As far as the comment to spin down the drives, what are the thoughts on that?  I know there are arguments that say drives fail at spin-up, so if they stay spinning they last longer, but with todays drives is this really an issue any more?  I keep mine spinning 24/7, but I would like to hear from the more experienced veterans as to what they do and how they handle the spin up spin down.

 

Going back 20+ years, I used to dread the first day back at work after the Christmas break.  Drives would be left spinning 24/7 for the whole year but everything would be shut off at Christmas.  What would happen was that the spindle bearings would seize while the drive was off, and it would fail to spin up again.  Sometimes I could coax the drive to spin, whereupon we could recover the data and replace the drive.  However, more often than not, the spindle would remain stubbornly frozen.

 

I cannot say whether these drives would have failed earlier, had they been spun up and down regularly, or whether the regular exercise would keep them running for longer.  I suspect the latter.  What I do know is that spinning them down regularly would have spread the failures over time and not given me a headache every new year.

 

Thinking about it, in an unRAID environment, I would wish to spread the failures - any two drives failing simultaneously will lead to significant loss of data.  I have mine set to spin down.

I think I will just order the Corsair 750 PSU and hope that that solves all my issues where things hose up.  I am hoping that is all it is.  This will also give me room for growth and plenty of it really.

Its a wait and see now.  Installed the Corsair 750 last night, so I hope this is all it is causing my troubles...Otherwise, next item on the list would be one of the 8 port SATA cards....UGH!  I hate chasing the unknown.