Running out of space: how to upgrade?

[f00kie]

I have been running Unraid for about 2 years now and love this thing - since it doesn't have a GUI, I don't touch it's setting, which is great because it's rock solid and stable.

 

Anyway, I am running out of HDD space, as well as physical space in my enclosure. I have:

 

Antec 1200 Case

3x 4-in-3 HDD Enclosures (Coolermaster I believe)

1x parity 2TB

14x drive 2TB

1x cache 500GB

 

That's all the physical space I have in the case, but I am down to about 3.3TB of free space, which sounds like a lot, but isn't when looking at each individual drive (they're well balanced at about 87% full).

 

So what are my choices? I think I have slots of my controller card for more SATA connections. I can start converting the 4-in-3 enclosures to 5-in-3 and keep purchasing 2TB drives? I can purchase a bigger enclosure (I'd like to maintain the desktop form factor though)? I can start upgrading to 3TB drives?

 

What would you suggest?

[Helmonder]

In any case, any new drive you buy make it 3TB, at this point in time it would be unwise to purchase 2tb drives... 5x3 enclosures will give you a bit more room to buy 3tb drives.. Changing 2tb to 3tb will also give you a bit more room.. Check smart reports on possible drives that need replacements and replace with 3TB..

 

In the end though... You have accumulated a lot of TB in two years, so you will need an out of the box solution if you want to keep on growing... If you expect to get  twice as big then I would advise to invest in a second unraid setup..

[ohlwiler]

I wrestled with this issue about a year ago. I did two things, I added six additional drives into the interior of the case to max out the array. When that filled up I added a second server. If you run the numbers, upgrading 2T drives to 3T just doesn't make sense.  Moving from 4x3 to 5x3 is a possible solution, but I choose not to go that route. Cooling will suffer and noise will increase from the Coolermasters.

 

I used Antec drive cages that I had lying around for my interior drives.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antec-preformance-series-Hard-drive-cage-P-N-SXHDCAGE-/320920409114?pt=US_Computer_Case_Accessories_Tool_Kits&hash=item4ab858d41a

 

 

 

[BRiT]

There's also 4TB drives available...

[Helmonder]

There's also 4TB drives available...

 

Yes but I agree with  ohlwiler, changing disks will give some extra space that is good for the wait for a new system, buying all new drives will just cost a lot of money, if you do not change all the disks but a few then use the extra cash for the other needed hardware and setup a second system that will make more sense... With growing data at this rate you will need to anyhow..

[f00kie]

It would suck if I have to get rid of my 2TB drives -- they're WD drives and are running fine.

 

Is there a way I can 'add-on' to the same array via another case? I don't want build a second Unraid array because, one of the key benefits of Unraid, is that all of the data is pooled into one array.

 

I looked into 5x3 enclosures - and they're $100! Seems way too much to be a viable solution.

[mbryanr]

I have <3TB remaining and face a similar situation. In the short term I could gain another 2TB by upgrading drives. For approximately 400 more I gain 3TB with room to expand.

 

Figure the combined/daisy chain array isn't necessary at this time because (1) since one array is full..very few writes and (2) my media player can combine network sources. Although I suspect a smb-extra magic could create a pseudo combined array.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using Tapatalk 2

[f00kie]

Still looking for some advice on this.

 

What if I buy another Antec 1200 case and start adding drives to it. What kind of a card do I need in the host server (current 1200) and the slave server (new 1200) to link the two? I do not want two separate Unraid instances, as I like my folder structure to be clean.

[Nnyan]

Good question and I'm brand new to unraid but how does (if at all) unraid handle a SAN or iSCSI?  If you could connect a SAN via an eSATA or SAS connector it would give you a relatively cheap way to add more storage (as you don't need a full PC just a SAN case, card, cable and drives).

[onlyjeeps]

Both of those last two posts are very good questions and reflect my questions as well. Anyone have any further ideas on this topic or answer to Nnyan's external case idea?

[theone]

you can add another sata card to the first array if possible and run sata cables to an additional enclosure.

[onlyjeeps]

What about licensing? Say I have a 20 drive unRaid server and want to add more capacity via the option mentioned above (external case) with say 8 more drives, how do you handle the license issue? Do you have to build a whole additional server of its own and if so how do you share all the media info (able to be seen as 1 share)? Is the answer ESXi, which I know nothing about (yet)? Only asking because in a signature I saw John... something had a 60TB server as a guest on another like 48TB server via ESXi I believe. Is there future support in the works for servers with more than 20 (or 22) physical drives?

 

Sorry for the newbie questions, I'm just starting a build and I'm feeling convinced unRaid is the way to go so I'm looking toward the future options. My media library is already pretty big and as soon as I find a stable way of keeping it online (which I think I have in unRaid) it will become massive. Thank you for any input.

[lionelhutz]

At this time, you only get 20 or 22 data drives in an unRAID array. You can either run 2 instances on ESXi or run 2 complete servers to support more drives.

 

Unfortunately, sticking to a tower type case costs more than a rackmount if you're building maxed out arrays. Buying the 4 x 5-into-3 and 1 x 4-into-3 hot-swap bays to max out an unRAID array in a tower case costs more than a Norco. The big rack cases are just the easiest way to do these large arrays.

 

As for putting another case beside your current one. The drives connect via SATA cables. Use longer cables or get SAS adapters so you just run a SAS cable to connect the enclosures. You can also use a port multipier and connect 4 or 5 drives in an external box. Check out Addonics for lots of cool parts to do this kind of stuff.

 

You could also get "cute" with your current disks, like putting 2 x 2T into RAID0 arrays and presenting that as a single disk to the server. I know the SiL3132 chipset will work doing this but I'm not sure if another RAID card would work this way. This approach is ideal since you're creating a higher chance of having an unrecoverable disk failure. It might make sense to add-in a few 2T drives into a newer array with 4T drives.

 

Toshiba bought the Hitatchi 3.5" HDD business and the Toshiba 1T to 3T drives are just appearing now at decent prices. So, Toshiba might start selling the ex Hitatchi 4T drives for more reasonable prices too. So, it might be a good idea to hold off on storage purchases for a bit and see if this happens.