Background
Hi, I recently upgraded my gaming pc, and have turned my old pc into a server.  I have been playing around with unraid on free trial and just registered the starter license, as really impressed having all our family photos and videos on Immich and the ability to play media through plex and view books through calibre.  

Unraid Server (as of now)
 No parity drive
 Data drive -  870 EVO 2TB SSD - Holds all the data in the array, photos/books/media - SMART failure recently started, 367 bad sectors, won't complete a long SMART test.  I have backed up the photos and books to a 2TB WD Elements External USB) and drive is still in warranty
 Data drive - 3TB WD30EZRX - SATA - (old hard drive out of warranty,  has failed, removed from the array)
 Unassigned - 120GB SSD - (old windows SSD- unassigned at the moment, perhaps use this for cache drive, or might just remove it power usage vs caching benefit?)

So, at the moment the hard disk array is high risk, just one data drive with SMART errors, no parity drive, fortunately have the external backup but at only 2TB that isn't going to be a viable backup solution as storage requirements grow...

Future Requirements
I don't have huge storage requirements at the moment, I think 8GB would be a good starting point, although cost per TB is cheaper for 10/12/14 TB drives so probably better to start with those as Parity drive is based on the largest hard drive.  The main issue I have is the initial cost as based in the UK, so considering a company that supplies refurbished HDD (Exos and Ironwolf) with a 5 year warranty. 

Options I can see 

2x10TB, 1 parity, 1 data drive   - is this viable at all, if the drive starting failing, I would have to bring the system down until I get another data disk then recovery it with parity drive.

3x10TB 1 parity, 2 data drives - seems the minimum viable approach, but higher upfront cost 

Or just use 2 data drives to begin with, not sure how easy is it to move content from one drive to another in the event of drive failure
I also have a 20TB Toshiba mg10ac20te in my gaming PC for my launchbox installation with 16TB of data on it, have thought about moving the key data files to the SSD in gaming PC , and mapping the rest of the content to the 20TB hard drive in the unraid server, but issue then is I would need a 20TB parity drive, so probably best to keep that in the gaming PC.

 

321 Backup rule for 3 copies of data, only care about the family photos, so would have 1 copy on data disk, 1 copy on 2TB external drive, will get a larger external drive as requirements grow, and look up cloud storage for 3rd backup.

Thanks in advance
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 4, 20251 yr by edp33

10 minutes ago, edp33 said:

Data drive -  870 EVO 2TB SSD - Holds all the data in the array

SSDs in the array cannot be trimmed, and can only be written at parity speed (when you get parity). Best place for SSDs is in pools outside the array.

 

Either parity option you mention should be fine. I think you are overestimating the risk of disk failure. If they are new disks you might do a preclear on each just to get past the early part of the "bathtub curve".

 

By far the most common problems we see are bad connections instead of bad disks. And user error is the most often cause of data loss we see. Sometimes data can be recovered even from user errors or bad disks.

Just now, trurl said:

If they are new disks you might do a preclear on each just to get past the early part of the "bathtub curve".

If they are not new disks, an extended SMART test might be a good idea.

 

Also, Unraid monitors certain SMART indicators for you. Be sure to setup Notifications to alert you by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected.