considerations for new drive and furture upgrades

[night2you]

Here is my current build:

 

CPU: AMD A4-3300 Llano 2.5GHz Socket FM1 65W Dual-Core Desktop APU

Motherboard: ASRock A55M-VS FM1 AMD A55 (Hudson D2) Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

RAM:  Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM

Case: iMicro ATX Micro Tower Case CA-IM1207P

Power Supply: Corsair Builder Series CX 600 Watt ATX/EPS  80 PLUS (CX600)

Parity Drive: WD Green 1TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5-inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, IntelliPower, 64MB Cache WD10EZRX

2 Data Drives: WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX

 

The upgrades I want to do:

 

New Parity Drive: WD Green 2TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5-inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, IntelliPower, 64MB Cache WD20EZRX

I hope to do this in the next week or so. This drive will replace the existing parity drive, and the current parity drive will just become a data drive. This will give me a total of 3 TB of space and allow me to add 2 TB drives in the future.

 

Controller Card: IO Crest 4 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0 x1 Controller Card Marvell Non-Raid with Low Profile Bracket SI-PEX40064

Cache Drive: WD Black 1TB Performance Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5-inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache WD1003FZEX

This is an upgrade I may do, 2 to 4 months from now.This NAS is mostly for backups. My thought is to use the cache drive to speed up the time it takes to do the backup, then have the mover move it later. I haven't researched this card too much, but wanted to mention this upgrade in case it affects recommendations.

 

Given my current system and the upgrades I want to do, is there anything else I should be upgrading? Any other parts or things I should be considering?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[HellDiverUK]

I thought 4TB drives were the sweet-spot for $/GB?  You should consider buying a 4TB drive for parity and then using your existing parity drive as another data drive.  Then you won't need to change your parity drive again for a while.

 

What's your budget?

[night2you]

I thought 4TB drives were the sweet-spot for $/GB?  You should consider buying a 4TB drive for parity and then using your existing parity drive as another data drive.  Then you won't need to change your parity drive again for a while.

 

What's your budget?

 

I was hoping to spend no more than $100 on the drive. But if 4 TB are a good value and work well with unRAID, then that is certainly worth a consideration.

[00b5]

Why are you upgrading/changing things? Are you out of space? Do you just want to? Did you get a $100 lotto winner?

 

I ask because knowing that, we can give you much better answers.

 

If its space (which I assume it is), my suggestion is to dump all your money into replacement hdds. You can add more 2/1TB hdds all day, but why bother?

 

Get a 3+TB hdd to use as parity, as you mentioned. I wouldn't waste your time with anything less than 3 though, and I'd strongly suggest you get 4/5/6TB as possible.

 

Then, instead of getting an addon card and another drive, i'd just add another large drive, then recycle a blue/green to be your cache.

 

So, you have 4 sata slots. You currently have 3 of them in use. Buy a new big parity, move the green to data (+1TB of space). In a few months, buy another large drive (another 3/4/5/whatever) and replace one of your 3 1tb drives, copy the data from another one to it, and then recycle that as a cache drive. You'll lose one hdd for storage (back to 2TB), but with at least another 3Tb drive, you'll still be up by 1TB (ie, 4TB of total space). Then, a few months later do it again. Now you have a 3TB parity, and 2 3TB datas. You have 6TB of protected storage, and have recycled at least one 1TB hdd to be cache. And you still only need 4 sata slots. Buy a usb enclosure for a hdd, and turn another 1TB drive into an external proper backup of critical data/etc.

 

If you insist on buying a hdd to use as cache, and it doesn't need to be 1tb in size (do you copy that much at once? the mover runs every night), then I'd suggest getting an SSD. I just picked up a 250GB Samsung 850 for a little more than that WD black drive. The SSD will be faster, and doesn't need to spin up/down, doesn't generate heat/etc. SSD's are also nice to run apps on since they can do all the work, and let your data drives spin down.

 

TL;DR

Buy a big parity now, then buy replacement big data drives later, recycle your current drive(s) for cache/external backups/etc.

