For a new NAS I’m building (my old 4x2TB one is full). After putting them into RAID 5 for redundancy incase of drive failure and after the conversion to real terabytes (claimed hard drive sizes are always larger than real values), it’ll end up being somewhere around 8 terabytes of actual usable space.
What kind of NAS are you building? I’ve thought about building one, but can’t seem to justify the cost when compared to using USB drives backed up through a service like Mozy or CrashPlan.
I dropped those 4 drives into a Synology DS411: http://www.synology.com/products/product.php?product_name=DS411 (which is amazing!)
They’re running in RAID 5 and giving me 8.07 TB of space (1 drive worth of space is “lost” to redundancy).
I use CrashPlan to back up the super important stuff that can’t be replaced on my desktop to my NAS (for local backup) and also to my dedicated webserver where I also have CrashPlan running for off-site backup incase of fire. Zero cost, other than the server I was already paying for.
Western Digital Green drives aren’t the best choice for a NAS. Although, I am sure they’ll work okay, the warranty is limited.
Although, a NAS in your new configuration would be nice to have. I am always saving stuff; stuff I never would have held onto years ago. I always go with the “you never know if you’ll need it” philosophy; which could be a good or bad thing.
I would have went with the Western Digital Black series (although they cost a little more), the warranty on those drives is 5 years. I went with the Black series when I built my desktop box back in 2010. It’s nice to know I still am covered in case of a hard drive failure. I configured my desktop machine in a RAID 10 configuration; makes for a screaming box, let me tell you. It’s one mean catdaddy.
I’ve never, ever had a hard drive fail on me, knock on wood. I currently own over 10 WD Green drives and while a bit slow of course due to the RPM, that’s fine because they’re just used for mass storage. They also suck less power.
I used two WD Black drives in RAID 0 for my operating system before I switched to two Intel SSDs in RAID 0. Now those scream: http://alex.blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ssdraid.png
Man, those are some impressive numbers. I’m gonna have to get me a couple of those SSD’s
These are the drives I have:
http://www.viper007bond.com/2011/12/02/new-ssd-drives/
Also in that post are benchmark comparisons to my old WD Blacks and a single WD Green.
Oh wow! That’s a lot of storage. If you don’t mind, what are you storing with your hard drives and you need that kind of huge space? 1080p HD movies? My desktop only has 1 2TB Hard drive and I can’t even use half of it. Haha!
PS: Had fun browsing your thingamajigs. I’m a user of your Viper Quick Tags plugin and I just visited this website to read about the jw-flv-player update. Hehe. 🙂
No comment on what I’m storing. 😉