$200 Budget New drives


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I currently have an unRAID basic build with

 SuperMicro x8dtl-3f

Intel x5650 x2

48 DDR3 1333 ECC FB RAM

500GB x5 Drives of various types

256GB SSD cache

I have these drives thrown in here and most are throwing SMART errors from old age and some are starting to fail SMART with bad sectors.

I have disconnected all drives and have stopped using things just to keep things from getting worse...

I've considered getting different drives from Amazon/Newegg and am looking at WD Red drives.

Benefits/Drawbacks between different plans.... I won't be able to spend money for a while as I've got kid #3 with an ETA of December so I'm looking at long term reliability and upgrade-ability. I'm probably going to pull all drives but those that are listing as healthy once I move their data to the new drive(s)

Different things I've considered

 

Option 1

WD Red 4TB x2 $100x2 = Full Budget

 

Option 2

WD Red 2TB x2 with Unraid Pro Upgrade

($63x2) + $79 =$205 Could Probably talk the wife into $5 over the budget... maybe

 

Option 3

WD Red 2TB x2 with Unraid Plus

($63x2) + $39 = $165 Under budget by $35 maybe get another 240GB SSD for Cache or to dedicate to Games Share only?

 

Option 4

WD Red 3TB x2 with Unraid Plus

($78x2) + $39 = $195 That's $5 under budget = Happy wife!

 

Option 5

WD Red 1TB x3 with Unraid Plus

($55x3) + $39 = $204 I know I'd kinda screw myself on long term upgrades but I'm thinking more drives would give me a bit less downtime If a drive died vs if I only had parity and 1 in array and I lost one?

 

Option 6

Your Ideas here?

 

 

Oh and the usage is kind of a general purpose system. I use it as a NAS, Plex Media Server, VM machines, Docker, all the good stuff lol.

Thanks in advance, I've also considered getting Amazon Recertified drives with warranties but I'm nervous about trusting them has anyone had any experience with them? I've also got the option of going to MicroCenter this upcoming weekend and I've heard they'll sometimes pricematch other places. I mention this because I've heard their warranties are amazing!

 

Edit* I forgot to mention How badly am I going to be limited by the older HBA of this motherboard?

Oh crap I just realized the SAS1068E is not on the "not recommended" list b/c of the lack of support for drives Over 2.2TB

Would I have the same issues with the SATA ports onboard?

This is my exact motherboard, Yes I know it's ancient tech but it's mine lol

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTL-3F.cfm

 

 

Edited by Butrdtost
Forgot Something
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9 minutes ago, Harro said:

Newegg has a special on these for 79.99 with promo code EMCUTTU38.

4Tb External drives

 

Should be easy enough to shuck the drives out of the enclosure.

I'm tempted I must admit... however I'd be concerned about long term reliability (since they're external drives vs NAS drives) and voiding warranty if they did crap out since I pulled them from the enclosure. Idk if my original issue is because I was using "regular" drives or just b/c I had a hodgepodge of random old hardware thrown into my unRAID server >.<

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I can tell you from experience, IMO there is nothing wrong with shucking external drives. I have over 25 drives between four unRAID servers that were shucked in the past three years, all running just fine, no issues. Oh and 98% of them are Seagate. I am in Canada and once we crack open a drive we void the warranty, although I thought if you are in the US you can still return a shucked drive for warranty support?

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My server at the moment is running on all shucked drives. 15 data drives and 2 parity drives. These are all 8TB and 10TB drives. No problems with them. My thought is even if warranty is voided the cost savings is the most beneficial. I bought eight 10TB drives at 150 @ piece  while the standard drives are close to 300.

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16 hours ago, Butrdtost said:

Would I have the same issues with the SATA ports onboard?

This would be a key factor, may be you need count a 2 port SATA controller i.e. Asmedia 1061/1062 in your budget and only 2 disk allow.

 

In fact, you don't need upgrade the license, just copy one disk at a time, then you could consider a better option which go to recommend LSI HBA with 2 larger disks, one data and one parity.

Edited by Benson
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So... Me being the cheap... person... I am, I found someone on the /r/DataHoarder/ Subreddilt that was looking to get rid of a bunch of 500GB hard drives... They had 62 2.5" drives and 12 3.5" drives SO... I might of bought 20 drives for $120... I'm doing half now and half after I check the drives on arrival. I know there's no warranty on them but I'm feeling like gambling. Plus the 2.5" drives are WD Black drives. The only reason I ever swapped my 320GB WD Black drives was b/c they were replaced with 500GB ones... Wish me luck! *crosses fingers this wasn't a totally dumb idea*

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3 hours ago, Butrdtost said:

I'm feeling like gambling. Plus the 2.5" drives are WD Black drives. The only reason I ever swapped my 320GB WD Black drives was b/c they were replaced with 500GB ones... Wish me luck! *crosses fingers this wasn't a totally dumb idea*

So you have decided to ignore this advice

On 10/1/2019 at 6:57 AM, trurl said:

I always recommend fewer larger drives instead of more smaller drives. Each additional drive requires more ports, more power and at some point, more license. And more importantly, each additional drive is an additional point of failure. 

It isn't simply a matter of whether or not ALL of the drives are good, though that is extremely important. Unraid must be able to reliably read every bit of parity PLUS every bit of ALL other disks in order to reliably rebuild a missing or failed disk.

 

It is also important that all connections to all disks are also good all the time. Bad connections are the main problem that causes disks to be disabled so they have to be rebuilt.

