Hi!

I need a 99% time silent setup, so my UnRaid little server is setup with 1 SSD array and a pool of 2 SSDs of the same size containing the data. Also, the machine is fanless (passive cooling).

 

This is fine to me, because as I say, it’s a little setup to allow just some dockers run like AdGuard Home, and store movies and contents to be available.

But I would like to have more space for the content I already watched or won’t access frequently, but I would like to keep treasuring. And that’s when I thought that maybe adding more SSDs isn’t the right route ($$$) but adding “cold storage”, in the form of a 8TB and 10TB 3.5 WD USB HDD I have to spare.

 

My ideal idea would then be having those two paired (one backup of the other to avoid a single HDD fail ruining it all) and only spin up when needed, for example if passing new content from the SSDs to this HDDs to “archive”, or retrieving data from the HDDs to the SSD to watch or whatever.

 

But I would need 100% assurance the HDDs will never spin up randomly at any moment or do any noise, and that’s not negotiable. Only spin up when manually needed.

 

So, how could I do this? I’m very lost about this because people say they can spin up randomly sometimes, or maybe when checking the SMART values, or IDK, and also other people say if I keep them unassigned and mount them as that, they will keep spinning up?

 

Do anyone know how feasible this setup would be and any ideas or tips?

 

Thank you so much.

Edited January 3, 20251 yr by edwardhawitt

Cold storage means the drives are not physically connected to the system. As in the drive is sitting unattached.

 

If you wanted a “warm spare” you could just not assign it to any drive slots, and only mount it as an unassigned drive when you need it.

 

alternatively you can assign the drive to a “pool” instead of the array and just set your shares to not use the pool.

 

the drives don’t randomly spin up either. 

Edited January 3, 20251 yr by MowMdown