Do you keep spare drives?


wisem2540

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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.

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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.

 

 

 

 

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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.

 

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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.

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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.]

 

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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.

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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

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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.
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  • 2 weeks later...

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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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