There are currently good deals on the 2TB Hitachi drives at both Frys and Tiger Direct.  It looks like I can get them for about $30 less than other brands and I intend to start with a four 2TB drives so I could save over $100 by buying 4 Hitachi drives now.  I know that there is a better chance of having multiple drives fail at once due to a bad batch of drives when you buy the same drives at the same time.  I also know that I am the only one who can determine how much losing my data means to me if I were to have 2 drives die at once.  I am just wondering how many of you out there have started this way?

 

Also, I am thinking that I could spread out my risk a little more by buying 1 drive each from Frys and Tiger Direct now and another one from each vendor in a couple of weeks close to when the sale ends (plus by waiting a couple of weeks, maybe another brand would go on sale).  Any opinions on this strategy?

 

thanks,

Murray

I have 3 2TB drives in my array (2 Data and 1 Parity). The approach I took was to buy them from different vendors staggered over 2 months time. I haven't checked that closely to see if they were from different batches or not, but I at least attempted to minimize the risk of multi-drive failures.

 

The advice I would give is to start off using the minimum number of drives you need today. If you are using 1.5 TB or less of data (~75% of the max drive size), then start off with only 2 2TB drives. Baring some super-sale today, the drives will get cheaper over time. As you get closer to filling the drive, then add in the next drive.

If possible, buy retail kits from B&M stores - better packaging, less risk of damage in shipment, easier to return if defective.

When I first built my unRAID server, I had 5 data disks to work with, ranging from 250 GB to 640 GB.  Of those, only three still reside in my server, the rest have been upgraded and replaced.

 

I've only ever bought one disk at a time for myself.  However, sometimes disks go on sale in 2-packs or with volume discounts - in these instances I convince one of my friends to split the cost (and savings) with me and we each get a new disk.