19 replies to this topic

[SHoTTa35]

Need to do this myself so I was wondering if I should go to 3TB drives or just wait till 4TB ones get cheaper. Not using them as boot drives obviously.

Next thing being to RAID or not to RAID . Was thinking to get storage spaces on Server 2012 so I don't gotta deal with this big upgrade again.

OH well, enough of me. Congrats! I'm too broke now to buy drives I need but definitely need to upgrade soon, got like 120GB free!

[+BudMan]

currently the 3tb from what I have looked is the best bang for the buck $ per GB. This is how I always compare sizes - size / price to get common how many cents per GB.

Raid or not is a big question, with all the non raid ways of creating storage space it is a big question. I am just using drive pool from stablebit currently to allow me to access all the space on all the drives I want as 1 share. Along with multiple copies of my more critical files on more than 1 disk in the storage. This allows me to grow on the fly - just add more disks, or pull out smaller disk and put in bigger one. No need for any special raid controller, and worse case can just put these disks on any computer and access the files on the disk just like normal with normal file names and dir, etc.

If a drive is lost, only have to restore files on that disk that was lost. Combined with smart monitoring of the disk, and the drive scanner from same company - I would hope to get warning of any drive failure (hope too) and just be able to remove files off that disk and move to new one, etc..

With people wanting to store more and more stuff, and being able to expand that on the fly in the home market I would look outside standard raid models for what works for you. Especially with drive costs being as they are -- not sure I want to loose a disk to parity for what I am storing. If I did want parity I would prob go with the unraid type model where there is a specific parity disk and can expand on the fiy with disks as large as the parity disk up to 20 some TB, etc..

edit: So for example as I get closer to needing more space my plan is to replace one of the 750GB with a 3TB and move that 750GB as a datastore for my VMs vs the current 250GB. Cost of upgrade in 2TB + more space the cost of 1 3TB drive. And that is just because I want to upgrade that 250 and reuse one of the 750's. Then next update will prob just add another 3TB drive as some latter date as that 2TB becomes full. Or maybe just swap out the other 750 because its oldest of the disks and more likely to fail before others, etc.

[pes2013]

Got the drives today I plugged one of them in because i also ordered a external eSATA/USB2 case so I wanted to test out.

First time in my life Ive had to use GPT instead of classic MBR. I didnt format it, make a volume, etc yet. Just wanted to test it out. Sounds quiet but lets see when four are put together.

Cant do anything as Im waiting for my RAID5 card to arrive so sadly Itll be collecting dust while I only have 100MB left on my current RAID5.

[pes2013]

Another thing in my head is that what do to with the current drives?

My OS drive is currently I think a 500gb and these are smaller so if I RAID0, Ill lose some space....

[pes2013]

pes2013, on 08 October 2012 - 22:29, said:

Another thing in my head is that what do to with the current drives?

My OS drive is currently I think a 500gb and these are smaller so if I RAID0, Ill lose some space....

Just occured a great idea when I woke up this morning!

Even if they are smaller I can RAID 0+1 = Two of the smaller disks each at least 500gb, put them in a RAID 0 and that RAID 0 combine it with the 500gb to form a RAID1!

That means my OS will be on a RAID 0+1 (using my motherboard's onboard RAID controller)
And my storage will be on a RAID 5 (using that external PCI-E card Im waiting for to arrive next week)