Hey I'm looking for a 2.5 hard drive to use inside unraid as a backup. My idea is to buy a Seagate 2.5 external portable drive. And suck the disk to use it inside. Do you recommend that I do this, or better another type of more reliable disk?

Edited November 15, 20205 yr by Wakana

Why put it inside? A backup is better stored separately.

 

What exactly is your backup plan?

I have limited size in my server case and I want to use a 5.25 bay with an adapter to convert to 3.5 or 2.5 with hot plug. A 2.5 disk is more versatile, I can take it out quickly and use it in an external box.

 

My idea is to use unraid with a pool of zfs with 4 ironwolf 2tb disks, but I can't have them in the array. So I want to connect the 2.5 disk and ssd to cache, to start the array. Use the 2.5 disk as snapshots of the zfs pool.

 

I don't know if I can snapshot out of the zfs pool, using the 2.5 disk in the unraid array.

 

I have two 3.5 ironwolf and ironwolf pro 4tb hdds available. You could use them for backup and not buy the 2.5 disk.

 

What dou you recommend? I am somewhat new to this world and it seems that I am getting very complicated, but I would like to have zfs implemented on my server, for all the advantages it has. Sorry if I haven't managed to explain myself well, but I'm not very good with English.

I have a number of 4TB 2.5" Seagate Expansion drives I shucked as they would fit in a Dell T20 slim optical / dual 2.5" expansion bay.

 

Worth noting that they are 15mm thick so don't fit in most 2.5" docks and they are also SMR which can be an issue depending on your write pattern. I use them for media storage in my backup server and they have been fine. 2TB is probably the largest you can get in a standard thicknes and that is likely to be SMR as well. 

 

WD are externals are native USB so no option to shuck. 

It has been a couple of years since I bought them, but you can check which drive is enclosed before you crack the case.