Comparing HDDs for Unraid Drive upgrade

[Hulkstern]

Hey guys, was looking at upgrading my Unraid box with some higher capacity HDDs as well, it's getting a little full:

 

I have a spreadsheet of some HDDs I was considering. However with all the news about how some manufacturers are mislabeling HDDs as CMR when they are really SMR I really wanted to get at least a second set of eyes to look at what I am considering as I don't want to end up with that'll not work as well.

 

These are the drives I am considering (Google sheets)

 

I'm probably not going to go higher than 6-8tb (and yes I know that the parity drive has to be the highest or equally as large capacity drive in the array). Just wanted to make sure none of these drives had any glaring issues and besides GB per dollar which would be the best one to go for.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Have you considered shucking drives? There normally the best value by far. Thats what I do for my arrays.

 

How many free bays do you have? id probably get bigger drives if you use more space quickly.

 

Id take the seagate constellation, and re drives off that list, there eol now, and unless there very cheap not a good pick.

[Hulkstern]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Have you considered shucking drives? There normally the best value by far. Thats what I do for my arrays.

 

How many free bays do you have? id probably get bigger drives if you use more space quickly.

 

Id take the seagate constellation, and re drives off that list, there eol now, and unless there very cheap not a good pick.

So this nas has been in use for about a year and some change and could you expand on what you mean by shucking drives? Is that where you buy external enclosures and take the drives out of them? I also don't have any free bays (and my license would not allow for any more drives any way) so my plan is replacing the parity drive with a higher capacity then replacing the 500gb hard drives with 2 additional drives as well (using the former parity drive to replace the third 500gb HDD). The reason I want to upgrade is not just for capacity but also because those 500gb seagates were used when I put them in and are now nearing 25,000 power on hours with warnings starting to pop up. For capacity I would like to shoot for 3 4tb HDDs, maybe more if it's economical

[Jarsky]

40 minutes ago, Hulkstern said:

So this nas has been in use for about a year and some change and could you expand on what you mean by shucking drives? Is that where you buy external enclosures and take the drives out of them?

Yup, getting drives like these: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD

Then removing them from their enclosure, and taping the 3.3V PIN if necessary: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Fix-the-33V-Pin-Issue-in-White-Label-Disks-/

 

Quote

I also don't have any free bays (and my license would not allow for any more drives any way) so my plan is replacing the parity drive with a higher capacity then replacing the 500gb hard drives with 2 additional drives as well (using the former parity drive to replace the third 500gb HDD).

That's the best thing to do: https://wiki.unraid.net/The_parity_swap_procedure  https://wiki.unraid.net/Replacing_a_Data_Drive

 

Quote

The reason I want to upgrade is not just for capacity but also because those 500gb seagates were used when I put them in and are now nearing 25,000 power on hours with warnings starting to pop up. For capacity I would like to shoot for 3 4tb HDDs, maybe more if it's economical

Using higher capacity drives is more economical, the 8TB are still about the best value for money, especially if you get the WD Elements/Easystore's and shuck them. 

[Hulkstern]

2 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Yup, getting drives like these: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD

Then removing them from their enclosure, and taping the 3.3V PIN if necessary: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Fix-the-33V-Pin-Issue-in-White-Label-Disks-/

 

That's the best thing to do: https://wiki.unraid.net/The_parity_swap_procedure

 

Using higher capacity drives is more economical, the 8TB are still about the best value for money, especially if you get the WD Elements/Easystore's and shuck them. 

So another question for you, I'm planning on moving to 10GbE soon (server Mobo has a built in controller) so would I possibly get better performance with 7200rpm drives instead of 5400 rpm? I know I am never going to see fully saturated 10GbE even when writing to cache as all my drives (including cache) are currently sata, but since I've been moving a ton of video files around recently raw throughput has been a concern. Would I get a meaningful boost in perf/throughput with 7200rpm or would 5400rpm still be fine? (also, I not only move video files around on this server but I do edit off the server as well)

[Electronics Wizardy]

15 minutes ago, Hulkstern said:

So another question for you, I'm planning on moving to 10GbE soon (server Mobo has a built in controller) so would I possibly get better performance with 7200rpm drives instead of 5400 rpm? I know I am never going to see fully saturated 10GbE even when writing to cache as all my drives (including cache) are currently sata, but since I've been moving a ton of video files around recently raw throughput has been a concern. Would I get a meaningful boost in perf/throughput with 7200rpm or would 5400rpm still be fine? (also, I not only move video files around on this server but I do edit off the server as well)

First thing, unraid isn't known for its speed, if speed is a big issue id really look at something liek a more traditional raid setup. Something liek zfs could easily be 2-4x faster with these drives if used in a raidz array.

 

7200rpm drives are about 15% fast in most uses compared to a eqv 5400rpm drive. But bigger drives are normally faster, so for this use id just try to get bigger drives and not worry about rpm.

 

 

[Hulkstern]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

First thing, unraid isn't known for its speed, if speed is a big issue id really look at something liek a more traditional raid setup. Something liek zfs could easily be 2-4x faster with these drives if used in a raidz array.

 

7200rpm drives are about 15% fast in most uses compared to a eqv 5400rpm drive. But bigger drives are normally faster, so for this use id just try to get bigger drives and not worry about rpm.

 

 

Thank you for the info, I know unraid isn't known for it's speed, I just don't have enough money to buy all the drives I would need for a traditional array outright and I don't know if I can make the time commitment of learning and transitioning to ZFS. Knowing that it's not that big of a performance improvement though I think I will go for less expensive 5400 rpm drives. Thank you for the help (=