[SOLVED] Need help choosing HDDs for RAID 5

[tommymakoto]

I was looking for some advice on what would be most cost effective. My plan was to use 3 drives in a RAID 5 array. This would be for home use to store my media files. I was looking at HDDs in the 6-8 TB range in size. I'm a little bit lost on how concerned I should be with the speed of the drives and if I should even bother with the drives that have enterprise features.

Thanks for the help.

 

[USAFRet]

1. RAID 5 is mostly out of favor
2. RAID 5 with large drives is mostly a bad idea.

Let's consider a RAID 5, 3 drives, 6TB each.
Resulting in 12TB usable space.

Lets assume you have 8-9TB consumed in that array.
Swapping in a new drive after a fail will take most of a day. In which all 3 drives are hammered, hard.
Whatever caused the first drive to die....the other two originals are liable for the same thing. Which, when getting hammered during the rebuild, is quite likely.

And you still need an actual backup of that data. RAID of any type is not a backup.


But, if you want, Seagate IronWolf or WD Red are indicated for that use.
I have 4x 4TB Seagate IronWolf in my QNAP.
Originally it was set up as RAID 5, mostly as an experiment. Recently undone.

 

[tommymakoto]

So, you don't think the fault tolerance is worth it? If I didn't use RAID would the recommendation be the same? I would still at least like to have them in a single volume.

 

[USAFRet]

So, you don't think the fault tolerance is worth it? If I didn't use RAID would the recommendation be the same? I would still at least like to have them in a single volume.

The fault tolerance is only for a physical drive fail.
Does nothing for all the other types of data loss. That requires a good backup plan. And if you have that, a drive fail is also covered.

What will these drives be going in?
Any of the current NAS boxes (QNAP/Synology/Theacus) would let you do a single volume encompassing all 3 or 4 drives.

 

[tommymakoto]

These drives would be going in my home desktop case. I'm running Windows 10 Pro if that matters.

 

[USAFRet]

These drives would be going in my home desktop case. I'm running Windows 10 Pro if that matters.

Even more reason to not do any RAID thing.
Only with a dedicated hardware RAID controller. And even then, you're not gaining any 'protection'.

 

[tommymakoto]

Even if I weren't to RAID5, I'm guessing that's it's still worthwhile to do the stripping in RAID0?

 

[USAFRet]

Even if I weren't to RAID5, I'm guessing that's it's still worthwhile to do the stripping in RAID0?

RAID 0 is even worse.
You have zero redundancy. A single failed drive, and all data across all drives is gone.

And especially not for the OS drive. Not even a little bit.

 

[tommymakoto]

So, you don't think the performance is worth it? Should I even bother with drives with faster that 5400 RPM?

 

[USAFRet]

So, you don't think the performance is worth it? Should I even bother with drives with faster that 5400 RPM?

On a single family file server accessed across the LAN?
No.

I have a QNAP NAS, accessed across a typical gigabit LAN.
3 different drive types in it.
480GB Seagate SSD
8TB Toshiba 7200RPM
2x4TB Seagate Ironwolf, RAID 0


Copying an 8.4GB single ISO file across the LAN from an Intel 660p NVMe drive, to each of those 3 volumes individually.
Can you identify which is which?

The LAN is the limiting factor.

Now...you may comment: "But you have a RAID 0 in there!"
It is not the OS drive.
The NAS box had dedicated hardware/software to run the RAID 0.
It is probably going to be undone in the near future. In favor of just individual drives.

 

[tommymakoto]

Well, I won't be accessing them across the LAN, the drives would be plugged in to my home computer directly in to the motherboard.

 

[USAFRet]

Well, I won't be accessing them across the LAN, the drives would be plugged in to my home computer directly in to the motherboard.

Oh my...I'm sorry. I had this confused with another guy with a similar request and config.

In any case...I still wouldn't RAID 0.

 

[tommymakoto]

Okay, thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

 

[USAFRet]

Okay, thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

For media storage and playback, the movie or music playlist does not play any faster if it were in a RAID 0 vs individual drives.
But with the RAID 0, you gain a whole lot of fail potential.

 

[popatim]

I was just going to mention Media doesn't need any performance. LoL

If you want a single drive, you can use windows storage spaces but I would rather you split your data up across the drives by type .
For example my server has My movies/shows on 1 drive, Wife's movies/shows on another, Music on a third, photo's on a 4th...
Why did I split the movies up? So the HDD wouldn't have to constantly reposition the heads between my movie and hers (HDD Thrashing) when we are watching at the same time.