RAID?

[Cramig88]

ok i have a raid enclosure, seats ten drives.  1-5 are on their own thing, 6-10 their own.  idk, it supports all sorts of raids except 6
so, i think im gonna set it as raid 50?  its for long term storage, but also if i wanna nab the media, no problem.  i am used to raid 10 but considering i will be dealing with 10 drives...

 

anyway so right now i have it setup like this on jbod, 1x 4tb seagate something, 4x samsung 980 evo's, then repeat.  so do the math, double it.  anyway, now i have two more 4tb drives, there identical - duh.  so, what RAID should i use?  the drives are getting dumped to reconfigure the array.  i just wanna know if i can shove my extra 2 4tb's in there, set to raid 50 and have room for expansion.  i have another buncha drives in the mail but theyre getting here around the 30th. 
can i just reconfig it to raid 50 (if thats best), dump my current drives in there, then add the others later?
i know raid works on the weakest link, thats my concern.  will raid 50 work that way?  the thing will have 10x 4tb drives, just not till the 30th.  as it stands id like to just shovel identical drives in, as they arrive

 

any ideas

[BitsofBits]

I don't have a specific recommendation as to which RAID you should use (I think 50 is fine), BUT you should NOT mix SSDs and HDDs in the same raid. You can cause yourself a hell of a time if your parity ever fails. 

Plus, you're going to cause a few issues: 
- Performance: the entire array will behave close to the HDDs; the SSDs are completely wasted there.
- Capacity: all disks in a RAID group are treated as the size of the smallest disk; any larger or faster drive gets cut down to the lowest common denominator.
- Wear: constant parity writes in RAID 5/50 will eat SSD write endurance without really leveraging their strengths (low latency, IOPS).

Those SSDs are much better as:
- A separate RAID 10 or RAID 5/50 SSD pool for fast working data, or
- Read cache / tier if your controller supports it.

Edited December 23, 2025 by BitsofBits
Added more context about why you shouldn't use SSDs in HDD RAIDs

[Cramig88]

14 minutes ago, BitsofBits said:

I don't have a specific recommendation as to which RAID you should use (I think 50 is fine), BUT you should NOT mix SSDs and HDDs in the same raid. You can cause yourself a hell of a time if your parity ever fails. 

Plus, you're going to cause a few issues: 
- Performance: the entire array will behave close to the HDDs; the SSDs are completely wasted there.
- Capacity: all disks in a RAID group are treated as the size of the smallest disk; any larger or faster drive gets cut down to the lowest common denominator.
- Wear: constant parity writes in RAID 5/50 will eat SSD write endurance without really leveraging their strengths (low latency, IOPS).

Those SSDs are much better as:
- A separate RAID 10 or RAID 5/50 SSD pool for fast working data, or
- Read cache / tier if your controller supports it.

well the objective is to eliminate the SSDs entirely, im just waiting on the other 4tb's to get in the mail, its only a few days.
so yeah, thats comprehensive.  everything will operate at the lowest tb capacity drive, and the speed of say, 5400rpm.  

im just wondering will it hold out for a temporary setup, as i gradually shovel 4tb HDDs to replace 1tb SSDs, one at a time?

[BitsofBits]

4 minutes ago, Cramig88 said:

well the objective is to eliminate the SSDs entirely, im just waiting on the other 4tb's to get in the mail, its only a few days.
so yeah, thats comprehensive.  everything will operate at the lowest tb capacity drive, and the speed of say, 5400rpm.  

im just wondering will it hold out for a temporary setup, as i gradually shovel 4tb HDDs to replace 1tb SSDs, one at a time?

From what I know RAID 50 doesn't always expand the best, especially with mismatched drives. You could probably get away with it, but I would wait until you have those drives since you're close to that date. I am, however, not a RAID expert beyond basic setups. I would personally just set it up as RAID 10s as the rebuilds would be a lot simpler, and you could tolerate a lot more lose. But you would lose a good chunk of capacity. 

[Kilrah]

A bunch of mismatched drives and expecting to upgrade them gradually seems more like a job for Unraid rather than any kind of actual RAID setup. 

