Best HDD drives for Home Server

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cdd85

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Dec 19, 2017
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I am looking to purchase 4 x 2TB HDDs for my home server to run in RAID 5.

The Server will be backed up using a NAS, also running 4 x 2TB in RAID 5 using WD Red disks.

I am debating buying the Seagate Enterprise Drives or the WD Gold drives but wondering if I can save some money and just by consumer HDDs.

The server will be used as a file server and will be turned off most of the time.

Thanks

Carl
 
Solution
RealBeast
I wondered why you were only using 2TB drives, should have known since PERC6i only supports up to 2TB drives. I would be comfortable running RAID 5 on that controller and of course still using good backup plans.

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I have the Segate enterprise drives, and they've been running solid in a RAID 1 since mid-2013, every day, 24-7. That said, the whole point of RAID is to allow some drives to fail, so you'll be okay getting cheaper drives. Personally, I like to have at least some good drives in my array. If you get four new but cheap drives, they are likely to all die around the same time. The RAID won't protect against that. Having some more reliable drives in the mix, if you don't want to pay for all of the drives to be enterprise grade, can help stagger impending failure. I hope this helps. Good luck!
 
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I would then use RAID 0 for consolidation.

 
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I'm using storage spaces quite happily, with raid0 you'll be risking a single drive issue causing a full rebuild. Jbod might be a better choice. Take your time at this stage and figure out what the best route is, you get to do this once without pain.
 
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Expanding capacity is tricky and expensive, storage spaces its easy.
A single failed disk will cause a rebuild. Motherboard dies, potentially any replacement will not be able to read it, they are not portable.

Its a solution that has its place, but that place may be in the past, but it's probably not in the home.
 
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Storage spaces is *far* more reliable than any motherboard based RAID. Now if you really want to run RAID 5 and can spend at least $350 for a high quality 4 drive RAID adapter capable of RAID 5 then it is not unreasonable.

The single most common RAID issue asked on the storage forum is how to recover a broken motherboard based array.

A bios update, power outage, bios hiccup all have high potential to break an array.

Edit: and almost never RAID 0 even with good hardware.
 
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It's how I'd go, you at least have a backup which is the usual problem. Wait to see what others say.

You may want to consider fewer bigger drives to give the same capacity, then you have a path to expand capacity. 2tb drives are not very cost effective compared to 3 and 4 perhaps?
 
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I have a RAID 5 in my NAS box (4 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf), but that is only because the hardware and the Qnap NAS OS are purpose built for it.
And the whole thing is also backed up weekly, to an 8TB external drive.

No way would I do this with just the typical motherboard RAID concept.
 
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I’m using a PERC6i RAID controller.
 
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I wondered why you were only using 2TB drives, should have known since PERC6i only supports up to 2TB drives. I would be comfortable running RAID 5 on that controller and of course still using good backup plans.

 
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Sure, with that hardware and your backup. The consumer Red drives should be fine, enterprise drives don't really seem to get you any quality improvement today at least according to Backblaze statistics.

 
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With a standard RAID 1, you'll be good to go. It's just a mirror of each drive. I edited my original response to note that I have a RAID 1, not a RAID 0 (oops). Each drive can read individually in most cases if the motherboard dies.
 
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