Can't decide - drives and RAID level?

nutcase · 21 Apr 2014 at 10:06

I currently have 3 WD Red 3TB drives in RAID 5 hosting DVDs and Music for the house. With my Daughter 1 now we are getting lots of kids programmes etc. and I'm running out of room on the drive so want to expand it. The array is also used for folder redirection.

Which leaves me some choices! I think I'm going to stick with 3TB drives as they're a reasonable size at a good price point - but I did look at changing to RE3s but the cost difference is quite a bit. Would the extra rotational speed be worth it? At present it chucks out Blu-ray ok but extra speed is always good? But worth the cost difference?

I also think it's time to change to a different RAID level for a bit more redundancy. I can't decide between RAID 10 or RAID 6. Which would give better read speeds for 6 drives? There are so many raid calculators out there but none really deal specifically with my needs

The server is an HP ML330 G6 with P410 512MB BBWC Server 2012R2

thanks

rpstewart · 21 Apr 2014 at 11:43

If you're accessing the data over a LAN then why the need for more read speed? If you can saturate the LAN, which you should be able to do with a single disk then why go with more.

I'm also not convinced with the need for additional redundancy beyond RAID5 either, you'd be better off using the extra disks for proper backups.

GefGz · 21 Apr 2014 at 11:50

Redundancy in home NAS is often overused to be honest with you, I can't see why you could justify losing a 1/3 or even 1/2 of your storage(depending on what you've got mirrored/striped) just to backup mountains of Dora the explorer

I'd just keep most of them out of RAID and have them organised properly, with one(two,three..etc) of the drives being used for things you NEED to save, then you just have those drives automatically backup your selected folders/or the entire thing.

It's more work to setup but once you get it right it's way better on your wallet, it's what I'd do anyway.

And as far as the speed goes, you will not benefit whatsoever from an increase in speed for what you're using it for, the drives you've got currently probably max out a 1gb LAN connection due to being in RAID5 anyway, since RAID5 is exceptional for reads, just pretty balls for writing.

nutcase · 21 Apr 2014 at 16:04

It's not just Dora the Explorer (think she's a bit young for that anyway

) - there's films, music, all the family photos and videos and all the other stuff life collects in electronic form. The backups are all sorted - I've got a microserver at my Parents' that it incrementals to and every now and then (i.e. when I remember) I bring it back and do a full one. It's more the pain in the bum if I lose the array - I'd rather it just worked and I have to change a drive occasionally.

Speed wise, the file server has two teamed NICs, but it's not just sustained rate it's response time as well - I want it so the users don't realise the files aren't stored locally. Changing from 5 to 6 or 10 should improve things - but not sure which is better?

Thanks