RAID's really not great unless you have matched drives and have them all to set up the thing as you want it from the start and never change it.

Also if really doing RAID then do it in software, that way when your enclosure dies you don't lose all your data.

[Dutch_Master]

57 minutes ago, Cramig88 said:

its only a few days

Then wait and don't waste time on a setup you know you're gonna change shortly

[jaslion]

3 hours ago, Cramig88 said:

as i gradually shovel 4tb HDDs to replace 1tb SSDs, one at a time?

Just wait ans do it proper. The amount of time it will take to do this as well as the fialiure rate is just stupid high.

 

Oh and make sure its software raid. No idea what hardwar eyou have but at least you can recover it then when the main system dies.

 

Need a backup? Keep in mind raid is never a bacup just additional uptime.

[BitsofBits]

13 hours ago, Kilrah said:

A bunch of mismatched drives and expecting to upgrade them gradually seems more like a job for Unraid rather than any kind of actual RAID setup. 

RAID's really not great unless you have matched drives and have them all to set up the thing as you want it from the start and never change it.

Also if really doing RAID then do it in software, that way when your enclosure dies you don't lose all your data.

I second the UnRAID Recommendation for the weird mix of drive. Make your SSDs a Cache drive, and all of your hard drives in one big ZFS pool. UnRAID is built for this. 

[Cramig88]

20 hours ago, Kilrah said:

A bunch of mismatched drives and expecting to upgrade them gradually seems more like a job for Unraid rather than any kind of actual RAID setup. 

RAID's really not great unless you have matched drives and have them all to set up the thing as you want it from the start and never change it.

Also if really doing RAID then do it in software, that way when your enclosure dies you don't lose all your data.

That is very true, which is why I’m consulting lol. I kinda figured I’d be better off just waiting till all the drives get in. For now, since I have 6 of 10 I’ll just use those as 50. I’d rather not lose 50% space for redundancy, which I would expect at raid 10.

now, I have done raid 10 in the past with frequent success. Geez it’s been a lifesaver, bloop a red light, uh oh. Ahh another!  Ok 5 alarm fire, let’s replace at least one drive ASAP!!

(sigh) and my data was intact, never a hiccup, even during the rebuild process.  A huge, huge sigh of relief!

 

anyway so I was wandering uh, a big retailer of electronics today?  Idk if I can say the name, their based on the US and everyone wears blue and is totally oblivious to anybody ready to spill thousands if only they would talk to ya

BLAH, so that store, not Walmart. I found a 24tb seagate external for like 300, so in that respect I coulda just bought 2 and done raid 1

 

but nope.  4tbx10 at raid 50 seems like the best solution. At ~80USD each, 800 bucks for at least 20tb of future proofed data?

 

and yea I have tried software raid, Microsoft storage spaces?  Idk it works, it’s just slow. Might be an issue on my side though cause I (had) the 4tb, 4x 1tb and repeat, on JBOD. Then I just shoved all my NVMe drives in usb enclosures, threw a 4tb usb in, another 2x jbod sata adapter…. Ten drives of USB C And like 6tb more of randoms via usb 3.0 lol

 

but yeah I’m giving the solution to our buddy, just cause he’s new and not a moderator. That was an affirmative rounded answer from both of ya!  Thanks!!!

[Cramig88]

6 hours ago, BitsofBits said:

I second the UnRAID Recommendation for the weird mix of drive. Make your SSDs a Cache drive, and all of your hard drives in one big ZFS pool. UnRAID is built for this. 

Ironic you should mention that cause it’s exactly what I’m gonna do lol

 

Im gonna try the raid 50 thing, I have 6 now so, long as I pair the expansions it’ll be fine

 

funny thing, I have an intel optane RST NVMe in the pc (haven’t had an intel in a bit, the 200$ flipping drives been in my closet for years). Surprisingly it flipping works, although due to being a dumb dell mobo (more on that…) I had to get a weird mobo to sata cable. Whatever, 256g cache on NVMe (which I literally can’t use, it’s hardware controlled) and a 1tb SSD.

