New System (WD Blue?)

[vonlehmden7]

Hey guys! 

 

I am new to the community as I will be officially setting up my first unRaid Server sometime within the next week.  I mainly built the computer out of spare parts and was curious about drives I put in it.  The question I have, however, is the following.  If I have my server in a desktop tower (DEEPCOOL Tesseract) is it okay to use WD Blue drives in my server?  I have two options.  Either buy a new WD Red drive (3TB), or buy another SSD (240GB) for my main desktop and move my 2x 1TB WD Blue drives to the server.  The drives are both less than a year old and I do already have a SSD in my main computer.

 

All the two blue drives have done in the past is hold my media.

 

Thanks for the help!

[trurl]

You can use any SATA drive in unRAID. The Blues you mention are a little small and you may find you'll be replacing them once you get going, but replacing drives is pretty easy in unRAID.

 

You don't mention parity but your parity drive must be at least as large as the largest data drive.

 

If the choice is between having an unRAID with 1 x 1TB Blue for parity and 1 x 1TB Blue for data, or having no parity and a single 3TB Red for data then I would go for the configuration with parity. Not only do you get better protection, but you will gain more experience using unRAID.

 

Note that unRAID will want to partition and format any drives you put in it, so you won't be able to keep any data on drives you are reusing.

 

It is recommended to use the preclear script to test any drives before using them in unRAID. See my sig for search tips.

[garycase]

WD Blue's are probably the least reliable of the WD drive series ... but as long as they're working okay, they're fine to use.    I agree that 1TB is a very small drive to use these days -- especially for your parity drive (which restricts the size of your data drives, since no drive can be larger than it).

 

... I'd buy a high-capacity WD Red for parity (e.g. 3TB or larger) so as you grow the server you can use the larger drives.

 

[vonlehmden7]

Thanks for your suggestions! 

 

I currently have 2x 1TB WD Blue in my desktop and 2x 500GB Toshiba drives from old laptops.  Since I don't have the money to go out and get a ton of WD Reds I wanted to make sure they would suffice until I did.

 

My initial goal was to use one of the WD Blue 1TB as the parity and use the other one as Data along with one of my 500GB ones. Then use my other 500GB drive as a drive I can store plex and other applications on (Cache drive?).  After reading your thoughts I think I'm going to get a WD Red 3TB (or do you guys suggest an alternative?), and use one of the WD Blue 1TB as well as my 500GB hard drive for data.  Then upgrade them all to WD Red 3TB as I get the money.  The problem is if I use both WB Blue in my main computer, I would have to replace them with another drive for my games as my OS drive is only a 120GB SSD.

 

Additionally I've read that getting a new drive is as easy as popping out the old one and putting the new one in.  Is letting parity reconstruct the drive the best way to change a drive or is there a different, better, way?  And is it easy to switch the parity drive as well?  Like after I get all drives as 3TB is it easy to bump my parity to a higher capacity drive and reuse the parity drive as a data drive?

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys.  Oh, and I do have a 2TB External to backup both the drives when I preclear them.

 

Thanks guys!

[garycase]

It's easy to update the parity drive later if you really want to just use a 1TB drive now ... I simply suggested starting with a larger drive so you wouldn't have to do that before you could use larger data drives.

 

But you CAN just start with the 1TB drive;  then, when you buy a 3TB drive, upgrade the parity to the new 3TB drive; and then add the old parity as another data drive.

 

[vonlehmden7]

Thank you very much.  I think I may take one of my old 500GB and put it in my main rig and take my two WD Blue 1TB put it in my server until I get more money.  If I am swapping a parity drive, do I just unplug it and plug the new one in?  Then let it rebuild?  And if I am swapping a data drive, do I do the same?

 

Is there by chance a "how to" guide on swapping bays?

 

Thank you guys so much for your support.  I will be purchasing a Plus (8 devices?) key shortly.

[trurl]

Wiki: Disk Configuration Changes

The wiki is also searchable.

[vonlehmden7]

Thank you so much!  You guys rock!  Very excited to get started!!

 

One last question.  Does the "Basic" version have any limitation, besides the 4 disk limit, that the Plus and Pro versions do not?

 

I was going to get the Plus version off the bat, but since my computer can only handle 4 Sata devices and I don't have a sata controller (nor the money for one) I may just wait to upgrade at a later time.  My plan now is to probably get a 3TB WD Red for parity, and then use the 1TB/500GB for data.

 

Thanks!

[trurl]

Thank you so much!  You guys rock!  Very excited to get started!!

 

One last question.  Does the "Basic" version have any limitation, besides the 4 disk limit, that the Plus and Pro versions do not?

 

I was going to get the Plus version off the bat, but since my computer can only handle 4 Sata devices and I don't have a sata controller (nor the money for one) I may just wait to upgrade at a later time.  My plan now is to probably get a 3TB WD Red for parity, and then use the 1TB/500GB for data.

 

Thanks!

No other limitations. See here

[HellDiverUK]

WD Blue's are probably the least reliable of the WD drive series

 

My experience is the exact opposite.  I've never had a Blue fail.  I've had Greens and Blacks fail, but never a Blue.

[vonlehmden7]

Thank you guys so much!

 

I'm very excited in getting this thing up and running.  I am preclearing one of the 500GB drives right night and waiting for my backup of one of my WD Blue drives to be done.  Then I'll be preclearing that one as well.  Gonna purchase a Basic key for now as I only have 4 sata slots and then, once I get familiar with the system, just go straight to Pro!

 

Thanks again guys!  You rock!