Solved Hard Drive arrays - Best Combo?

[Aririnkitaku]

So, I've been looking into creating an External Storage array (A DAS array), but I have ran into a dilemma involving Redundancy, Capacity, & Cost.

You see, I'm looking to create this setup for £300-400, but preferably as cheap as possible.

I also need it to be redundant, as this is going to have 6-8TB of data on it.

This is where the problem arises, I can get the following setups for the following prices:

(% Redundant calculated by dividing how many drives can fail from the total number of drives, eg: 1/3 = 33%)

2x4TB Drives + 2 Slot enclosure, RAID 0, 0% redundant, 8TB total: £315.66,

3x3TB lower-quality Drives + 4 Slot enclosure (I can't find a 3 Slot one), RAID 5, 33% redundant, 6TB total: £377.97,

4x2TB Drives + 4 Slot enclosure, RAID 5, 25% redundant, 6TB total: £381.90,

Which would be my best bet, considering I'm looking for a cheap solution, whilst retaining a high capacity, & decent redundancy?

Or would a completely different setup be better? Feel free to suggest something else...

 

[kbrady1979]

How much is the enclosure itself? What quality drives are you looking for? Will normal desktop hard drives be sufficient, or are you wanting Enterprise or NAS ready drives?

 

[Aririnkitaku]

How much is the enclosure itself? What quality drives are you looking for? Will normal desktop hard drives be sufficient, or are you wanting Enterprise or NAS ready drives?

Using the cheapest "known brand" enclosures, a 4 Bay enclosure is £126.06, & a 2-Bay enclosure is £48.40, however I have included those in the price.

I'm looking for standard desktop Hard Drives, Seagate or WD, but preferabbly not Toshiba, seeing as 50% of those seem to arrive broken, even though they're cheap...

 

[kbrady1979]

Seagate HDD.15 4TB drives can be found on sale for $150 a couple of times a month in the States. I've purchased 3 OEM models and they've all been 100% reliable so far. I put them through 11.5 hours of read/write tests before I used them and they all passed with no issues. Great drives for storage.

 

[Pauly]

I was just looking at WD Red drives and it seems whichever way you go 3x3 or 4x2 the price is virtually identical
WD 2TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive (WD20EFRX) - dabs.com
WD 3TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive (WD30EFRX) - dabs.com
Seagate 4TB NAS HDD SATA 6GB/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive (ST4000VN000) - dabs.com

I could find anything better for the prices your stating, using NAS type drives prices seem quite a bit higher

 

[madcratebuilder]

To store that amount of 1's and 0's I would Cloud it. 10 years of storage fees well buy how many 4TB hard drives?

 

[Aririnkitaku]

Seagate HDD.15 4TB drives can be found on sale for $150 a couple of times a month in the States. I've purchased 3 OEM models and they've all been 100% reliable so far. I put them through 11.5 hours of read/write tests before I used them and they all passed with no issues. Great drives for storage.

So far, that seems like my best solution, seeing as it'd have Higher capacity, yet cost quite a bit less, however the fact that it relies upon a RAID 0 config seems risky, seeing that if one drive were to fail, I'd loose a large amount of data.

Now, using a more expensive RAID 5 array, I can have one drive fail without any problems, then simply replace it, & nothing would be lost. But they come at an increased cost, with lower capacity.

If I were to buy 2x4TB, I could use a JBoD setup, although I'm not entirely sure on how it works, I think it can survive one drive failing, whilst only loosing the data on that drive, meaning only 50% data loss, lowering the risk & retaining the same capacity. Although I could be wrong about that.

Of course, if I'm simply paranoid about data redundancy, & the array can hold out long enough that a larger array becomes cheaper than it, meaning I can upgrade my array, thus refreshing my drives, meaning a doubled lifespan, which can then be repeated infinitely, then there's no problem...

 

[Aririnkitaku]

To store that amount of 1's and 0's I would Cloud it. 10 years of storage fees well buy how many 4TB hard drives?

I imagine could storage on that scale would be rediculously expensive, & also, I'm looking to store data that will need a Superspeed USB3, ESATA, etc interface, in order to load data quickly, hence why it's a DAS array. I don't know about you, but where I live, my internet is about 300KB/s, which doesn't really compare to the 5Gb/s SSUSB3 speeds...

 

[kbrady1979]

Save up and grab 3-4TB drives and set them up in RAID 5 so you have redundancy and 8TB of storage.

 

[Aririnkitaku]

I was just looking at WD Red drives and it seems whichever way you go 3x3 or 4x2 the price is virtually identical
WD 2TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive (WD20EFRX) - dabs.com
WD 3TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive (WD30EFRX) - dabs.com
Seagate 4TB NAS HDD SATA 6GB/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive (ST4000VN000) - dabs.com

I could find anything better for the prices your stating, using NAS type drives prices seem quite a bit higher

Inded, the price is simmilar, however, if you use a Non-NAS 4TB drive, you can get one from amazon for £133.63, saving £20, & doubling up to £40. Along with the reduced price of a dual slot enclosure, it ends up quite a bit cheaper... but I'd have to deal with RAID 0...

 

[Aririnkitaku]

Save up and grab 3-4TB drives and set them up in RAID 5 so you have redundancy and 8TB of storage.

I'll consider that, although it would add up to £526.95.. which is quite a bit above my budget, so I'd have to wait a while.

Just so you know I'm on my last 182GB out of 3TB here, & I'm not sure how long that'll last...

 

[kbrady1979]

I know how you feel, i was just about to run out of space on my 2TB drives before I got my 4TB drives.......had less than 100GB left

 

[Aririnkitaku]

It seems when it comes to drive cost, 4x2TB is the cheapest, at £255.84, followed by 2x4TB, at £267.26, followed by 3x3TB at £269.85...

The obvious winner, then, should be 4x2TB, seeing as it's redundant & cheap, however, the problem arises when I look for an enclosure, I can find a 2-Bay enclosure for £40-60, whereas I can't find a 4-Bay enclosure for less than £125, which brings 2x4TB into the competition.

Now the question is: Do I save £60 or so, & get a larger, riskier 2x4TB RAID 0 array, or spend more, & get a smaller, but safer 4x2TB RAID 5 array?

 

[Aririnkitaku]

It seems I'll be having an unexpectedly large amount of money this week, so I've decided to get a 9TB 4x3TB RAID 5 array, adding up to quite a bit under £500.

Marking as solved.