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Gradually buying HDDs for home server: best strategy? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by cidra_@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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Hello guys, I just got a motherboard, a CPU and a 8 bay case (Node 804) as a deal and was thinking to getting other components to make a home server.

It would be unrealistic for me to buy all 8 HDDs at once, I can't afford to do it. Also, I guess I should also take into account the HDDs for a backup device, and a spare HDD to keep around when needed.

So the question: what's the best way to start gradually? If x is the total capacity of the main device, how much should it be for the backup device?

Just for the record: I already have a 6TB WD RED HDD hanging around, connected to an Odroid HC2.

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[–] whodatdair@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

My personal strategy was to buy reman’d HGST drives off Amazon and take the acronym “RAID” literally.

I think it was ~$30 for a 4tb drive (there are other sizes, i just picked one that worked for me) and I filled my nas with them and dedicated two drives to redundancy. I set them all to raid 5 and then put an extra drive in the last bay and configured it to be a “hot swap” - essentially raid 5 means one drive can die on me and the data is recoverable. Then the nas will automatically pull the hot swap online and begin the recovery process immediately if one does die cuz if two go there can be data loss. Your could even raid 1 the drives and then if one dies the other is fine.

I got lucky and haven’t had any fail yet but if you’re willing to put up with and plan for a possible drive failure you can get some seriously low $/TB.

Depends on what’s worth it to you, but i like my redundant array of inexpensive drives.