I am planning out my fresh install of unraid to replace a standalone media server. The unraid server will be used for plex, time machines backups, archive storage, and will run a win 10 VM for fun. I am trying to figure out which hard drives to use.

 

I plan to go with WD Red for the primary storage drives. This machine runs 24/7 and I like the extra year warranty. Can I save some money and go with WD Blue for the parity or just stick with the same WD Red for both parity and storage? Looking for any and all input.

Hello and welcome.

 

You can use Red or Blue drives.  But it's important to note that the parity drive isn't "less important" than the data drives.  They're all equally important.  If you loose a drive, it will take all of the other drives (including parity) to reconstruct the drive you lost.  In fact, there are certain situations where you want parity to be faster than your data drives - for instance if you have multiple processes writing data to the array at the same time.

 

Personally I use WD Reds.  They've performed well for me and I like the extra year of warranty.  I recommend buying 8TB drives right now, they're the best performance and price per TB.  Many people are buying WD or Seagate USB enclosures and shucking the drive - there are some great deals if you do it that way, though you have to deal with the potential warranty issues.

Thanks for the input! I was looking at getting 6TB drives because they have a good deal today at $189.99. I am currently running 3x3TB Blue Drives. My plan is to get 2x6TB Red, 1 for Parity and 1 for data. Then slowly replace the blues as needed; I am currently only using 6TB. I have a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB right now which is my main system drive. Since unRAID runs off a thumb drive, I was going to use the Evo SSD as my Cache drive.

 

I have never thought about shucking the drive from drive enclosures, thats an interesting approach. I don't want any warranty issues so I will probably avoid that.

I use the Seagate archive drives in two of my four unRAID servers for parity and they have performed well. I don't think it really matters, you can use whatever you like and it really comes down to personal preference and budget IMO.

38 minutes ago, LFTech said:

Thanks for the input! I was looking at getting 6TB drives because they have a good deal today at $189.99. I am currently running 3x3TB Blue Drives. My plan is to get 2x6TB Red, 1 for Parity and 1 for data. Then slowly replace the blues as needed; I am currently only using 6TB. I have a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB right now which is my main system drive. Since unRAID runs off a thumb drive, I was going to use the Evo SSD as my Cache drive.

 

I have never thought about shucking the drive from drive enclosures, thats an interesting approach. I don't want any warranty issues so I will probably avoid that.

 

If you live in the US, the WD EasyStore 8T drives were (maybe still are) $160 at Best Buy. The nice thing about this enclosure is how easy it is to put back together and not be able to detect it was ever opened. So warranty risk is low. The enclosures contain WD Reds, which have been rock solid for me so far.

I am so jealous of these drives available in the US! The Seagate equivalents we get up here are really tough to open in general and it's just impossible to open them without destroying the enclosure. I saw them on sale for Black Friday for $129 USD

Edited November 27, 20178 yr by ashman70

Looks like they may be cheaper at $149.99: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401

 

I am definitely a tinkerer and if it saves me a ton of money, sounds like its worth the effort. It only comes with a 2 year warranty versus the 3 year on normal Red drives. Not sure the extra year is worth the extra cost. I can even do the best buy 2 year plan for $20 and get brand new drive from best buy versus refurbed RMA from WD.

Buy with Amex or Visa and get extra warranty.

1 hour ago, ashman70 said:

I am so jealous of these drives available in the US! The Seagate equivalents we get up here are really tough to open in general and it's just impossible to open them without destroying the enclosure. I saw them on sale for Black Friday for $129 USD

 

The $129 drive version (model number ends with NEBB) contain white label drives, not WD REDS. But the $149 sounds tempting. I also got a $10 gift card from BB i need to use. So $139. Believe I may have to grab another one today.

I bought one up here in Canada that contained a white label drive, died on my in less then a month, oh well.

I am going to pick a couple up today and open them up. I will let report back to confirm if they are WD Red drive inside.

Just got back from Best Buy; they had 46 of these guys in stock at my store just not on the shelf. Had to go to customer service to get them. Model is WDBCKA0080HBK-NESN. Price online is $149.99. Opened one of them up and it has a WD RED NAS 8TB drive in it; model WD80EFAX. I did break a tab opening the enclosure up but other than that pretty simple. Thanks to @SSD for the huge tip!

Another tip, when they rang it up at the register the Cyber Monday price wasn't showing. They price matched but it may be easier to buy on bestbuy.com and do in-store pickup.