The Archive drives would probably be good for me since I have a lot of static data.
I actually just picked up two 5TB Toshiba drives for $130ea. Can't beat that price. I'm trying to get them in a pool to load them up and test them out to see if they will be decent. I'm mostly concerned about the heat.
My goal is to expand my server, and gain some reasonable protection. In the last 15+ years I've had a media server, I've had 5 drives die on me. 3 of them in a short time (all WD Green drives). Every time I was notified (or could tell) that the drive was going out, and I moved the data off and I haven't lost any data.
I've tried hardware raid solutions, but they were too rigid. The two software raid solutions I've tried have been fairly decent. FlexRAID is decent, but it's a PITA to rebuild, scans come back with all kinds of errors and can't do anything about it, and to be frank, I feel that it isn't well supported.
I feel that if I duplicate 20+TB of data, that it's a HUGE waste. At that point, I might as well run a RAID solution and just take a 1-2 drive hit on space instead of 50% hit I will absolutely duplicate my personal files. I'm looking for some middle ground on the media.
"I had one drive with data on it, and it added the free space to the pool, and there was a drive with just the data on it that remained. I moved the data, but it didn't remove the now empty drive."
I have two drives with data already on them. I added them to the pool. Previously I expected the data to be automatically added to the Drivepool drive, but after some reading I discovered that is not the case. My Computer window now looks like this: http://prntscr.com/8t73ld
I then moved the data from the drives (E: and G:) to the Drivepool drive (D:). I expected Drivepool to consume the drives completely (increasing the Drivepool drive), and for the individual drives to disappear... But they did not. Now I have: http://prntscr.com/8t7b2m
That's going to look very ugly with 14 drives I like how FlexRAID removes the drives (and drive letter) from My Computer.
http://wiki.covecube...vePool_Q4142489
That one makes sense, and will be handy when I'm moving the data from my FlexRAID drives.
http://wiki.covecube...vePool_Q4822624
That one makes a lot less sense, but it could be because I don't yet understand exactly how Drivepool works.
Right now I'm fighting with my server and the drive letters which doesn't help...
Note: The Toshiba drives are hitting 116F under load, and about 104F idle... I think they may be going back I can probably pick up one 8TB for the price of them... Net loss of 2TB
Now I need to figure out how to get the SMART readings working from my LSI 9201 16i so I can see what temps the other drives are running right now.
I found this post, but it means nothing.