Opinion on optimal storage

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chirsxblade

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Dec 27, 2014
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Hello. I've digging through threads on here and other forums and have been met with a lot of conflicting opinions and downright contradictions. I didn't know storage was such a subjective topic. I wanted to explain my situation and get some ideas on what may be best for my situation. I have recently upgraded my PC and have decided to take the old Mobo, CPU, and gpu, and throw it into a HTPC. I also want this PC to act as sort of a NAS. I'll be accessing files on it from my main PC, my laptops, my phone, and occasionally outside of the home. Because of this I'm wanting to up my storage game. I'm gonna lay out my requirements, for lack of a better word, and the specs of the PC in case that may be an issue.

1.) Speed isn't the most important thing to me. I don't mind waiting a bit for a file to load, but I don't want to be waiting 6 or so minutes. I was thinking because of this a HDD with at least 7200 RPM would be ideal.
2.) A lot of the files on this PC will be games. So I know I'm going to need a decent size. How much would you recommend? I was thinking 4TB but I am unsure if this will meet my needs.
3.) Should I just buy one large HDD or should I buy two and run them on RAID? If not should I buy an extra HDD for backup?
4.) Since this system will be handling a lot of data warranty seems to be of importance. I know the newer Seagate pro HDDs have a 5 year warranty so something in that range is definitely preferred.
Specs are Intel i4-4440, RX 470 4GB, H81M-P33 micro atx board, and a 120 GB SSD for the OS.
thanks in advance.
 
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geofelt
Read this article on the WD rainbow:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Understanding-the-WD-Rainbow-674/

1) 7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm makes a difference in latency. That is, how long it takes to find the starting point for sequential reading.
It is more important for small random I/O which is what windows does mostly. Hence the recommendation for a ssd for windows.
The actual data transfer rates are determined by the density of the platter and, to some extent the rpm of the drive.

2) You can buy hard drives up to 14tb in size. If you think 4tb, go with that. Just plan on being able to add another HDD if/when you need it.

3) The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 is that you can recover from a drive failure...
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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Read this article on the WD rainbow:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Understanding-the-WD-Rainbow-674/

1) 7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm makes a difference in latency. That is, how long it takes to find the starting point for sequential reading.
It is more important for small random I/O which is what windows does mostly. Hence the recommendation for a ssd for windows.
The actual data transfer rates are determined by the density of the platter and, to some extent the rpm of the drive.

2) You can buy hard drives up to 14tb in size. If you think 4tb, go with that. Just plan on being able to add another HDD if/when you need it.

3) The value of raid-1 and it's variants like raid-5 is that you can recover from a drive failure quickly. It is for servers that can not tolerate any interruption.
Modern hard drives have a advertised mean time to failure on the order of 500,000+ hours. That is something like 50 years. SSD's are similar.
With raid-1 you are protecting yourself from specifically a hard drive failure. Not from other failures such as viruses, operator error,
malware, raid controller failure fire, theft, etc.
For that, you need external backup. If you have external backup, and can tolerate some recovery time, you do not need raid-1

4) Of more importance than warranty is reliability. Such statistics are hard to come by, but I think WD and Hitachi are reputed to be a bit better in that regard.
If anything, design your HTPC with adequate cooling. Heat is the enemy.
 
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