October 17, 20187 yr Hi Guys, Planning on using the Phanteks P400s case and as it only has 2 bays for SSDs and 2 for HDDs i intend on having x2 3.5" 2Tb HDD with a 2.5" 2Tb HDD as the parity drive in the array. Is this advisable? The cache drives will be x2 M.2 500Gb placed on the motherboard that I'll be using. Edited October 17, 20187 yr by Kich902
October 17, 20187 yr 5 hours ago, Kich902 said: Is this advisable? Should work, but unknown whether it will meet your expectations.
October 17, 20187 yr 5 hours ago, Kich902 said: Is this advisable? It will work but avoid SMR disks, which most 2.5" 2TB are, AFAIK only the Toshiba is PMR, both current Seagate and WD options are SMR.
October 17, 20187 yr I run 2x 2.5in 2TB drives with no issues so far. 36 minutes ago, johnnie.black said: It will work but avoid SMR disks, which most 2.5" 2TB are, AFAIK only the Toshiba is PMR, both current Seagate and WD options are SMR. Why do you advise avoiding SMR disks? That contradicts the information on the Seagate drives. Edited October 17, 20187 yr by whipdancer
October 17, 20187 yr Author 1 hour ago, jonathanm said: Should work, but unknown whether it will meet your expectations. My issue is the mix match of 2.5" and 3.5" drives and setting the 2.5" as the parity drive
October 17, 20187 yr Author 23 minutes ago, whipdancer said: I run 2x 2.5in 2TB drives with no issues so far. Why do you advise avoiding SMR disks? That contradicts the information on the Seagate drives. wondering the same
October 17, 20187 yr 1 hour ago, whipdancer said: Why do you advise avoiding SMR disks? SMR will never be faster than PMR, and for some uses, mostly if you do a lot of random writes it might be slower, so given the choice and since they cost the same avoid, if you already own an SMR drive than go ahead and use it.
October 17, 20187 yr 45 minutes ago, Kich902 said: My issue is the mix match of 2.5" and 3.5" drives and setting the 2.5" as the parity drive That by itself is meaningless, depending on the 3.5" drives you'll be using they might even be slower than a newer 2.5" drive.
October 17, 20187 yr Author 6 minutes ago, johnnie.black said: That by itself is meaningless, depending on the 3.5" drives you'll be using they might even be slower than a newer 2.5" drive. the 3.5" drives will be Seagate Baracuda https://amzn.to/2p0pRfn and the 2.5" drive will be (by your prior advice) a toshiba https://amzn.to/2yK2wSr
October 17, 20187 yr Why are you using such low capacity drives? You would get much better performance and double the capacity with a pair of good 8TB 3.5" than you will with the combination you currently proposed.
October 17, 20187 yr Author 3 minutes ago, jonathanm said: Why are you using such low capacity drives? You would get much better performance and double the capacity with a pair of good 8TB 3.5" than you will with the combination you currently proposed. Financial constraints my friend; working with what i can afford:) Plus the Rig will be only for VMs so i don't need such large drives as will not be installing dockers nor doing downloads on it, got a NAS for that. But just out of curiosity which would you suggest? Edited October 17, 20187 yr by Kich902
October 17, 20187 yr 13 minutes ago, Kich902 said: the 3.5" drives will be Seagate Baracuda https://amzn.to/2p0pRfn and the 2.5" drive will be (by your prior advice) a toshiba https://amzn.to/2yK2wSr Mixing drives won't be a problem, but the array will be a little slower (mostly noticeable during parity checks and disk rebuilds) than if if you used all 3.5" new drives like the ones you linked, e.g. parity check will start at around 140MB/s instead of 200MB/s.
October 17, 20187 yr Author 1 minute ago, johnnie.black said: Mixing drives won't be a problem, but the array will be a little slower (mostly noticeable during parity checks and disk rebuilds) than if if you used all 3.5" new drives like the ones you linked, e.g. parity check will start at around 140MB/s instead of 200MB/s. Ok. so which would you suggest since in the case will only have 2 bays or 3.5" drives and want to have 3 drives in the array-1 parity and 2 for the data. Initially planned on just 2 but wanted a third to increase the data safety incase the 1 failed.
October 17, 20187 yr 3 minutes ago, Kich902 said: Financial constraints my friend; working with what i can afford:) But just out of curiosity which would you suggest? If you can wait until the holiday sales, you should be able to pick up easily shuckable 8TB easystore at best buy for around 130 each, I got 3 last year for $119 each plus tax. There are threads on this forum discussing it.
October 17, 20187 yr 2 minutes ago, Kich902 said: Initially planned on just 2 but wanted a third to increase the data safety incase the 1 failed. What is your logic there? 3 spindles increases the risk of failure.
October 17, 20187 yr Just now, jonathanm said: 3 spindles increases the risk of failure. Yes, unless the OP plans to use two of the drives as parity.
October 17, 20187 yr 6 minutes ago, johnnie.black said: Yes, unless the OP plans to use two of the drives as parity. True.
October 17, 20187 yr Author 8 minutes ago, jonathanm said: What is your logic there? 3 spindles increases the risk of failure. So i just stick to 2?
October 17, 20187 yr Author 10 minutes ago, jonathanm said: If you can wait until the holiday sales, you should be able to pick up easily shuckable 8TB easystore at best buy for around 130 each, I got 3 last year for $119 each plus tax. There are threads on this forum discussing it. If only that were possible. Planning on the build for next year whenever it'l be possible. Hoping i'l be around mid but will depend on the availability of funds.
October 17, 20187 yr So i just stick to 2? If the capacity is enough yes, also Unraid will perform better since it will act like a 2 drive mirror, and you can use just the faster 3.5" drives.
October 17, 20187 yr Author 1 minute ago, johnnie.black said: If the space is enough yes, also Unraid will perform better since it will act like a 2 drive mirror, and you can use just the faster 3.5" drives. Alright, got you. So if i can afford 2 larger drives instead then that would suffice, yes?
October 17, 20187 yr Yep, you should be able to buy at least 2 x 3TB drives or maybe even 2 x 4TB drives for what you were going to spend on the other 3.
October 17, 20187 yr Author 3 minutes ago, johnnie.black said: Yep, you should be able to buy at least 2 x 3TB drives or maybe even 2 x 4TB drives for what you were going to spend on the other 3. I've even decided to switch to 2x 3Tb. Thanks👍
October 17, 20187 yr Author A quick one: are x2 500Gb M.2 SSD drives enough for the cache pool that will have 2 VMs each at around 200Gb in size?
October 17, 20187 yr Yes, as long as you're not going to use the cache for much else, like unpacking large rars, etc.
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