4 x 4tb Ironwolf or 12 x 2tb Standard HDD for Home NAS?

[Dravinian Broke]

Roughly speaking, within a margin that doesn't make much difference, the price is equivalent here.  All drives are 7200rpm so I don't think there is a significant speed difference.

 

Here are the factors I am considering.  I don't run a home server that is active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with 30 users hammering me for data.  It is used by me and family with a maximum of 3 connections at any given time, with a lot of time spent in downtime, we are at work, we are asleep, we are doing something else.  It simply isn't being used.  So do I really need drives designed for 100% 24/7 use with massive 300tb a year capacities?

 

I don't do a lot of read/write, back and forth constantly.  I write a lot of data, and then occasionally that data is read by upto 3 users at once and even that is quite rare, usually it is one user or two.

 

I am building a new server that has a maximum capacity of 12 x 3.5" HDD, and 4 x 2.5" HDD/SSD.

 

So I am weighing up, if I buy 12 x 2tb, that is 24tb, once I put it in raid and lose 1/3rd, I am still looking at about 16tb of storage space.

 

If I buy 4 x 4tb then that is 16tb to start so about 11tb of storage, a loss of 5tb off the potential maximum - however, it also leaves me the opportunity to buy another 8 x 4tb in the future, which would mean a total capcity of 32tb of storage.

 

Though of course, this will cost 3 times as much for double the capacity. (3 x 4 x 4tb vs 12 x 2tb which is equal to 4 x 4tb)

 

Now I could buy standard 4tb HDD, which are half the price of the Ironwolf drives.  So effectively buy 12 x 4tb at double the price of the 12 x 2tb drives.  Now I can't afford to do that, but could perhaps buy 6 x 4b standard drives.

 

I am just wondering whether it is worth buying 4 x 4tb Ironwolf because of the design features they have - 24x7 workload and the 5 year warranty that comes with them, even though effectively I would lose 5tb of immediate storage?

 

Now to be clear, the 5tb probaly unlikely to impact on my needs right now, but I don't know what the future will bring, and the reality is, I may not be in a position to spend this much money on HDDs again in the future.  I would like to hope I can, but who knows.

 

So your thoughts welcomed.

[Dutch_Master]

I'd suggest getting 3x 8TB disks in RAID5, so effective capacity is 16TB and you still have 9 bays left for future expansion. Just make sure you have the OS on a dedicated disk, like a SATA SSD or NVMe drive.

 

Expansion can be done piecemeal (single disk) or block-wise (complete array group). Adding the first extra disk, you can either convert the array to RAID6 or add it as hot-spare to the RAID5. The 2nd drive can then become a hot-spare for either RAID mode, while the 3rd allows you to create another RAID5 and put that into a RAID1 with the existing array. None of these actually expand your capacity, but will do wonders for your redundancy. note that this is all pure RAID. Unraid uses a different method of combining drives, so adding new disks will actually expand your capacity. The downside is that in case of failure, only Unraid can read the disks, whereas on a normal RAID, a different OS can work out what goes where and reconstruct your arrays fairly successfully. If that risk is worth taking is entirely your call.

[mariushm]

Yeah, no... neither.

I'd suggest calculating best price per capacity, you'll probably find out it's at around 6-8 TB these days.

Make an effort to go for 8 TB or more and do buy a drive with at least 3 years warranty, ideally 5, even though it costs more. NAS rated drives typically are rated for 3+ years.

Drives fail, and if they do fail they'll typically fain within the first 3 years.

 

Definitely no 2 TB drives because they'll consume power , 5-8w each, all the time they run, and they'll probably have short 2 year warranties.

[GDRRiley]

16 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah, no... neither.

I'd suggest calculating best price per capacity, you'll probably find out it's at around 6-8 TB these days.

pcpartpicker does it already

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9gDJ7P/toshiba-14-tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-mg07aca14te

these are some of the best right now in the US from a non sketcy amazon seller

[mariushm]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

pcpartpicker does it already

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9gDJ7P/toshiba-14-tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-mg07aca14te

these are some of the best right now in the US from a non sketcy amazon seller

pcpp has a lot of shitty listings from companies that sell new old stock , refurbished/"renewed" stuff, and it's often outdated info (not refreshed daily)

It's difficult .. better to go on newegg and choose new/sold by newegg  or amazon and chose sold by amazon etc

[GDRRiley]

Just now, mariushm said:

pcpp has a lot of shitty listings from companies that sell new old stock , refurbished/"renewed" stuff, and it's often outdated info (not refreshed daily)

It's difficult .. better to go on newegg and choose new/sold by newegg  or amazon and chose sold by amazon etc

you can do it pretty quick on them though vs the hour+ it will take by hand and that assumes whatever site you chose has good pricing on those units

[ARikozuM]

4TB are the better option. Most expansion ability and less power usage. I would recommend going with 8TB though. It would make bugging out a lot easier with a single drive for archive. 

[Enderman]

Go with larger drives, and fewer of them.

[Dravinian Broke]

Not going to quote you all, but thanks, I see there is a consensus here...go big or go home

5 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

pcpartpicker does it already

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9gDJ7P/toshiba-14-tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-mg07aca14te

these are some of the best right now in the US from a non sketcy amazon seller

That is a well priced drive. 5 year warranty.   Of course, I could only buy 2, but that is still 28 tb of storage, less power draw, something I forgot to put in the first post was my concern that I would have to buy a new PSU for 12 drives - not to mention an expansion card to connect the drives, and my concern about 12 power SATA cables and whether my PSU would support that many.

Also leaves a lot of expansion possibilities.

 

I think we have a winner.