April 4, 201115 yr Currently I'm running my unraid on 15 x 1TB drives and have a total of just over 11TB formatted space. Of that I have about 9.75 TB used. I could start by replacing my parity drive, then once a month replace a 1tb with a new 3TB drive. But what I'd really like to do is lower the number of drives i have. Is this even feasible? Or am i looking at much more work than its worth.
April 4, 201115 yr 3TB drives are not support just yet. You can use them but there are some manual steps you have to go through before they can be used.
April 4, 201115 yr http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11183.0 There are instructions here on how to short-stroke a 3TB drive to 2.1TB, which will enable compatibility with UnRaid v4.7 The idea is that when 3TB become supported, you will be able to reverse the procedure and use the whole 3TB (without any extra $ expense).
April 4, 201115 yr http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11183.0 There are instructions here on how to short-stroke a 3TB drive to 2.1TB, which will enable compatibility with UnRaid v4.7 The idea is that when 3TB become supported, you will be able to reverse the procedure and use the whole 3TB (without any extra $ expense). The extra cost is actually being paid up front. The drives will get cheaper by the time 3TB is supported. In order to convert the short stroked drive to 3TB you will probably have to reformat. If so then it will be a fun amount of juggling as you up-convert each drive.
April 4, 201115 yr http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11183.0 There are instructions here on how to short-stroke a 3TB drive to 2.1TB, which will enable compatibility with UnRaid v4.7 The idea is that when 3TB become supported, you will be able to reverse the procedure and use the whole 3TB (without any extra $ expense). The extra cost is actually being paid up front. I guess this means that you are paying for 800G of space you won't be able to use initially - if this is the intent then I agree. It is space on the drive, however, that will eventually be usable. The drives will get cheaper by the time 3TB is supported. This may or may not be true. With Hitachi drives division being sold to WD, we may see, at least a short term, an increase in drive cost. Hitachi 3T drives were down to $129 recently, and at $139 now. The cheapest WD is $179 and cheapest Seagate is $199. I predict with Hitachi supplies dry up, 3T drives will not be had for < $150 before the end of the year. Also, read THIS POST - there may be an even greater reason to buy 3T drives over 2T drives, despite a premium. In order to convert the short stroked drive to 3TB you will probably have to reformat. If so then it will be a fun amount of juggling as you up-convert each drive. No reformatting, but you will have to reverse the HPA procedure and rebuild. (It will be fun to see the drives grow from 2.2T to 3T ) Something like this ... 1 - Remove parity from the array. 2 - Reverse the HPA 3 - Reinsert as parity and rebuild partity 4 - Perform parity check 5 - Remove first 3T data disk from array. 6 - Reverse the HPA 7 - Replce the disk and rebuild 8 - Repeat steps 5-7 for each 3T drive For extra safety, you might want to begin with one new 3T drive and perform each step without overwriting the original. In the end you will have your extra 3T drive to preclear and add to the array.
April 5, 201115 yr The extra cost is actually being paid up front. The drives will get cheaper by the time 3TB is supported. In order to convert the short stroked drive to 3TB you will probably have to reformat. If so then it will be a fun amount of juggling as you up-convert each drive. Yes - there is extra cost upfront, but what I was trying to say is you're not spending $80 on a 2TB which you then replace when 3TB are supported.
April 5, 201115 yr Ok, here's my prediction. By the time the industry supports 3TB drives...4TB drives will be the item to have. And you will be wanting 4TB instead of 3TB.
April 5, 201115 yr Ok, here's my prediction. By the time the industry supports 3TB drives...4TB drives will be the item to have. And you will be wanting 4TB instead of 3TB. Hope you're right. I still have plenty of slots for the bigger boys when I need them. But I am concerned that we will not see the kinds of cheap prices continuing ... Local analysts observe that the latest M&A deal will possibly cool the heated price wars among HDD manufacturers since there will be fewer competitors. “The industry is all about economies of scale, research and development and inventory balancing”, says one analyst. “Over-production or price-cutting by any one player disrupts the equilibrium”, he says, adding that Hitachi was also responsible for much of the price discounting of late. Local HDD component producers concur with the general consensus of industry observers so far, hoping for the best outcome due to the challenging outlook caused by downward pricing pressures and the ringgit’s strength. A spokesman with Notion VTec Bhd says that since there are fewer players in the industry today, there will be fewer price wars. “Both of them [Western Digital and Seagate] are our major customers. And a consolidation signals healthier times ahead for the wider industry. But how can we be positively affected by this, is still too early to tell,” the spokesman says. “I believe we did not see much impact on the wider industry after the first merger between Seagate and Maxtor, but since this latest deal will considerably reduce the number of players from the original five, the industry could then be direct beneficiaries,” he adds. Source: http://sahamas.net/forum80/13391.html A "healthy industry" means higher prices!
April 5, 201115 yr It seem to me that WD and Seagate are typically the low priced drives. I don't really expect them to stop the competitive pricing "wars" they have. Peter
April 5, 201115 yr The price cutting is because the whole industry was expecting computer purchases to rebound in the 4th quarter of 2010 and expecially the holiday season. It didn't. Silos full of computer parts have to be shed before prices will rise. Your seeing it especially with RAM prices. In a normal cycle the 2TB drives would be getting replaced by the next bigger size. Without motherboard support the next bigger size has no market. The makers can't produce them the bigger drives in quanitity until there is a market. They will have to keep producing the 2TB drives just as those are priced lower. But the very moment that support appears for the larger drives making a market the drive manufacturers will try to completely dump the 2TB drives. They will do that because if they start churning out bigger drives and noone buys them it's going to be a devastating second blow on the heels of also not being able to sell those bigger drives to early adopters for $200 or so.
April 5, 201115 yr one question... don't these high capacity drives need special controller cards..? No. People are already using 3TB drives in unRAID.
April 5, 201115 yr The real answer to the question about needing newer controllers is "It depends." It all depends on what SATA chipset and motherboard firmware you have. Some support >2.2TB drives and some do not.
April 6, 201115 yr Look here for some tests I ran with a number of the popular controllers with 3T drives. 3T Controller Support
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