 

Make very sure you test every one of these disks before trusting them in your array. Always be very careful and double-check all connections.

 

Be sure to setup Notifications to alert you immediately by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected. Don't let one problem go until you have multiple problems and data loss.

 

And if you are going to have a lot of disks make sure you use 2 parity disks.

 

 

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23 hours ago, trurl said:

So you have decided to ignore this advice

It isn't simply a matter of whether or not ALL of the drives are good, though that is extremely important. Unraid must be able to reliably read every bit of parity PLUS every bit of ALL other disks in order to reliably rebuild a missing or failed disk.

 

It is also important that all connections to all disks are also good all the time. Bad connections are the main problem that causes disks to be disabled so they have to be rebuilt.

 

Make very sure you test every one of these disks before trusting them in your array. Always be very careful and double-check all connections.

 

Be sure to setup Notifications to alert you immediately by email or other agent as soon as a problem is detected. Don't let one problem go until you have multiple problems and data loss.

 

And if you are going to have a lot of disks make sure you use 2 parity disks.

 

 

Well not all the drives will be running at once but >.< I hate having a stupid budget. I think I may split it across multiple machines in different locations on different plugins with separate surge-supressors... may even ask my mom if I can put up a small machine and sync it at her house so should I ever have a fire it's "safe" No way am I going to throw all the drives in one machine. This way I have several backup drives should I lose one until I have more than a tiny $200 budget. Also It was kind of an ADHD impulse buy... Kinda like the 10TB I managed to get new for cheap with it... still trying to explain that one to the wife X-D

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-10-LSI-SAS3081E-R-8-port-Internal-SATA-SAS-3Gb-s-RAID-Controller-Card/172523978778?hash=item282b3b001a:g:em4AAOSwA2hdm4iY:sc:USPSPriority!66619!US!-1

Would these be worth getting and flashing to IT mode? If not can anyone recommend cheap HBA's I know these don't support 6Gb/s but my HDD's only hit around 130MB/s anyways. Also I've migrated unRAID to a different board an ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 my buddy gave me. It's got 4 SATA 2 ports and 4 SATA 3 ports onboard. I've stuck in my old 3570k and it seems to be chugging along pretty happily so far. I don't think I'm going to be doing the VM's like I did before. I may just use a baremetal hypervisor and store my VM's on unRAID and stream across the network. But anyways. I'm looking for a solid HBA maybe with a SAS expander I can get in the margins of cheap and good. With an ideal spending around $60-80.

Also I'm looking at getting a 2.5" Hotswap bay.

https://www.newegg.com/icy-dock-mb326sp-b-6-x-2-5-sata-6gbps-sas-hdd-ssd-mobile-rack-cage-in-1-x-5-25-bay/p/N82E16817198068?Item=9SIAFJ8A1A7397

Is what I'm looking at but I also found this

https://www.newegg.com/athena-power-bp-15287sac-other/p/N82E16816119044?Description=athena power 2.5 8 sata&cm_re=athena_power_2.5_8_sata-_-16-119-044-_-Product

I've heard great things about Icy Dock but I've never heard of Athena Power before. I'm thinking of getting an HBA with the Athena Dock but not ever hearing of a company makes me wary >.>

Anyways thanks for putting up with me and helping me despite my being an askhole >.<

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54 minutes ago, Butrdtost said:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-10-LSI-SAS3081E-R-8-port-Internal-SATA-SAS-3Gb-s-RAID-Controller-Card/172523978778?hash=item282b3b001a:g:em4AAOSwA2hdm4iY:sc:USPSPriority!66619!US!-1

Would these be worth getting and flashing to IT mode? If not can anyone recommend cheap HBA's I know these don't support 6Gb/s but my HDD's only hit around 130MB/s anyways. Also I've migrated unRAID to a different board an ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 my buddy gave me. It's got 4 SATA 2 ports and 4 SATA 3 ports onboard. I've stuck in my old 3570k and it seems to be chugging along pretty happily so far. I don't think I'm going to be doing the VM's like I did before. I may just use a baremetal hypervisor and store my VM's on unRAID and stream across the network. But anyways. I'm looking for a solid HBA maybe with a SAS expander I can get in the margins of cheap and good. With an ideal spending around $60-80.

Also I'm looking at getting a 2.5" Hotswap bay.

https://www.newegg.com/icy-dock-mb326sp-b-6-x-2-5-sata-6gbps-sas-hdd-ssd-mobile-rack-cage-in-1-x-5-25-bay/p/N82E16817198068?Item=9SIAFJ8A1A7397

Is what I'm looking at but I also found this

https://www.newegg.com/athena-power-bp-15287sac-other/p/N82E16816119044?Description=athena power 2.5 8 sata&cm_re=athena_power_2.5_8_sata-_-16-119-044-_-Product

I've heard great things about Icy Dock but I've never heard of Athena Power before. I'm thinking of getting an HBA with the Athena Dock but not ever hearing of a company makes me wary >.>

Anyways thanks for putting up with me and helping me despite my being an askhole >.<

Don't buy any 3081E HBA, same as 1068E, it support HDD not more then 2TB. ( Also not confirm Unraid support and IT mode or not )

 

If you buy mini-SAS connector HBA, then best you could buy mini-SAS cage too, below cage now seems buy 2 free 1. ( But you need two 8-port HBA for 16 bays )

http://amazon.com/dp/B07H4NMT63

 

BTW, I don't think running lot of 2.5" HDD was a good idea.

Edited by Benson
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