I have 4 hard drives that I am putting in a Lenovo EMC PX4-400D NAS appliance. What is the best way to configure them? My guess:

 

5.5tb parity

5.5tb data

4.5tb data

4.5tb spare

128gb SSD as cache

 

Is there another more optimum configuration?

 

Thank you.

Hi,

 

I am not an expert but this looks good to me, assuming all drives are of the same RPM/cache specifications (I believe it is best to assign "faster"/more robust hard drives to parity).

 

And also maybe you can consider using your 2 5.5TB drives to have dual parity. That would of course reduce your usable array size but in your current configuration, that spare 4.5TB drive would only be useful if you need to replace your other 4.5TB anyway.

 

Edit: I realise that you may intend to use one of the enclosure's trays for the 2.5" SSD cache drive, so the above may be irrelevant. 

 

Best

OP

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by Opawesome

I think what you've stated is probably best-practice, although I wonder what you're trying to achieve with the 'spare' drive? Is that just in case one fails you've got one ready to go in?

The spare drive is what I have left over from other previous configurations which lately was OMV. Where I didn't use a SSD cache drive and now with this NAS appliance with 4 drive bays I have to make way for the cache and therefore a spare hard drive.

Ah got you. I thought you were saying that you had a spare all connected up but not assigned to the array.