February 1, 20179 yr I tried to search for a topic on this, but my google-fu is weak. What are the thoughts on going beyond the manufacturer-recommended 8 drive configurations in unRAID systems? Looking at various people's builds, a lot of folks are well beyond that threshold. My thoughts is that the vibration issues are different in an unRAID system since you generally only have one drive seeking on a read, and possibly only one drive spinning at all, depending on how you've configured your spin-down settings. However, all drives need to be spun up for writes, and that's where an error is most likely to show up. Thoughts?
February 2, 20179 yr People were building 20 drive servers before the Red drives even existed. Invest in a good case and components.
February 3, 20179 yr Using 11 Red's and no problems with it Spec says max. 8 but this is only for smale Cages.
February 3, 20179 yr ... all drives need to be spun up for writes ... Not unless you have turned on Turbo (reconstruct) write. The normal write setting only spins the drive to be written and the parity drive. By reading the data to be overwritten and comparing it to the data to be written it is possible to determine whether the parity will change without actually needing to read the other disks. See the Turbo Write thread.
February 8, 20179 yr Beats me. I have 10 + 1 SSD in my machine and if need be I'll be hitting 12 + SSD some day then start swapping out drives to make room for more data. Like pointed out by trurl only two drives are typically spun up for writing, but all drives for parity checks. My CoolerMaster Cages had rubber isolaters between each drive and now my drives sit in ICY Docks with no rubber isolaters. I haven't noticed any problems as of yet.
February 10, 20179 yr I used to run 12x WD Greens in one box. No problems, other than making the whole house hum.
February 10, 20179 yr I have 14 Reds in one of my servers and have never had an issue. A lot of folks have 24+ of these drives in Norco or SuperMicro rack-mount cases, and they're all working fine. The only time all drives are spun up in most cases is during parity checks or drive rebuilds (although if you have turbo-write enabled they'll also all spin up for writes). But even then most folks have a spin-down timer so the drives aren't spinning 24/7. I wouldn't worry about the recommended 8-drive limit => clearly there is SOME basis for it -- there IS a magnifying effect of vibrational issues if you have a lot of drives -- but it may also just be designed to encourage the use of Enterprise class drives with larger systems. As long as you have a good case with reasonable drive mounting that helps absorb some of the drive vibrations I don't think there's any reason to be concerned about the total drive count. Backblaze fills 60-drive cages with these drives
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.