Media data raidz1 or raidz2?

FlangeMonkey

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 11, 2010
Messages
161
Hi Guys,

I know most people are going to shout out "are your crazy go with RAIDz2" because lets face it, that's the new trend... However I have 6x WD Red 4tb and need as much space as possible. I really only need single disk redundancy because there isn't a lot of load and I don't have a problem taking the pool offline, while I acquire a new disk.

So what are people opinions for redundancy of Media?

Thanks,
 
I went with 8 disk raidz2. I have virtual machines and media and backup on on my NAS so i just wanted that extra piece of mind of set it and forget it. Worked like a charm for two 1/2 years now. :)
 
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I may run VM's on it, but I highly dought it. I'd love to cough up for a couple more drives and go RAIDZ2, but my current chassis is struggling to get 6 in it let alone 8... I do want to replace it with a unas or something similar, but its getting to a point where I just want it up and running with the current config and migrate later.

At the end of the day, its probably going to be media only and its a question of weather single parity will suffice.

I did a quick rebuild test with 9TB in a 5 disk raidz1 and the resilver was only 8.5 hours. with write speeds at about the 60MBps mark or pool rebuild at 300M/s. Therefore I can see a full cap rebuild on the disk being 16 hours. With my experience, even with a half smeged disk, I'm not fearful of data loss... But to set and forget is what I want so I might rethink and even go more disks, I'm not sure I need that amount of space mind...

I'll checkout SnapRAID, but I'm in bed with ZFS...
 
I may run VM's on it, but I highly dought it. I'd love to cough up for a couple more drives and go RAIDZ2, but my current chassis is struggling to get 6 in it let alone 8...
What case do you have?

Personally, I vote RAIZ2 as well: That's my plan for my future file server upgrade.
 
It's only a Microserver N40L... Its getting a little underpowered at present and needs replacing.

Plans have changed and in hindsight after testing with the 4TB's, I should have gone with 3TB's on a completely new build, with 8. Cost would have been about there... This is however replacing my 4x 3TB build on another N40L.
 
I may run VM's on it, but I highly dought it. I'd love to cough up for a couple more drives and go RAIDZ2, but my current chassis is struggling to get 6 in it let alone 8... I do want to replace it with a unas or something similar, but its getting to a point where I just want it up and running with the current config and migrate later.

At the end of the day, its probably going to be media only and its a question of weather single parity will suffice.

I did a quick rebuild test with 9TB in a 5 disk raidz1 and the resilver was only 8.5 hours. with write speeds at about the 60MBps mark or pool rebuild at 300M/s. Therefore I can see a full cap rebuild on the disk being 16 hours. With my experience, even with a half smeged disk, I'm not fearful of data loss... But to set and forget is what I want so I might rethink and even go more disks, I'm not sure I need that amount of space mind...

I'll checkout SnapRAID, but I'm in bed with ZFS...

You can do a 6 disk raidz2 also. Doesn't have to be 8. I choose 8 and I'm only use roughly 40% of the space. :p Filling up slowly.
 
Trust me... If your anything like me, it goes quickly. It's the hoarding equivalent of computer geekdom...

However I've been deleting media for 3-6 months now, but am stretching the limits of what I want to delete. I know that 6 disks in RAIDz2 will give me around 14.5TB, which gives me around 6.5tb freespace. That won't last me a year... RAIDz1 gives me 10tb freespace, which is more reasonable, where as 8 disks in RAIDz2 gives me around 13.5tb. Can you see my dilemma, of 6 disk single or double parity. Where do people switch from RAIDz1 to 2?

The alternative... just be aggressive in deleting stuff!
 
I have been using double parity since I started doing massive media storage 5-6 yrs ago - I have also never had a drive fail. This either means that I wasted money on unnecessary redundancy, or that I will be saved when a drive eventually dies and all of the other drives in the array are in an equally precarious state...

Also, all of my raid 6/raidz2 arrays have been 8+ disks....
 
I have been using double parity since I started doing massive media storage 5-6 yrs ago - I have also never had a drive fail. This either means that I wasted money on unnecessary redundancy, or that I will be saved when a drive eventually dies and all of the other drives in the array are in an equally precarious state...

Also, all of my raid 6/raidz2 arrays have been 8+ disks....

Large arrays no problem, but how low would you go? :)
 
I'm using RaidZ1 on 5x 3TB disks, mostly media storage and backups. I lost a drive a few months ago and it was still usable while I had a replacement overnighted. 8 hours of restriping later, its back in business.
 
you'd be nuts to use RAIDz1 with disks that large, the chance of another failing during a rebuild is quite likely - unless your data is easily replaceable, i.e from your backup array you have off site. Given you can mitigate a high % of risk for a small sum ($150?) its not worth it IMHO. Go Raidz2 and worry-less.
 
I understand your dilemma, deciding what to do with a 6 drive array is tough. I personally am not comfortable with less than double parity, but that is also bordering on overkill for a 6 drive array. If it were me? I would probably go raidz2.
 
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