unRAID Capacity Calculator


Recommended Posts

I was going to reply yesterday that the calculator was pointless, as all you have to do is add up the size of your data drives.  But, then I noticed that it does make an attempt at coming up with current ratings, etc for the power supply.

Link to comment
13 hours ago, Spyrule said:

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I came across this calculator, and the only addition that would be nice would be if you choose to run dual parity.

 

While you apologize for rebirthing an old thread, I absolutely adore that folks are still using the capacity calculator, and it inspires me to enhance it. It was built so long ago that the interface is pretty ... ugly. LOL. I will put it on my to-do list.

Link to comment
  • 3 months later...
  • 4 months later...

Hi!

I'm sorry for updating this thread after it remained inactive for quite some time but I just wanted to thank @Robbie Ferguson for this tool he created.

This helped me choose which drive I should select as parity drive and what size my PSU should be not to be either oboxiously overkill nor underpowered.

I'm totally new to unRAID an the only NAS I've been using until now is my Synology DS213J so... switching to unRAID is quite a large hop in several regards, and such small but handy tools make my life easier! :) 

Edited by CiaoCiao
Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

Hi, I am new to Unraid and after watching every tutorial, I still cannot understand how much storage I need for each of the drives. I'd assume the answer is simple.

I have Synology NAS with 2 HDD (both 4TB each) + 1 SSD (0.5 TB for Cache)

 

Given than all of my data will amount to a total of 6TB (in next 5 yrs), what should be the minimal size of:

Parity HDD?

HDD 1?

HDD 2?

Link to comment
6 minutes ago, emod said:

Hi, I am new to Unraid and after watching every tutorial, I still cannot understand how much storage I need for each of the drives. I'd assume the answer is simple.

I have Synology NAS with 2 HDD (both 4TB each) + 1 SSD (0.5 TB for Cache)

 

Given than all of my data will amount to a total of 6TB (in next 5 yrs), what should be the minimal size of:

Parity HDD?

HDD 1?

HDD 2?

I haven’t ever used this calculator but in your situation I believe you would just need 3- 3 TB drives. Parity drive just needs to be as big as your largest drive on the array. 

Link to comment
46 minutes ago, SpencerJ said:

I haven’t ever used this calculator but in your situation I believe you would just need 3- 3 TB drives. Parity drive just needs to be as big as your largest drive on the array. 

Thanks for quick response.

 

I'm trying to understand this (and I still do not), to know which HDD to purchase and the price is LITERALLY either $100 for ONE additional HDD (parity) of 3TB or $450 for THREE brand new HDD with each 6TB.

 

Help me understand. 

 

In RAID 1 it's pretty self-explanatory:

HDD 1 with 6TB

HDD 2 with 6TB

If all of my data is 6TB and I want it mirrored, I need two drives to have minimum size of 6TB EACH. Easy.

 

In UNRAID, and with my total data of 6TB, how is it possible to have:

1 Parity HDD = 3TB

1 HDD (the data drive)= 3TB

2 HDD (the data drive)= 3TB

to ensure that ALL of my 6GB data is mirrored?

 

I would assume that 6TB+6TB = 12TB (for mirrroring), so HHD1 and 2 would need to have 6TB EACH, and parity would need to have 6TB.

 

Am I misunderstanding something?

 

This video is informative but doesn't help me (personally) calculate the size: 

 

Edited by emod
Link to comment
1 hour ago, emod said:

I’m n UNRAID, and with my total data of 6TB, how is it possible to have:

1 Parity HDD = 3TB

1 HDD (the data drive)= 3TB

2 HDD (the data drive)= 3TB

to ensure that ALL of my 6GB data is mirrored?

 

I would assume that 6TB+6TB = 12TB (for mirrroring), so HHD1 and 2 would need to have 6TB EACH, and parity would need to have 6TB.

 

Am I misunderstanding something?

 

In Unraid, data isn’t striped so if you had a 3 TB parity drive and 2 3TB data drives, you would be protected from one HD failure and could reconstruct from the parity drive.  If somehow you had simultaneous double hard drive failure then you would be in trouble. 

 

If you want all of your data mirrored, you would need dual parity meaning you would need 4 total 3TB drives. 2 parity/2 normal hard drives. Or- have a secondary backup solution in lieu of dual parity.

 

This is a pretty good video describing the parity drive and how it works:

 

 

 

 

Link to comment

Unraid is not RAID. There is no mirroring in the parity array. Each parity disk must be at least as large as the largest single data disk. You can have one or two parity, but neither contains any of your data. Parity PLUS ALL other disks allows the data for a missing disk to be calculated. 

 

This is not really any different than the meaning of parity in other uses. Parity is simply an extra bit that allows a missing bit to be calculated from all the other bits.  So, a single parity disk will allow a single missing disk to be calculated no matter how many data disks there are. An additional parity disk allows two missing disks. 

 

RAID1 is the mirroring you are thinking of. That is one of the options for the cache pool. 

Link to comment

Ah! Now it makes sense. Thanks!

 

Here is the rule summarized. There are three conditions when buying HDD for UNRAID.

