[Cialug] NAS & disk drives

[Dave Hala]

It doesn't hurt to leave a drive on the shelf. While you can prove
that there is a some degradation of a mechanical drive while it sits
on the shelf, it really isn't a factor. "Stressing the raid array" by
forcing a rebuild is in my opinion also a non-issue.  I can see
Jeffrey's point, but I think in the terms of real world usage those
really aren't factors. A nas box is something you setup and forget
about until its broken. When its broken, you generally want to fix it
now, not wait for a drive to be shipped to you over night or 2nd day.

If it makes you more comfortable, buy an extra drive, put it on the
shelf and then don't worry about until it becomes an issue.  Once a
week do a  "cat /proc/mdstat"  to check the status of your array and
you'll be fine.

Another option is put the extra drive in the array as a hot spare.

:) Dave



On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 6:44 PM, Dan Hockey <icepuck2k at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Another dumb question....If I get the 2bay nas I want should I get spares
>> and switch out the older drives for a while(for a backup) or should just
>> run the first set of drives until a failure?
>>
>
> Unless you're running a giant datacenter I don't think that makes a lot of
> sense to keep a spare drive on the shelf "just in case".  Unless your
> drives are failing frequently (and if they are you're doing something
> wrong) you've got a lot of money sitting there on the shelf.  While a drive
> will last longer on the shelf, the will still be some degradation which
> means by the time you need to replace the drive the spare has developed
> problems too. Periodically swapping a drive out just for the heck of it
> will create extra stress because the RAID will have to work overtime to
> rebuild the array.
>
> My suggestion is to buy the drives that you need now, make sure that your
> backups are in order, and make sure that you'll find out quickly if a drive
> (or your backup) is failing so that corrective action can be taken promptly.
>
>
>
>> On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 6:36 PM, Dan Hockey <icepuck2k at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Thanks for the input. I ordered a pair of wd reds 2tb drives.
>> >
>> > On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 5:07 AM, Dave Hala <dave at 58ghz.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >> The hitachi ultrastar 2tb drives have a low failure rate.
>> >>
>> >> :) Dave
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 8:44 PM, Nathan Smith
>> >> <nathan.smith at rockinghamridge.com> wrote:
>> >> > Three years plus or minus.
>> >> >
>> >> > Check out the backblaze blog about drive lifetime expectancies.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > On April 9, 2016 6:30:26 PM CDT, Dan Hockey <icepuck2k at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >> >>What would be you guess about expected life from a wd red?
>> >> >>
>> >> >>On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 3:41 PM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us>
>> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >>> I've been buying the WD Red 4TB drives for a while with no
>> complaints
>> >> >>so
>> >> >>> far.
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 1:55 PM, Dan Hockey <icepuck2k at gmail.com>
>> >> >>wrote:
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> > I've looking upgrade to these
>> >> >>> > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236343
>> >> >>> >
>> >> >>> > It's also the drive synology recommends
>> >> >>> >
>> >> >>> > For something that's not as power hungry I've been looking at
>> >> >>> >
>> >> >>> >
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>
>> >>
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108216&cm_re=synology_2bay-_-22-108-216-_-Product
>> >> >>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> --
>> >> >>> Jeff Ollie
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> --
> Jeff Ollie
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