 

so the pc itself was bought from the boys in blue, they’re dumb. Anyway 500 for a dell ect1250, meh I’ll make it into a server

uh ok, what the crap?  An Intel ultra 5? What the fudge is that?  No hyper threading?  I’m legit getting 9k on R23 (puke!)

crack the pc open and find out yep, it’s all proprietary. Plus I just spent 500 on a pc, I’m not really in the mood to retrofit a 250$ 1000w seasonic into it lol

so ordered a 500w? Something…. It fits fine. Then checked the qvl for the ect1250 and apparently it supports LGA1853(?). Well I go down the list and bam, core ultra 7 265F

ok I buy one, turns out it’s a KF, sweeeeeet. Toss in the extra ram I bought (cheap DIMM off amazon, 16, so 32 total), pulled off the cheap plastic shroud over the cpu and swapped

put the crappy heatsink on, just with some cryonaut lol (who cares, closet stuff). Then I look and hmm, 6600? 6700? Nah, I’m not gonna watercool this yet. Oh hey wait, I have a quadro 4000!  Heyyyy and it just uses one of the two pcie things from this “awesome” psu. After all the 265kf don’t have an APU

 

sure enough. I go from 9k area in R23, to 28-30k!  What the math?!  It isn’t even overclocked!  So I ran plex forever, let it sit as a server for 5 days and ran again

31.5k - what?!

 

so yeah I’m pretty darn surprised how a 20 core, no HT, pulls that off with a stock cooler. Temps don’t get past 80, presuming it’s Mobo capped?  Sometimes I hit 90 but very rarely, speeds taper down first.

 

so I grabbed a 35$ heatsink from the boys in blue. Idk, arctic chill or some crap. I’ll install it later and swap the fan for my premo expensive one, another closet item, thing was like 90 bucks for a 2 pack at 140mm.

 

bazow!  Now to do that, then bench setup my x570 project I been dealing with all week

[BitsofBits]

5 hours ago, Cramig88 said:

That is very true, which is why I’m consulting lol. I kinda figured I’d be better off just waiting till all the drives get in. For now, since I have 6 of 10 I’ll just use those as 50. I’d rather not lose 50% space for redundancy, which I would expect at raid 10.

now, I have done raid 10 in the past with frequent success. Geez it’s been a lifesaver, bloop a red light, uh oh. Ahh another!  Ok 5 alarm fire, let’s replace at least one drive ASAP!!

(sigh) and my data was intact, never a hiccup, even during the rebuild process.  A huge, huge sigh of relief!

 

anyway so I was wandering uh, a big retailer of electronics today?  Idk if I can say the name, their based on the US and everyone wears blue and is totally oblivious to anybody ready to spill thousands if only they would talk to ya

BLAH, so that store, not Walmart. I found a 24tb seagate external for like 300, so in that respect I coulda just bought 2 and done raid 1

 

but nope.  4tbx10 at raid 50 seems like the best solution. At ~80USD each, 800 bucks for at least 20tb of future proofed data?

 

and yea I have tried software raid, Microsoft storage spaces?  Idk it works, it’s just slow. Might be an issue on my side though cause I (had) the 4tb, 4x 1tb and repeat, on JBOD. Then I just shoved all my NVMe drives in usb enclosures, threw a 4tb usb in, another 2x jbod sata adapter…. Ten drives of USB C And like 6tb more of randoms via usb 3.0 lol

 

but yeah I’m giving the solution to our buddy, just cause he’s new and not a moderator. That was an affirmative rounded answer from both of ya!  Thanks!!!

Storage Spaces is terrible. If you're going to run a software based NAS, I would recommend looking into UnRAID specifically for this. It's made around having mismatched drives of any kind. Though, you'll want to see if you can expose each individual drive to UnRAID. You'd get similar amounts of the data available (for 10 drives I'd probably have 1-2 partity drives as a "just in case" so about 8tb lost to protection). 

UnRAID is super easy to use and setup and supports SMB shares. Even if you do end up matching all your drives, highly recommend over direct attaching a JBOD.