 

1.  Determine the total size of all of your files. Let's say this is 6TB.

2. Purchase (or reuse) data HDDs which cumulatively(!) have a total storage of a minimum(!) 6TB. This could be HDDs: 1+2+3TB, 2+4TB, 3+3TB.

3. Purchase ONE parity HDD, whose size must(!) be equal to the largest data HDD. Given examples above (in order of appearance) this could be: 3TB, 4TB, 3TB.

 

UNRAID does NOT mirror the data, meaning it does not create a duplicate of all of your files. At any given time, there is only ONE version of a file across ALL data HDDs.

UNRAID simply enables you to purchase less HDDs, and still be able to recover ONE failed drive - this is done using ONE parity drive.

Parity drive does NOT store the actual file, meaning parity drive will not have a PDF or Word document on it - the parity drive stores only a bit calculation from a summary of all data HDDs. Given above examples, the bits would be summarized across 3, 2 and 2 HDDs.

 

There is an option to have TWO parity drives, but I'll leave that discussion for experts.

 

In my case, I have a small home NAS, with 3HDD slots (2.5 or 3.5), and 2 SSD slots (M.2 factor) on Motherboard. So my configuration will be 1 parity HDD (6TB, which I will need to purchase), and two HDD (each 4TB, which I already have). I will have a total of 8TB capacity for all my files. Given that all of my files have cumulative 4TB size, I will have 4TB of additional storage free, which should last me for few years. So, instead of purchasing several new drives worth cumulatively anywhere between $750 and $1,200, I will only need to purchase ONE drive of $150.

 

I decided to purchase parity drive of 6TB, which will enable me to upgrade my future data needs to 12TB (e.g. 4+8TB of data HDDs) if I ever went that far with my data.

 

I buy only HGST HDDs, which are more expensive but have the lowest HDD failure rate (according to Backblaze). Every single Seagate and WD HDD I bought always failed within 1-2 yrs (the former being by far the worst). Not one HGST drive I bought ever failed, and I have one that has been running for 8 years now.

Edited by emod
  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • 9 months later...

We're already into 2020, and this capacity calculator is still very useful to this day, almost 11 years later. Cheers to @Robbie Ferguson for creating such a useful and long-lasting tool!

 

While I'm not using UnRAID yet, I will be building an UnRAID box very soon to replace my current WD MyCloud NAS. I was looking for a way to determine how much storage capacity I'd have once building my UnRAID box, and came across this calculator. I'm very glad that I found it, as it even includes power draw estimates on top of the capacity calulator function. Now I know how much storage capacity I'll have available once my UnRAID box is built, and it's all thanks to Robbie Furguson. Cheers again!

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, cinereus said:

Really? It doesn't seem to work for odd sized drives. e.g. 14 GB 

 

Actually, it's fine.  It's expecting you to enter in drive sizes in GB.  And if you have a 14GB hard drive I'd be really surprised.  (IE: You should be entering in 14000)

 

Secondly, it is confusing the issue between GiB and GB since it's referring to manufacturer capacity and actual storage space using the same units when they aren't (manufacturer is GB and "actual" is GiB)   Both units are valid, but you can't refer to "actual storage space" in terms of GB since the implication is that this is what Windows reports.  Windows has it wrong by consistently using the wrong units.

 

Link to comment
51 minutes ago, Squid said:

Actually, it's fine.  It's expecting you to enter in drive sizes in GB.  And if you have a 14GB hard drive I'd be really surprised.  (IE: You should be entering in 14000)

 

Secondly, it is confusing the issue between GiB and GB since it's referring to manufacturer capacity and actual storage space using the same units when they aren't (manufacturer is GB and "actual" is GiB)   Both units are valid, but you can't refer to "actual storage space" in terms of GB since the implication is that this is what Windows reports.  Windows has it wrong by consistently using the wrong units.

 

I know. I'm entering for a 14 GB hard drive, not a 14 TB one.

 

It's also not a GB vs GiB issue as you can simply test by using other amounts.

 

Again, it gives incorrect figures for examples using 14 GB and other numbers I didn't note down. If it can't get 14 GB right I'm worried about it getting numbers in TB wrong too.

Link to comment

image.png.905ea3d5f00657e8c44b94148f3074e2.png

 

But the whole thing is a joke anyways.  The capacity is always the total capacity of your data drives.  unRaid always uses the full capacity of the data drives, unlike a RAID solution where mismatched drives will result in less capacity than the total.  (Not to mention that the calculator doesn't take into consideration if you're running dual parity drives, or a cache pool)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
1 hour ago, Squid said:

unRaid always uses the full capacity of the data drives

 

That is unless you used any but the largest drive as parity drive isn't it? (I don't know if you can do any differently and I don't see the point tough).

Edited by CiaoCiao
Link to comment

LOL, that I'm getting notifications that my thread from 2009 is getting bumped makes me smile.

 

Glad some of you are still finding it useful. Yes, it could use an update. It's 11 years+ old  :)  But seems it's still working for folks, so that's cool.

 

Just thought I'd say hi and thanks for continuing to use the tool  :)

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
  • 1 year later...
  • 11 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.