Drive config. thoughts?

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vgking96

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Dec 11, 2013
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Obviously, the more drives the better, when it comes to avoiding complete system loss in the event of a failed drive.

However, it's not always cost-effective to buy many smaller capacity drives (in the case of acceptable format times and whatnot) in the place of one drive of equal capacity.

In my situation, I have two SSDs acting as an OS and specialized drive, respectively. For the usual media, games, less intensive programs, it's obviously gonna be (a) HDD. I was going with a 3TB cap, for now.

For me, is it smart to leave it (the 5% chance of failure) between a 2TB and 1TB, or go for inverse-broke with 3x 1TB drives?
Also, should I bother going RAID, even though only one drive will really be used to projects and such?
 
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ronintexas
I configure my systems with an SSD for the OS/Programs (Samsung 840 EVO 128GB/250GB is my favorite) and a 1TB HDD for Data (WD Black is my favorite). If the computers are networked, I put backup drives that are large enough to backup the irreplaceable data (pictures, videos, documents, music, etc.)

My main rig has a 2TB WD black to backup the laptop, my wife's computer, my 2nd computer and my main rig - running about 70% free.

The theory - two drives rarely go out at the same time, so I will always have at least 1 copy of the data. On very important pictures and other documents - I have a cloud backup for those.

I never use RAID at home - even though I am an IT Pro who builds servers with RAID for a living....The proper use of...
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ronintexas

ronintexas

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Dec 10, 2012
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I configure my systems with an SSD for the OS/Programs (Samsung 840 EVO 128GB/250GB is my favorite) and a 1TB HDD for Data (WD Black is my favorite). If the computers are networked, I put backup drives that are large enough to backup the irreplaceable data (pictures, videos, documents, music, etc.)

My main rig has a 2TB WD black to backup the laptop, my wife's computer, my 2nd computer and my main rig - running about 70% free.

The theory - two drives rarely go out at the same time, so I will always have at least 1 copy of the data. On very important pictures and other documents - I have a cloud backup for those.

I never use RAID at home - even though I am an IT Pro who builds servers with RAID for a living....The proper use of RAID is getting a controller to handle the situation (usually costs around $1,000 to $1,500), the max amount of drives that connect (usually 10 - 20 drives) + 20% spare drive (i.e. in a 20 drive configuration, I have 4-5 spare drives on hand).

The problem with it at home - the inexpensive RAID that is built into motherboards and/or software RAID solutions don't handle the drives well in all cases - plus the cost is often prohibitive. I use SyncBack Free to backup the drives (it only does a differential daily - one a month I do a 100% backup).
 
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vgking96

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Dec 11, 2013
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My setup is definitely 2 Samsung 850 Pros (256GB & 128GB) and an undetermined amount of 1TB+ WD Black(s).

Funny enough, I actually do basically the same thing (Enterprise Server Cab Assembly/Testing) for VCE so, yay coincidences!

But yeah, RAID seemed a possibility because I do workstation tasks where a combination of mass scratch drives would be very usable, but I think I would be better served to part I on three drives in the future for that task, and go with one or two media/backup drives for my daily use, and use the sampler SSD for scratch/projects for now, which was my original intention, but thanks for the confirmation!
 
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