What do you think about buying second hand disks and using higher redundancy?
For example 4x 16TB in RAIDz2? Is anyone using something like that? How’s it performing, reliability-wise?
E: Thanks all for the opinions and information!
What do you think about buying second hand disks and using higher redundancy?
For example 4x 16TB in RAIDz2? Is anyone using something like that? How’s it performing, reliability-wise?
E: Thanks all for the opinions and information!
This sounds pretty great. If reliability can be mitigated via software, which it seems it can, then using old parts might even be more environmentally friendly than buying new ones. 🤔
I have 2 x 20tb mirrored for hot storage
2 pools x 3 x 20tb in Z1 for warm backup.
And I have 2 x 14tb for cold storage
2 x 18tb at a remote location
All are refurbished drives
There seems to be two types of homelabbers with regards to storage:
I’ve made the mistake of asking the second group what they thought about types and quantities of storage, and I got quite a few “why are you concerned?” type questions. My guess is that they regard obtaining data to be free/trivial, so storing it redundantly is a pointless cost. I’ll just say that I don’t share their cavalier attitude.
This setup is my personal goal, and I think refurbished drives are the best way to go about it (provided they are reasonably taken care of). If you’re working in a redundant setup, the age of the drives matters a lot less.