 

 

[garycase]

Your motherboard has 4 SATA ports ... you're only using 3 of them.    So you can add a cache drive (if desired) without needing an additional controller ... at least not until you need to expand beyond 4 drives.

 

Given your current setup, and the very limited amount of data you apparently need to store, I'd do the following ...

 

(1)  Upgrade parity to at least 3TB, and preferably 4TB.  While I prefer the WD Red drives, the Greens are fine, and are a bit less expensive.  A 3TB unit will keep you under your $100 budget:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136874

... the 4TB is a bit more:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236604

 

(2)  Add the old parity drive to the array, as you had planned.

 

You can then decide which way to move forward r.e. adding more small drives or upsizing the 1TB drives to the same size as the new parity drive.

 

Also, since you only have 3 drives at the moment, it looks like you may be running the free version of UnRAID.  To move beyond 3 total drives and add a cache you'll need to buy a key ... either Basic or Plus should be fine for your needs.    This is mandatory if you plan to move to UnRAID v6, as there is no longer a free version (just a 30-day trial); but if you're on v5 you can continue to run with just 3 disks on the free version (but then you couldn't add the old parity drive as a 4th drive).

 

 

[night2you]

Why are you upgrading/changing things? Are you out of space? Do you just want to? Did you get a $100 lotto winner?

 

I've accumulated a little over $100 in Amazon gift cards. So while newegg is cheaper, Amazon is "free" 

I'm currently using 1.25 TB of my 2 TB. Obviously more space is always a good thing, but I think I just need 1 TB more. (for now!).

 

If you insist on buying a hdd to use as cache, and it doesn't need to be 1tb in size (do you copy that much at once? the mover runs every night), then I'd suggest getting an SSD. I just picked up a 250GB Samsung 850 for a little more than that WD black drive. The SSD will be faster, and doesn't need to spin up/down, doesn't generate heat/etc. SSD's are also nice to run apps on since they can do all the work, and let your data drives spin down.

 

It doesn't have to be 1 TB, but probably at least 350/500 GB. Once a month I do a full system backup, and that's a little over 300 GB. You and garycase make some good points though. So I may just get a 3 or 4 TB now, and make that the new parity disk. Then at some point when I can get another drive, replace one of the 1 GB, and make the other 1 GB a cache drive. While I love the idea of an SSD for the cache drive, that may not happen until the prices come down more.

 

To move beyond 3 total drives and add a cache you'll need to buy a key ... either Basic or Plus should be fine for your needs.    This is mandatory if you plan to move to UnRAID v6, as there is no longer a free version (just a 30-day trial); but if you're on v5 you can continue to run with just 3 disks on the free version (but then you couldn't add the old parity drive as a 4th drive).

 

I'm on 6.0-rc6, I've kept that in the back of my mind that I'll need to get Basic key. But thanks for a reminder!

 

Basically this is all a balancing act of what I can afford, what I need now, and what I will need in the future.

 

[00b5]

You could also stalk amazon for an external drive, and then take it out of the case and use it as an internal.

 

This can go wrong though, so try to figure out which hdd model is actually inside before you do it, and make sure you are ok with no warranty (unless you get it back in the case cleanly) or often just a 1yr (whereas a cheap green internal drive could be 2yr).

 

I've seen 5tb external seagates at $99 on sale lately, so its possible.

 

The best choice is probably a NAS drive (like a WD Red), but then you are paying a small premium for a longer warranty, better built drive to run 24x7/etc/etc.

[garycase]

Agree that NAS drives are preferable ... as I noted above, I prefer the WD Reds to the Greens.  I think the small extra cost is worth it for the NAS-oriented design and firmware,  and the longer warranty.  Looking for the absolute lowest price/TB isn't always the best choice.

 

[night2you]

A little postscript for those who are curious.....

 

I got a 3 TB WD Red drive. I ran the preclear script on it with a count of 3, came back no errors. I used this new drive to replace my existing parity drive. Going to do a preclear on the drive that was the old parity drive, and then make that the cache drive.