What do you think about buying second hand disks and using higher redundancy?

For example 4x 16TB in RAIDz2? Is anyone using something like that? How’s it performing, reliability-wise?

E: Thanks all for the opinions and information!

  • randombullet@feddit.deEnglish
    8·
    10 months ago

    I’m running 160tb of refurbished Exos right now.

    I throughout the years

    2 x 10tb

    2 x 14tb

    3 x 16tb

    12 x 18tb

    8 x 20tb

    I’ve only had 2 x 16tb fail within 500 hours. All other disks have 7k+ hours and are running fine.

    As long as you manage your backups properly, you won’t need to worry.

    Bought mine through server part deals. Their 2 year warranty is so painless. Shoot them the SN and smart data and you just swap disks.

    If they don’t have the disk they just refund you completely.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      This sounds pretty great. If reliability can be mitigated via software, which it seems it can, then using old parts might even be more environmentally friendly than buying new ones. 🤔

      • randombullet@feddit.deEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        I have 2 x 20tb mirrored for hot storage

        2 pools x 3 x 20tb in Z1 for warm backup.

        And I have 2 x 14tb for cold storage

        2 x 18tb at a remote location

        All are refurbished drives

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          There seems to be two types of homelabbers with regards to storage:

          • Those who take storage redundancy seriously
          • Those who don’t seem to care

          I’ve made the mistake of asking the second group what they thought about types and quantities of storage, and I got quite a few “why are you concerned?” type questions. My guess is that they regard obtaining data to be free/trivial, so storing it redundantly is a pointless cost. I’ll just say that I don’t share their cavalier attitude.

          This setup is my personal goal, and I think refurbished drives are the best way to go about it (provided they are reasonably taken care of). If you’re working in a redundant setup, the age of the drives matters a lot less.