I've noticed that a lot of people around here uses 3.5 inch drives. Why is that? Is it because they are cheaper and/or larger (Storage wise, not physical size?)

 

I was thinking about using 2,5inch drives in my ESXi build, as with my 6 5.25 inch bays, that would yield me 32 slots, 24 of which can be used for unraid and the last for datastores.

 

Could you help me with the pros and cons with the small, and the large disks?

3.5 inch is cheaper, easier to cool, bigger capacity, only 'advantage' of 2.5: weight. Max arrat size of 2.5 inch: about 20TB. Max size with 3.5 inch:  about 90TB.

3.5 inch is cheaper, easier to cool, bigger capacity

... and faster.

3.5 are not necessarily faster . The raptors are 2.5inch drives in a 3.5 enclosure.

 

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Wouldn't a 2.5HDD 7200RPM SATA3 HDD be faster than a 3.5 inch equivalent, due to the physical disk's being smaller (Thus, theoretically faster to locate files?)

 

So the only advantage of a 2.5 inch drives is the physical size? For servers with many small disk's a 2.5 would be ideal, but for large storage systems, without a LOT of disk's, 3.5 is preffered, due to the sheer amount of GB per HDD?

Currently, in the UK, 8x1TB 2.5" drives will cost £592 where as 2x4TB drives will cost £564 and 3x3TB drives would cost £336 so i don't see any point why you would go for 2.5".