Richard Zimmerman wrote: > hw wrote: >>Next question: you want RAID, how much storage do you need? Will 4 or 8 >> 3.5" drives be enough (DO NOT GET crappy 2.5" drives - they're *much* >> more expensive than the 3.5" drives, and >smaller disk space. For the >> price of a 1TB 2.5", I can get at least a 4TB WD Red. > > I will second Marks comments here. Yes, 2.5" drive enterprise drives have > been an issue. +1 for the WD Red drives, so far 3.5" w/ 2tb and 4tb > drives, ZERO issues. I've had good luck with HGST NAS drives too. > Unfortunately, that will come to an end soon (With WD owning HGST). > Yeah - the WD Reds, and there are Seagate also NAS-rated, are about 1.3 or so times the price of consumer-grade, but work in servers (consumer grade WILL NOT*), whereas enterprise-grade are about 3 times the price of consumer grade, and the quality of NAS-rated vs enterprise isn't especially noticeable. * The big differences, in addition to quality, between NAS-rated, or enterprise-rated, vs consumber/desktop grade are this: the desktop REALLY, REALLY want to spin down, whenever they can, and, most significant: TLER (time limit error recovery, I think). The consumer or desktop or laptop drives will, on encountering a hardware error, will keep trying for up to two *minutes*. The ones meant for server give up and relocate the sector after seven *seconds*. Servers gag and actively dislike a drive when it takes too long....