The ability to add disks of various sizes is what drew me to unraid. However, the majority of the drives I have laying around are SSDs that are all different sizes.  

 

I've since learned that SSDs in the array could cause issues with parity because of TRIM/discard, etc. That said, I would like to know if adding a few various sized SSDs to my array would cause long term issues if the parity drive is an Ironwolf HDD. Do SSDs cause issues when just set as the parity drive? Or do they cause issues if there is a parity drive combined with any amount of SSDs?

 

I mostly want to make use of array protection, without having to go out and buy a whole bunch of new drives. But I don't think i fully understand the underlying issue. Please help guide me!!

 

I've setup a server on 6.12.9, and am not sure what the most up to date advice is. 

 

Desired Array Setup: 

Parity: 4TB Ironwolf HDD

Disk1: 4TB HDD

Disk2: 4TB HDD

Disk3: 2TB SSD

Disk4: 1TB SSD

Disk5: 1TB SSD

Disk6: 512 GB SSD

Disk 7: 512 GB SSD

Disk 8: 120GB SSD

 

Cache 

VM: 1TB NVME

App Data / Docker: 1TB SSD

Write: 1TB SSD 

 

1 minute ago, ill_logic said:

Do SSDs cause issues when just set as the parity drive?

They should not, note that writes will still be slow because they will be limited by the parity HDD, and lack of trim may also degrade write performance after some time, other than that it should be fine, and if it's not there will be some sync errors during the parity checks, so you will know there's a problem.

Thanks for the input! Is there anything specific that I should do to improve the configuration? Or anything to steer clear of? 

 

10 hours ago, JorgeB said:

if it's not there will be some sync errors during the parity checks, so you will know there's a problem.

Also -- would I be able to fix/rebuild with the same disk that has the issue, assuming it wasn't because the drive died?

12 hours ago, ill_logic said:

would I be able to fix/rebuild with the same disk that has the issue, assuming it wasn't because the drive died?

Yes, you can do normal rebuilds