barrier. Being on a budget you can just buy 3 drives up front, and add more as you go. This is the main reason I use RAID 6, whenever I fill up, I just buy another drive and expand. Yeah the expansion takes FOREVER, but the additional capacity I gain makes the money I spend stretch further.

 

Right now my data grows at around 3TB a year. My upkeep on the array was roughly equivalent to 1 drive per year + 1-2 weeks of raid/partition expansions. Thanks to my RAID card and filesystem (XFS) both supporting online capacity expansions I never experienced any downtime, and just had to deal with the temporary performance degradation during that time frame.

 

TL;DR you have many options available, I hope you consider them all before purchasing a drive you may regret down the road.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

-snip-

Many thanks for you reply :) Seagate Drives are not an option any more.

 

WD Green Drives are still an option I know what you mean by the tweaks may cause a few issues however I will be doing more research on this route.

 

You didn't comment on the Toshiba Drives? I know you now use Hitachi Drives but for the cost of those drives ... well its just out of my reach.

Main Machine:  16 inch MacBook Pro (2021), Apple M1 Pro (10 CPU, 16 GPU Core), 512GB SDD, 16GB RAM

Gaming Machine:  Acer Nitro 5, Core i7 10750H, RTX 3060 (L) 6GB, 1TB SSD (Boot), 2TB SSD (Storage), 32GB DDR4 RAM

Other Tech: iPhone 15 Pro Max, Series 6 Apple Watch (LTE), AirPods Max, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS3, Xbox 360

Network Gear:  TP Link Gigabit 24 Port Switch, TP-Link Deco M4 Mesh Wi-Fi, M1 MacMini File & Media Server with 8TB of RAID 1 Storage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Many thanks for you reply :) Seagate Drives are not an option any more.

 

WD Green Drives are still an option I know what you mean by the tweaks may cause a few issues however I will be doing more research on this route.

 

You didn't comment on the Toshiba Drives? I know you now use Hitachi Drives but for the cost of those drives ... well its just out of my reach.

 

My buddy has 12 of the Toshiba DT01ACA200 all running in RAID6. I don't know the intimate details on his drives, but in the past 4 years he's experienced 2 failures.  He has the same RAID Controller as me (LSI 9260-8i) and is running them 24/7. Our setups are very similar, the two of us bounce ideas back and forth off each other and built our servers at the same time. He's stubborn and uses windows though :P

 

I sent him a text, I'll have him pull up the smart info on his drives.

I would do some more research on the drives, I couldn't find the MTBF for the drive, but the load/unload cycle count is rated at 300k, while the hgst nas is rated for 600k.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

-snip-

 

Thanks :) 2 Drives out of 12 sounds ok and will allow me time to save for some better drives :)

Main Machine:  16 inch MacBook Pro (2021), Apple M1 Pro (10 CPU, 16 GPU Core), 512GB SDD, 16GB RAM

Gaming Machine:  Acer Nitro 5, Core i7 10750H, RTX 3060 (L) 6GB, 1TB SSD (Boot), 2TB SSD (Storage), 32GB DDR4 RAM

Other Tech: iPhone 15 Pro Max, Series 6 Apple Watch (LTE), AirPods Max, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS3, Xbox 360

Network Gear:  TP Link Gigabit 24 Port Switch, TP-Link Deco M4 Mesh Wi-Fi, M1 MacMini File & Media Server with 8TB of RAID 1 Storage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Right just an update on what drives I've chosen.

 

Dabs a UK Tech Retailer had just put 3TB WD RED NAS Drives on sale for £12 more expensive than the WD Green Drives, So I've Ordered 4 of them. They were £92.94 Each with £4.98 24hr Delivery so all together £376.74 so $560 and C£707.

Main Machine:  16 inch MacBook Pro (2021), Apple M1 Pro (10 CPU, 16 GPU Core), 512GB SDD, 16GB RAM

Gaming Machine:  Acer Nitro 5, Core i7 10750H, RTX 3060 (L) 6GB, 1TB SSD (Boot), 2TB SSD (Storage), 32GB DDR4 RAM

Other Tech: iPhone 15 Pro Max, Series 6 Apple Watch (LTE), AirPods Max, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS3, Xbox 360

Network Gear:  TP Link Gigabit 24 Port Switch, TP-Link Deco M4 Mesh Wi-Fi, M1 MacMini File & Media Server with 8TB of RAID 1 Storage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


×