Looking to upgrade my Array soon and these question came up.

 

Assuming I have a 12 1TB drive array and a 6 2TB drive array.  All the data will just be videos and the array would be set to evenly spread the data to all the drives.

 

Will the 1TB array “live longer” because the files are more spread out and there for the work load is spread among more drives?

 

To my understanding if I did lose multiple drives at once would I be able to save more data on the 1TB array vs the 2TB?

 

Aside from more points of failure are there other negatives I am not seeing having a larger number of drives in the array vs having a smaller array?

 

Thanks for the help

 

Larger number of drives requires more ports, bigger power supply, all of these factors could mean additional expense. Also a bigger case which requires more space in your home.

 

The smaller drives in your example are also actually more expensive in terms of TB / $.

 

The 3TB and 4TB drives are the sweet spot now, and that will probably change as even larger drives get cheaper.

I have a mix of 3TB and 6TB drives in my array.  In retrospect I wish I had gone with 3TB and 4TB drives as it turns out they would have met my needs - I like the bigger drives but you don't want to over-buy.  There's no way I'd want to manage lots of 1TB or 2TB drives, though - not with the convenience of managing a smaller number of larger drives.  In addition to trurl's comments, fewer drives means less mechanical complexity, less wiring, less power usage, easier cooling and hopefully fewer trips into the case to fix things.  Larger drives also tend to be somewhat faster due to their higher areal density.

No need to go for one and two TB drives noadays, only if you have them lying around.

 

More drives also mean more vibrations which is not good for them.

Looking to upgrade my Array soon and these question came up.

 

Will the 1TB array “live longer” because the files are more spread out and there for the work load is spread among more drives?

 

Thanks for the help

 

Failure rates are almost completely unrelated to drive capacity!  At best, it is a third or fourth order variable.  First thing, all hard drives fail.  It is just a matter of time.  Second item, drive design is an important variable.  Some drive designs turn out to be simply be more reliable than some other designs.  (You only find this out after the first production drives are three-plus years old and have been out of production for at least a year!)  Second thing, there is a difference in the quality of the same drive based on where iot was manufactured.  (Again, someting that can be determined only well after the fact.)  Third item, some manufacturers seem to have better records for reliable designs and quality control.  (You can search on this forum [and the web] to find lots of discussion and opinions on this topic.) 

 

This basic statement is true.  The fewer number of drives in your system, the fewer number of drives failures you will have.  The few number of drives in your system, the lower the probability that you will have two drives fail at the same time. 

 

If you have a bunch of small-capacity hard drives available free, use them.  But don't buy them thinking that you will have fewer issues.  You won't! 

Look at that BackBlaze studies and you'll see that brand and model are the two primary indicators of drive failure. HGSTs are a pretty good bet and my array is full of them. Seagate quality seems to be on the rise, but I am still skeptical but have 2 4T that are good so far. I hadn't bought a WD in a very long time. They were great in the 1T era, but 2Ts were lousy and nothing since had been tempting enough to make me buy.

 

As far as size, 4T minimum. 6Ts are nice but often pricey unless you hit a good sale. 8T showing promise.

 

One thing you might look at are the Toshiba 5T on Amazon. Have been down as low as $139 (I'm waiting for then to hit that price again to buy some!). Toshiba got some influx of Hitachi technology and may therefore have similar quality to HGST. Only time and experience will tell for sure, but at that price maybe worth the risk.