Having gradually built up my media collection to near the capacity of my 16TB external HDD, I’ve reached the point where I’ll probably need to build a RAID array to keep the collection in one place. Assuming the RAID array will be at least 32TB, I have a few questions:
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From what I’ve read RAID arrays can help mitigate the risk of individual drives failing if extra space is allotted on the hard drives. Assuming a total capacity of 32TB, how much of that space would be reserved by the RAID array for data loss prevention?
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Is there a certain type of hard drive I would have to use? Aside from my 16TB drive, I also have two 2 8TB drives that I’d ideally like to be able to re-use in the RAID array, but have left them in their enclosures for the time being.
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If the hard drives in the array have different transfer speeds, does the array as a whole default to the slowest one?
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Whether the hard drives I already have are compatible or not, what RAID enclosure and hard drives would you recommend?
6·9 months ago- https://www.synology.com/en-au/support/RAID_calculator or similar is good to easily do these calculations
- No, but more RAID configurations than not are limited by the smallest size drive. It’s a factor to consider, assuming you can’t afford to just buy a bunch of disks. I wound up maintaining two separate NAS devices, one of which gets my old, smaller disks.
- Generally yes, though you’d be surprised how little difference disk speed makes once you get enough of them in an array.
- I use Synology with various shucked WD externals. I have a bunch of other stuff in my homelab though, so I need the storage to not be it’s own project, else I likely would have built something less expensive. I’m sure there will be better suggestions in this thread than mine.