I'm just finishing up the preclear of eight 2tb drives to go into my new unRAID build and I noticed that one drive finished the preclear script noticeably faster.  When I checked the specs it turned out that this drive (Hitachi deskstar) is a 7200 rpm drive.  The drive also runs about 10c hotter then the other seagate "green" drives (5900 rpm). 

 

So, I'm wondering if there is a "better" place to put this one drive.  I'm of four minds:

1) who cares; no difference.

2) use it as the parity drive where is might speed up checks/builds.

3) use it as my cache drive where is will speed up writes to the server and moves from cache to protected storage.

4) use it in the coolest place possible so it doesn't add heat to the other drives.

 

I'd appreciate any input from those with experience and maybe less minds.

 

Thanks.

Richard

I'm of the opinion it's a combination of 2 and 4.

 

If you have it as the Parity drive, then writes to the other drives won't be bottlenecked by the parity drive. If you plan to have multiple writes to different drives at the same time in the system, you will see better response time. Also, should you pickup another 7200rpm drive, then writes to that new data drive will be as fast as possible with the already existing 7200rpm parity drive. No need to reorganize the drives for best response times (assuming the new data drive is the same size or smaller than the parity drive).

 

You should also place it in a cool location in regards to physical slot location.

I'm of the opinion it's a combination of 2 and 4.

 

OH NO!! I need a fifth mind?!?

 

After posting this I read something that said it wouldn't help as the parity drive but I see your point about multiple writes.  I don't think that will happen often in my set up but it's worth thinking about if everything else comes up neutral. 

 

Concerning future purchases it appears that "green" drives are the future for consumer oriented drives.  So I don't know that there will be any more 7200rpm drives purchased around here (don't you love a product that performs poorer then its predecessor and gets upsold through marketing hype?). 

 

I'm curious to see what others think about using it as the cache (/warm spare).

 

Thanks for the input.

 

 

I had a seagate 7200 rpm as a warm spare. Only reason I purchased the drive was because of the price. And as fortune would have it I had a disk become disabled. Put it into service without having to restart. Love the versatility of unraid.

I had a seagate 7200 rpm as a warm spare. Only reason I purchased the drive was because of the price. And as fortune would have it I had a disk become disabled. Put it into service without having to restart. Love the versatility of unraid.

 

Great to hear!

Thanks.