Microserver Storage Options

Amraam · 25 Jan 2016 at 13:19

Hi all,

Going to need to order my drives soon. 3TB is probably going to be enough as I'm only really going to use it for drive backups and movies via plex. I'm thinking that perhaps two 3TB drives in RAID 1 would suffice. Or should I look at getting three for RAID 5 (software) or maybe get two 4TB drives again in RAID1?

EssexBoy · 26 Jan 2016 at 06:16

I have a 3TB WD red and am happy with it for the price.Have also heard the toshiba's/hitachi's are also very good.

Amraam · 26 Jan 2016 at 13:38

EssexBoy said:
I have a 3TB WD red and am happy with it for the price.Have also heard the toshiba's/hitachi's are also very good.

Cheers. The WD Reds are what I have my eyes on, as it what the consensus says to go with.

I just can't make my mind up what to do in terms of drives. I'd like to keep the drives to £150-£200 or thereabouts. I can't work out whether to get two drives in RAID 1, or get three or more lower capacity drives and go RAID 5. I'm aware of various drawbacks of RAID 5 however, so I'm completely open to suggestions.

I'll be reading data more than writing, but I will be saving my blu ray collection to MKVs to add to my Plex server. I'll be creating shares and mapping them as network drives so that I can relocate my documents to a network location, but again, I read much more than I write.

I like the sound of getting perhaps 4 2TB drives and going RAID10.

Jamauk · 26 Jan 2016 at 14:57

FWIW: I'm running a Microserver (N40l - I know it's old, but it still works!) with WHS 2011 and DriveBender with 4x WD 6TB Reds. They're well worth the investment. I can transfer files across the network to them at speeds of around 115 Mb/sec, they run at fairly low temperatures - most of the time mine are under 30°C, Very quiet and seem to use less power than the 2TB Seagate drives I took out.

I always see storage similar to the theory of planning how many network sockets to install - Plan for what you need and then double it.

Amraam · 26 Jan 2016 at 15:49

Jamauk said:
FWIW: I'm running a Microserver (N40l - I know it's old, but it still works!) with WHS 2011 and DriveBender with 4x WD 6TB Reds. They're well worth the investment. I can transfer files across the network to them at speeds of around 115 Mb/sec, they run at fairly low temperatures - most of the time mine are under 30°C, Very quiet and seem to use less power than the 2TB Seagate drives I took out.

I always see storage similar to the theory of planning how many network sockets to install - Plan for what you need and then double it.

Thanks for that. Currently I just have a 1TB drive in my PC that contains my docs and current plex library, so 2TB would be the minimum really. That way I'm thinking 4TB would suffice but more is always better, but I don't want to spend silly money on a basic home file server.