I am getting quite the collections of old drvives. I must have 10TB of 200 IDE to 500 SATA drives that have been rotated out of my array.

 

Whilst I could build another unRAID the costs of the chassis + MB + PSU etc is still a bit expensive to make it worth the while (since im trying to make everything rack mountable now).

 

Anyway I tried to find real life MTBF figures (as opposed to manufacturer theoretical ones) or a case study. What I am thinking of doing is using a SATA stage rack and adding somehting to automount it under unRAID. This way I could label up old disks, add older less interesting content and then use just like inserting a DVD.

 

The question is since the disks will be unprotected are there ant factors to consider

im in the same boat. i have like 10 300gb SATA drives just sitting on the shelf. i've actually been browsing the forums to see if I can find out what people are doing with their old drives and considered building another unRAID system. having something like an external SCSI case for SATA just to place drives in and connect it up to the main unRAID system would be pretty handy and save me building a complete system again

im in the same boat. i have like 10 300gb SATA drives just sitting on the shelf

 

I can t see building an unRAID server for 3 TB of 10 old drives unless you plan to use the server hardware and grow past them.

 

I would erase them with DBAN and sell them on eBay.

If the SMART statistics are good and you bundle them you would probably be able to use the cash to buy a couple 1TB WD's.

I suppose you have to do the math for an eSata case, cable, controller card (or port if you have it) then the electricity to run them over time.

 

From what I've seen a decent sized functioning drive goes for $25 to $40 each anyway.

 

I'm about to do this with my 500GB drives.

 

 

 

http://www.dban.org/about

 

I was thinking more along the lines of just adding old videos to them that arent in my "likely to watch soon list", cataloging them and shelving them.

 

But the quesiton is since they would be unprotected are there any factors to consider... or put another way... is the MTBF of an on the shelf drive huge/different/tiny?