wisem2540 Posted November 20, 2015 Share Posted November 20, 2015 I was having a conversation with a friend today about unraid. It got me thinking that I have a 2TB drive that I bought probably 3-4 years ago...Still in the package. (God knows what I paid for it) I am starting to wonder why on earth I even have a spare. My initial thought was that I would keep drives in case of the need for expansion, or failure, whichever came first. But, like most of you, now that I have had unraid for several years, my rate of data accumulation has slowed. So, while having a spare seems nice, in theory, it also seems like a terrible waste of money. Not to mention the fact that the warranty just ticks away while you arent using the drive. I would like to get some thoughts on this. Quote Link to comment
hernandito Posted November 20, 2015 Share Posted November 20, 2015 In my case, I have kept spares for about 2 years. I have a 4TB parity, thus I kept a spare 4TB. It has happened that a drive starts to fail and I have a pre-cleared ready drive to replace and prevent data loss... I have to guess that this has happened 2 or 3 times. My unRAID is older and as the drives get older, some start to fail. I also have a growing media library, and my storage needs grow. When running low (1TB or less) I would swap a smaller drive size with the larger spare and immediately add space. I still have two 2TB drives that I can swap out for larger ones. I would order another spare, pre-clear and shelf for the next need. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted November 20, 2015 Share Posted November 20, 2015 I keep one well-tested spare. If I haven't needed it to replace an array drive before I need another drive for my backups, I simply use it as the next backup drive and buy another spare. If I have a "soft" failure in the array ... i.e. a drive hasn't actually failed, but has some pending sectors or a reallocated sector count I don't like (especially if it's changed), then I replace that drive with the spare and use the removed drive as my next spare -- and buy another spare. Quote Link to comment
interwebtech Posted November 20, 2015 Share Posted November 20, 2015 No spares. Amazon Prime on speed dial Quote Link to comment
StevenD Posted November 20, 2015 Share Posted November 20, 2015 I keep hot spares in every raid array that allows it. And I keep a precleared 4TB spare for unraid. When i upgrade to 8TB drives, i will buy a spare and use the 4TB somewhere else. Quote Link to comment
BobPhoenix Posted November 20, 2015 Share Posted November 20, 2015 I have at least one cold spare for each of my arrays. Quote Link to comment
Russ Uno Posted November 21, 2015 Share Posted November 21, 2015 I keep a precleared drive or 2 ready to go. I usually buy them when I get a good deal and might watch deals for months before I buy. I try to replace older drives before they die and while the replacement still has a good warranty. That way I can use the drive I replaced in a pinch for a backup spare. I keep a spare in case I need to add to the array. In 5 years I've had 2 drives I replaced because of reallocated sectors climbing slightly. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted November 21, 2015 Share Posted November 21, 2015 No spares. Amazon Prime on speed dial +1 Quote Link to comment
dirtysanchez Posted November 21, 2015 Share Posted November 21, 2015 No spares. Amazon Prime on speed dial +1 Ditto. On top of that I can usually get Prime same day delivery if needed where I live. The one drive failure I had happened in the middle of the night. Woke up to an alert and had a replacement drive at my door in less than 8 hours. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted November 21, 2015 Share Posted November 21, 2015 Amazon Prime is indeed a very nice service ... we're definitely spoiled with the 2-day delivery of just about everything => and for those who live close to distribution centers where you can get same day delivery it's even cooler. However ... getting a drive quick isn't quite the same as having one already on your shelf that you've ALREADY TESTED. I run all of my drives through a testing regimen that takes a couple days, so my spare is "ready to go" ... which would not be true of one that was just delivered, unless I just wanted to install it and let the actual usage within the array server as the test. [in most cases, this would actually be fine -- but I'm a conservative old guy who likes to do the testing BEFORE I put the drive in service.] Quote Link to comment
cassiusdrow Posted November 21, 2015 Share Posted November 21, 2015 I keep a spare drive the same size as the parity drive that has been fully tested and precleared. It has saved me time recovering from a drive fail on three occasions, including a time where another drive failed within a week of the first drive failure. Considering that it takes several days to do the testing, I might have lost data from the second drive failure if I had ordered the drive when the first failure occurred. So far I've always used the spare within a year to replace an older or failed drive. Quote Link to comment
stchas Posted November 21, 2015 Share Posted November 21, 2015 I keep a spare drive the same size as the parity drive that has been fully tested and precleared. +1 Quote Link to comment
