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raid 6 drive replacement options hw raid

A

ALpHaMoNk

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
Messages
108
I have been running my raid 6 for some years now with 2x15 hitachi 2tb hhds.
I am pretty much out of space and was thinking of adding drives and expanding the array..issue is .... I am having a hard time locating hitachi drives. My 20bay case really only has room for about 3more drives. what are my options?

1. Do I continue to try and hunt down the 3 needed drives and just expand the array.
2. Can I somehow add larger drives and somehow slowly replace the hitachi 2tb drives with 4tb drives......is this possible? without the loss of data or building another array and migrating
3. are hitachi drives still a good choice of drives to use for hw raid (I have had 0 issues once I started using them)

I am sure I have a few more questions but these right now will help get me thinking in the right direction.

raid controller is old but hasn't given me any issues ARC-1680 with the HP expander
 
Nothing says you have to use the SAME drives in a RAID... You can find similar spec drives and it should work just fine.

As for #2 I think it depends on the RAID controller. A lot of hardware the QNAP and SYNOLOGY offer the ability to expand a RAID by doing exactly what you suggested, adding bigger drives one at a time until they are all bigger and then expand it. Software solutions like the new Storage Spaces on Server 2012 can do it too.

There are some arguments for not using desktop drives in a RAID due to timing issues and constant wear but I've never really paid much attention to that lol. But I would suggest the WD RED drives or another "NAS" oriented hard drive. SSHDs are an option too.
 
MystocRyuujin thanks for the information..yes I know I can mix drives but I have always tried to stay with the same brand and specs just to keep things inline. I have had great success since switching to the Hitachi drives so I think I may want to stay with that brand but in 4tb format and slowly begin to replace the 2tb drives that are currently in place.
#2 my hw raid controller is a bit dated ARC-1680 not sure what the largest drive the card can handle and / or if it will be able to as mentioned. (add larger drives and expand all the unused space once all drives have been replaced.) Spaces on Server 2012 is something else I would like to venture into later on.

I have looked into the red drives but they seem to be a bit on the slow side when looking at the specs.
 
Do you have the option to convert the whole thing away from Areca RAID?

I would do JBOD controlling wise and use ZFS at this point. ZFS has won, plain and simple. Even I use it now.

Once there you have no problems with a mix of -say- 2 and 3 TB drives. You partition them and then you use the 1 TB remainder on the 3 TB drives for a new zpool with however many of them you have. You can go on like that gradually replacing all 2 TBs and then sweeping back with 6 TBs or whatever is the fashion at that point.
 
uOpt said:
Do you have the option to convert the whole thing away from Areca RAID?No

I would do JBOD controlling wise and use ZFS at this point. ZFS has won, plain and simple. Even I use it now.
Once there you have no problems with a mix of -say- 2 and 3 TB drives. You partition them and then you use the 1 TB remainder on the 3 TB drives for a new zpool with however many of them you have. You can go on like that gradually replacing all 2 TBs and then sweeping back with 6 TBs or whatever is the fashion at that point.
Click to expand...
sounds great but I have zero experience with ZFS and would still need a method to transfer all the data over in aother words 2x the amount of space.

definitely sounds like a good plan But Again I am taking this will require me a new build. I do have a spare areca card same as I am using.

JJ Johnson said:
4. Delete some shit.
Click to expand...
No Not an Option. if it was that simple I wouldn't be posting, looking for a solution.

Lost-Benji said:
Like, um, whatever........... In your books maybe, not in everyone elses.


Not as silly as it may sound.
Click to expand...
? yes just as silly as it sounds. deleting my collection of media defeats the purpose of having a media collection/library
 
Look into migrating to SnapRAID or FlexRAID. Those are much better choices for a large media library than either hardware RAID or ZFS (although you could use ZFS on each individual drive with SnapRAID, if you really wanted to).
 
If you never ran ZFS that would be a problem. As I said, in the beginning I also managed to fatfinger a zpool that I had to then recreate. I am not a ZFS fan by far, it's just that the availability and compatibility with different OSes has now pushed it over the edge for me. All we need is some falling RAM prices.

You could be brutal and buy some harddrives from a place that accepts returns, do the copy and return them.
 
ALpHaMoNk said:
No Not an Option. if it was that simple I wouldn't be posting, looking for a solution.

? yes just as silly as it sounds. deleting my collection of media defeats the purpose of having a media collection/library
Click to expand...

How much of that media collection represents real work that either cannot be replaced or that would require many hours to reproduce?

I have a music collection of hundreds of albums that I ripped myself and would take months to recreate. I back it up religiously. But music doesn't take up much space - less than 1 TB on my file server. I have movies that I've ripped and encoded. Again, representing weeks of work involved that I don't want to do again. But still, a fraction of what I store on my file server.

And then I have about 20 TB of movies and TV shows and porn that I've downloaded via torrent and usenet. All of it could just be downloaded again. Many times I've found myself adding more and bigger drives to hold all the new media, but honestly, how many ****ing times am I going to watch Superman III in my lifetime?

I recently got to a point where I was thinking about upgrading more 1.5 and 2 TB drives to 3 or 4 TB, then I realized that I do NOT need all of this crap. And so I started pruning. You know what? I now know why I just blindly added capacity before - because it was easier. It's a lot of work going through thousands of files and asking yourself if you want to keep stuff. But it also frees up terabytes of space.

YMMV.
 
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