8TB drives for raid - which to get?

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maze

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Apr 27, 2013
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With that being the case, I'd look hard at SnapRAID/UnRAID instead of a traditional striped RAID setup.
Iv been considering having a look at unraid lately. Havent done much research but more and more people seem to point in that direction with larger discs.

Without knowing much (hardly anything) about unraid, im a bit hesitant though..
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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I also have a pair of Seagate 8TB Archive drives, I don't like them. Don't consider them for RAID, but as single disks I only get 20MB/s writes to them. Painful even for just write and forget.
I also have 8 of the 8TB Seagate Archive drives in each of my two UnRAID servers. I'd never use them for direct writes but I use an SSD cache pool so all writers go to that first. I can saturate my 10Gb connection writing to my array.

Iv been considering having a look at unraid lately. Havent done much research but more and more people seem to point in that direction with larger discs.

Without knowing much (hardly anything) about unraid, im a bit hesitant though..
It's really quite simple to setup and configure mainly through the WebGUI. You can install it as a trial and see how you like it before buying a license.

With that said, if there was an easy way to setup caching along side SnapRAID I'd be all over it since it's free but thats a deal breaker for me. And while I don't use UnRAID for dockers/VMs anymore, it's pretty convenient to have that all at your fingertips in the WebGUI.
 
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maze

Active Member
Apr 27, 2013
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I also have 8 of the 8TB Seagate Archive drives in each of my two UnRAID servers. I'd never use them for direct writes but I use an SSD cache pool so all writers go to that first. I can saturate my 10Gb connection writing to my array.



It's really quite simple to setup and configure mainly through the WebGUI. You can install it as a trial and see how you like it before buying a license.

With that said, if there was an easy way to setup caching along side SnapRAID I'd be all over it since it's free but thats a deal breaker for me. And while I don't use UnRAID for dockers/VMs anymore, it's pretty convenient to have that all at your fingertips in the WebGUI.
Thanks for the feedback. I did a little light reading last night on unraid's site, but from the looks of it, I need 3 ssd's for the cache pool? What kinda size ssd's are you running if you dont mind me asking? - I have 3x 80gig laying around unused atm, so that might be an option.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Thanks for the feedback. I did a little light reading last night on unraid's site, but from the looks of it, I need 3 ssd's for the cache pool? What kinda size ssd's are you running if you dont mind me asking? - I have 3x 80gig laying around unused atm, so that might be an option.
Well for starters, you don't NEED to use a cache pool. You can use a single SSD if you'd like as a cache drive. You need 2 drives to make a cache pool though which is what I'm using. I use 2 x 480GB Intel 730's in my cache pool configured in RAID0 so it gives me about 960GB on the pool. I do this because I copy large amounts of data daily (backups) and I also have some cache only shares (meaning they stay on the cache pool and never get moved to the protected array) such as my Downloads share and my DVR share. For any share that is not cache only, the cache acts as a resting place for data before it gets moved to the protected array. You can schedule the data to move at certain times or certain intervals. Mine is every 2 hours I believe.
 
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maze

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Apr 27, 2013
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Well for starters, you don't NEED to use a cache pool. You can use a single SSD if you'd like as a cache drive. You need 2 drives to make a cache pool though which is what I'm using. I use 2 x 480GB Intel 730's in my cache pool configured in RAID0 so it gives me about 960GB on the pool. I do this because I copy large amounts of data daily (backups) and I also have some cache only shares (meaning they stay on the cache pool and never get moved to the protected array) such as my Downloads share and my DVR share. For any share that is not cache only, the cache acts as a resting place for data before it gets moved to the protected array. You can schedule the data to move at certain times or certain intervals. Mine is every 2 hours I believe.
Thanks, sounds like something i can work with. Gonna give it a try when i get the discs sorted.
 

Geran

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Oct 25, 2016
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I am using DrivePool and Snapraid to handle all my storage needs. DrivePool has a SSD cache feature and SnapRaid handles everything on the individual drives.