hernandito Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Amazon Prime is indeed a very nice service ... we're definitely spoiled with the 2-day delivery of just about everything => and for those who live close to distribution centers where you can get same day delivery it's even cooler. However ... getting a drive quick isn't quite the same as having one already on your shelf that you've ALREADY TESTED. I run all of my drives through a testing regimen that takes a couple days, so my spare is "ready to go" ... which would not be true of one that was just delivered, unless I just wanted to install it and let the actual usage within the array server as the test. [in most cases, this would actually be fine -- but I'm a conservative old guy who likes to do the testing BEFORE I put the drive in service.] +1 Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted November 23, 2015 Share Posted November 23, 2015 Amazon Prime is indeed a very nice service ... we're definitely spoiled with the 2-day delivery of just about everything => and for those who live close to distribution centers where you can get same day delivery it's even cooler. However ... getting a drive quick isn't quite the same as having one already on your shelf that you've ALREADY TESTED. I run all of my drives through a testing regimen that takes a couple days, so my spare is "ready to go" ... which would not be true of one that was just delivered, unless I just wanted to install it and let the actual usage within the array server as the test. [in most cases, this would actually be fine -- but I'm a conservative old guy who likes to do the testing BEFORE I put the drive in service.] +1 I would never use a drive without testing either so the other part of my Amazon Prime plan is to not use my server until replcement is tested. I know that would be unacceptable to some but it works for me and I can take advantage of the latest drive prices that way. Quote Link to comment
kizer Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 I have a spare drive pre-cleared and ready to match the biggest drive in my Array. Currently that is my parity and a few data drives, but soon that'll change, but I'm a firm believer of "If something can fail it will" Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 Actually, I do have a spare drive currently. I took advantage of a price drop in 6TB WD Red to get one so I would have it on hand for dual parity. Maybe we will get it for Xmas! Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted December 3, 2015 Share Posted December 3, 2015 That would be nice -- and your "Amazon Prime plan" is more viable with dual parity as well, since the array is still fault-tolerant after a single drive failure. Quote Link to comment
wisem2540 Posted December 4, 2015 Author Share Posted December 4, 2015 Is dual parity really coming that soon? Anyone know if you can mismatch them as well? Say I had a 6, 3, 2, 2, 2 Could the 6 and 3tb drives be used for dual parity? Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Is dual parity really coming that soon? so we are told! It appears that 6.2 is in internal testing at LimeTech, so it should be months rather than years. Anyone know if you can mismatch them as well? Say I had a 6, 3, 2, 2, 2 Could the 6 and 3tb drives be used for dual parity? interesting question I think only LimeTech can answer. It will depend on their implementation whether both parity drives need to be the same size or whether they simply each need to be at least as large as the largest data drive. There is also the question of even if it is theoretically possible whether it is one of their test scenarios. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Regardless of whether the implementation would allow such a configuration, I'd think you'd certainly want both drives to be the same size => otherwise your largest data drive will be limited to the SMALLEST of the two parity drives. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Regardless of whether the implementation would allow such a configuration, I'd think you'd certainly want both drives to be the same size => otherwise your largest data drive will be limited to the SMALLEST of the two parity drives. True, and I certainly plan for both parity drives to be the same size when I move to dual parity. But then I already have a 8TB parity drive (I used to have a 6TB one) and plan any new data drives to be 8TB ones. Currently my largest data drive is 6TB but I still have some smaller ones in the array so plenty of room to grow without increasing the drive count. However I can see a case where a user has a mixture of drive sizes but wants to add a new drive for dual parity purposes. In such a case it might make a lot of sense to buy a drive that is larger than the current parity drive as part of planning for future expansion. I would certainly be in that situation if I still had a 6TB drive as my parity drive. Quote Link to comment
RobJ Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 However I can see a case where a user has a mixture of drive sizes but wants to add a new drive for dual parity purposes. In such a case it might make a lot of sense to buy a drive that is larger than the current parity drive as part of planning for future expansion. I would certainly be in that situation if I still had a 6TB drive as my parity drive. That's a very good point. It's likely to be a common scenario, as many users generally upgrade one disk at a time. If that's not initially supported, there will certainly be desire for it in the future. Quote Link to comment
korith Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 Used to have a spare or two, none now, now part of unraid box. Mostly using unraid as a media box and to store images of boot drives on laptops and the desktop. Doing nothing critical, so can just keep the box turned off a day or two, until I can get a new drive and get it precleared. Drive prices haven't been really dropped enough for me, to want to keep a spare handy. At the moment using a mix of 2tb and 3tb drives, a few 4tb. I'm kind of stuck in the if I wait a bit longer, then I can get cheaper larger drive loop. If I do need a drive, microcenter and frys are a short drive away, and then there is always newegg or amazon. One of them usually has something for sale. Quote Link to comment
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