Server Storage and Redundancy Techniques and Software

[Jarsky]

2 minutes ago, ArchGabriel said:

May I ask what is your reasoning for having 14 small drives and 5 average sized drives (average in the context in which Seagate now does 16TB)? I would imagine fewer larger drives would have been easier to manage, use less space, use less energy and you would not have needed all those expansion cards. I have seen quite a few people using your strategy, I just don't get the reason behind it.

The RAID is from 2009 when it was an 8 disk raid5 with 2TB drives.

Disks started failing in late 2013 / early 2014 so I replaced them with 3TB Red's at the time because 8 x 4TB were too expensive. 

Then I just switched it to a RAID6 and added additional drives to give it more space. 

8TB drives didn't exist in 2014, let alone the current 14TB drives. And 6TB drives were extremely expensive

 

Because im from NZ not the US, the cost of upgrading an entire array is ridiculously expensive. I would need 5 x 12TB disks which would cost me about $3500 in disks alone to give me the same space I currently have. 

[RayLeech]

On 4/1/2019 at 11:22 PM, ArchGabriel said:

May I ask what is your reasoning for having 14 small drives

I'm not sure if it is the OP's concern, but the rebuild times on a replaced drive in a Raid-5/6 array of 12TB as opposed to 3TB drives could be a concern.