RAID Help

[its_me_ritch]

Hiya folks,

So, I'm building my own server at the minute and have a ton of old, used hard drives spare. I know what you're thinking, bad idea from the start by using old drives but I have no choice.

 

I need as much storage as possible from creating a RAID using linux's mdadm.

 

I have the following drives:

 

1Tb, 750Gb, 500GB x2, 320GB x2, 250GB and 60GB (I know the 60 is pretty much useless).

 

I know ZFS would be a great option but it has to be mdadm for now.

 

Which array do you think I can use and how much big can the array be with a little wastage as possible?

 

Cheers

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you need to use mdadm? How about something like btrfs, then you can just shove then all in there and get the optimizl space.

 

Sith a single array, your limited to the smallest drive sizeso, so probably 4x500gb, in like a raid 5 for 1.5tb total, and don't bother with the other drives.

 

Or get multiple arrays, A lot of raid 5s to use all the spaace well, so (250gb X 7) + (70 x 5) + (180 x 4) + 250gb *2)

 

So each array would be 1500gb + 280gb + 540gb +250gb so 

That would give you about 2.5tb

 

This is really messy though, so make sure its baced up well.

[its_me_ritch]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you need to use mdadm? How about something like btrfs, then you can just shove then all in there and get the optimizl space.

 

Sith a single array, your limited to the smallest drive sizeso, so probably 4x500gb, in like a raid 5 for 1.5tb total, and don't bother with the other drives.

 

Or get multiple arrays, A lot of raid 5s to use all the spaace well, so (250gb X 7) + (70 x 5) + (180 x 4) + 250gb *2)

 

So each array would be 1500gb + 280gb + 540gb +250gb so 

That would give you about 2.5tb

 

This is really messy though, so make sure its baced up well.

Hi mate, 

 

thanks for your reply. 

 

I would use btrfs but hearing the amount of negative comments from people who have used it on Ubuntu Server puts me off. Plus, I've got experience with Mdadm so I feel more confident with it I guess. 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, its_me_ritch said:

Hi mate, 

 

thanks for your reply. 

 

I would use btrfs but hearing the amount of negative comments from people who have used it on Ubuntu Server puts me off. Plus, I've got experience with Mdadm so I feel more confident with it I guess. 

 

btrfs really is your best option here, just give it a shot.

 

And if something goes wrong, you can just restore backups.

[its_me_ritch]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

btrfs really is your best option here, just give it a shot.

 

And if something goes wrong, you can just restore backups.

I should probably mention that its a raspberry pi 4 running Ubuntu Server, which is why im hesitant to run btrfs

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, its_me_ritch said:

I should probably mention that its a raspberry pi 4 running Ubuntu Server, which is why im hesitant to run btrfs

btrfs should work with a pi, Just make one big raid 1 array with all of the disks and it will work well. BTRFS doesn't need much computer power to work well.

 

Or look into mergerfs + snapraid. WOrks like unraid where there is one parity disk.

[Jarsky]

10 hours ago, its_me_ritch said:

1Tb, 750Gb, 500GB x2, 320GB x2, 250GB and 60GB (I know the 60 is pretty much useless).

 

I know ZFS would be a great option but it has to be mdadm for now.

 

Dont use mdadm if you want a single pool. Each disk will only give you as much space as your smallest disk. 

Consider either Xpenology (hybrid Synology RAID), BTRFS (e.g Rockstor) or UnRAID which will optimise the amount of space with redundancy. 

 

Or go with a RAID over FileSystem (RoFS) like the ones @Electronics Wizardy suggested