Hello everyone,

I've currently got a very basic system set up using an old Dell Optiplex computer, which has the following hard drives installed: 4TB Seagate, 4TB WD Green, 2TB WD Green. I would like to transition into an unRAID system. Currently I use crashplan as my backup system. Should an entire drive fail, I would have to restore it over my network from crashplans servers, I don't have any sort of parity running. The current setup has Windows 7 installed (on a SSD) with the individual drives mapped to computers on my network. The only two reasons I would like to transition is that all of my hard drives are spun up on boot up and shut down, and with multiple power cycles daily, that adds a lot of spin up cycles to my hard drives. Also, since each network drive is only 4TB, a lot of my data is split across multiple drives which can be frustrating when looking for a particular file. It would be much more convenient to have one 10TB share instead of individual 4, 4, and 2TB shares.

 

My plan for the future included purchasing another HD (presumably a WD Red, or possibly an HGST, and I just saw an article about 8TB seagates, so I'm sort of in the unknown department regarding that), and transitioning my current system into the unRAID environment. Basically, I'd pull all the drives that currently house my data from the system and then initialize the new 4TB drive (which I haven't purchased yet) and move data from an existing 4TB drive onto the new drive, then put that old drive into the array. I'd repeat that process, until all of my data had been migrated from my existing hard drives onto the new unRAID platform, then I'd use one of the remaining 4TB to setup as the parity drive.

 

Like I said earlier, I'm contemplating what size new drive I'd purchase. I'm considering going larger than 4TB since the price per TB is less for the 6TB WD Red's on Amazon. However, I'd hate to have my largest drive consumed as my parity drive, but my thinking is that by purchasing a 6TB I'd be future proofing myself, since drive sizes are bound to increase. Can anyone comment on this? This would also add a hiccup in my transition, as I'd have to purchase two 6TB drives, since one of the 6TB drives must be used as parity, and the other would needed to transfer data before I insert my current drives into the array. Unless, unRAID can move the data from my 6TB hard drive to an existing 4TB drive within the array, to allow the 6TB drive to be used as parity.

 

Also, I have a question regarding the crashplan app which runs from within the unRAID platform. Does that app see each drive individually, such that if (for instance) my Seagate 4TB failed and I didn't have a parity drive initialized (and I had backed that drive up to crashplan) I could download only the data stored on that drive before it failed so I could replace the failed drive and have it hold the same data?

 

Thanks everyone in advance for any help. I hope I was clear, I tried to be, but I feel as though I was not. Let me know if you have any questions or recommendations.

You could probably move data to a 6T drive and then move it back to the 4T after formatting it with an unRAID supported file system and adding it to the array. But, you'd have to do that for each full drive you add which would be a lot of file moving.

 

I wouldn't put much stock into buying a larger parity for future proofing unless you are planning to add more drives in the near future. If much time elapses, you just might buy a 8T as the next drive making you have to move the 6T from parity to a data drive.

 

I think crashplan will backup whatever way you set it up.

How full are your current drives? How quickly do you expect to need to expand?

Moving the data back and forth between the drives would be OK with me, it would be a logistical time waster, but I suppose that's ok. I will make a decision sometime later (I plan on implementing this change in May).

 

Currently, in the 10TB of space I have, 880GB is free. The rate of expansion is kind of random for me. Once I find a new TV show I like I tend to buy all the blu-rays for it and then transfer them to the hard drives. So a show like House M.D. is about 600GB of data. Why do you ask?

Sounds like you are going to have to go with a new data drive at least 4TB before you will be able to clear any of your other disks. You could do that and then use one of your existing 4TBs as parity since you have backups. If you buy a 6TB then you will have to use it as parity and would still need another drive at least 4TB to start moving your data to.

If you want to keep the optiplex or similar form factor, you will want to use at least 6TB drives. I use the Optiplex 380, which only support 3 drives (yes, they actually removed the fourth SATA port from the motherboard). Even if you add a card you'll be pushing the power and cooling ability of the case.

 

If you are switching cases, then it comes down to $/TB which currently the clearance 3,4,5TB drives @~$25/T, followed by the 8TB and 6TB @~$33/T. I just got two truckloads of 5TB drives for a surprising low price.