More than 8 WD-Red disks?

[xxxONURISxxx]

Hello!

I plan to expand my freeNAS. I wanted to add 8x 4 TB and 8x 3TB WD Red disks in one case. However, the WD Red are only specified for a maximum of 8 disks in one case.

Does anyone have experience with more than 8 disks in one case?

Edit: Found a good answer from a technician. Seems to be no problem except for possible performance losses. spiceworks.com

Greetings

 

[sretalla]

It's all about cooling, power and cables... disks are the same no matter how many of them there are.

If you use a properly ventilated chassis which allows enough airflow to each of the disks, you can add as many as you want. (I personally run 16 Reds and 8 Purples in the same 24-bay chassis).

Then you just need to make sure you have enough power running to support all drives spinning up at the same time (I use a 1200W PSU).

And finally, you need to have the right kind of Disk Controller (motherboards rarely have more than 10 SATA ports), so a SAS HBA (LSI if you don't hate yourself) with breakout cables for SATA or backplane connections would be the normal answer.

 

[Jessep]

The disks and firmware are not the same between consumer and datacentre drives. Red vs. Red Pro there may not be much difference, those are both consumer drives. Red vs HUH721010ALE604 there will be more differences.

In a home lab it would likely not make much difference, for business use I would suggest buying disks rated for the task.

 

[xxxONURISxxx]

The WD Red Pro hard drives have a built-in vibration sensor. The WD Red calculate the vibrations by software and have no sensor. This is the difference between the two drives and therefore also the limitation to 8 drives for the non-Pro drives.

 

[joeschmuck]

For a home or small business system, you can place many WD Reds in the same case, vibration issues I've never seen a single report of drive performance issues. For a long time we around here thought it was a marketing gimmick, and I still think it is, unless you have 8 really out of balance hard drives (the kind that walks your computer across the floor). I know many people pile in the Reds without any issue.

The WD Red calculate the vibrations by software and have no sensor.

I wouldn't say it exactly like that. You can't use software or anything to calculate vibration if you can't detect the vibration it in the first place. I've always thought it was the centering of the drive heads over the data track, signal strength, and rational potision of the spindle. With that data I could see how you could calculate the axis offsets that occur during vibration. While the heads are not a VIB-AMP, it could produce similar results.

You are adding quite a bit of storage which makes me want to buy more but I don't need it. Good luck.