Need some advice

[ijzerman]

Hi,

Im fairly new to nas setups, so that's why i'm asking this question.

I have got myself an old Dell T110 II with 4 WD Purple 4TB disks. I will not setup the disks in raid using the h200 controller, the disks will be just seen as disks.

I will be using this nas for storing my photos and also for downloads from usenet.

I will be making back-ups of my photos onto an external USB disk every few weeks.

What would be the best raid setup for my situation?

 

[Alecmascot]

You could set up two mirrored vdevs which gives you raw 8tb or add a drive and use RaidZ2 for raw 12tb.
It's easy to expand the T110 II chassis to take up to 7 drives. Replace the 5 1/4 devices with a cage for 3 X 3.5 and add an extra cable to the H200.
You have flashed the H200 to IT mode ?

ZFS Capacity Calculator - WintelGuy.com

ZFS / RAIDZ Capacity Calculator - evaluets performance of different RAIDZ types and configurations

wintelguy.com

 

[ijzerman]

i already have the h200 in dumb mode. i can see the disks connected to the controller. so they are in non-raid mode. is that what you mean?

but you dont advice a raid-z1 with 4 disks ?

 

[ijzerman]

I mean rad-z2 ofcourse

 

[Alecmascot]

4tb is about the break-point for raidz-1 to raidz-2. It depends on the re-silver time.
If you are happy with your backups then raidz-1 would be ok.

 

[jediweapon]

The striped mirrored vdevs will give you better performance, you would end up with 8TB usable, similar to a RAID 10 setup.

 

[ijzerman]

thanks very much guys. now i have to choose between purchasing 4 new 4tb discs on the same price of almost new 6tb discs :P

the only downside is that the 6tb disca have two years of guarantee instead of 3 years of guarantee on new discs

 

[Yorick]

Which 6TB disks? Make and model?

 

[ijzerman]

6tb discs WD purple