Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 (edited) 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, 2018 by Kich902 Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 5 hours ago, Kich902 said: Is this advisable? Should work, but unknown whether it will meet your expectations. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
whipdancer Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 (edited) 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, 2018 by whipdancer Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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 Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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 Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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 Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 (edited) 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, 2018 by Kich902 Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 Just now, jonathanm said: 3 spindles increases the risk of failure. Yes, unless the OP plans to use two of the drives as parity. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 6 minutes ago, johnnie.black said: Yes, unless the OP plans to use two of the drives as parity. True. Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 8 minutes ago, jonathanm said: What is your logic there? 3 spindles increases the risk of failure. So i just stick to 2? Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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? Quote Link to comment
Solution JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Solution Share Posted October 17, 2018 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. Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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👍 Quote Link to comment
Kich902 Posted October 17, 2018 Author Share Posted October 17, 2018 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? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 Yes, as long as you're not going to use the cache for much else, like unpacking large rars, etc. Quote Link to comment
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