buy all at once or spreadout?

[somethingweird]

Home NAS situation

Like everyone - eventually reach that 80% mark - storage - do you buy all at once or spread out over time? Just wondering. They both have pro & cons of course - I'm trying to figure out the best of out the two.

 

[winnielinnie]

Buy what all at once? Harddrives? What would "all" be? How can you know how many drives you'll need?

Is this a new yet-to-be-started NAS? or is this an existing NAS?

 

[somethingweird]

Buy what all at once? Harddrives? What would "all" be? How can you know how many drives you'll need?

Is this a new yet-to-be-started NAS? or is this an existing NAS?

Buying hard drives - 5+ on existing systems for resilvering to bigger drives.

 

[winnielinnie]

It might make more sense to buy what you need now, and perhaps one extra drive for emergency replacements/resilvers.

The trajectory of SSDs and HDDs show a trend of lower prices and higher capacities as more time passes.

 

[Dice]

You probably need to provide further details on your pool setup to enable useful comments.

 

[wsoteros]

Personally, I like to buy once and cry once!

 

[somethingweird]

You probably need to provide further details on your pool setup to enable useful comments.

single vdev - z2 setup. Plan to resilver before I reach 80% storage. (I got some time, no rush.. hehe)

 

[Dice]

single vdev - z2 setup. Plan to resilver before I reach 80% storage. (I got some time, no rush.. hehe)

Alright. A z2 makes a difference.
Are you aware that you will not unlock additional capacity until all drives have been swapped to a new "smallest drive in vdev"-size?
Aka, if you have 6x 3TB drives now, and "cry a little bit" and get yourself 2x18TB to replace two of those 3TB drives - you will not gain any capacity att this point in time.

What size drive and what number of drives do you use in your z2? What drive size do you dream about getting?
This might influence decision making further.

 

[somethingweird]

Alright. A z2 makes a difference.
Are you aware that you will not unlock additional capacity until all drives have been swapped to a new "smallest drive in vdev"-size?
Aka, if you have 6x 3TB drives now, and "cry a little bit" and get yourself 2x18TB to replace two of those 3TB drives - you will not gain any capacity att this point in time.

What size drive and what number of drives do you use in your z2? What drive size do you dream about getting?
This might influence decision making further.

Yup - I know, I need to replace ALL drives before I get the new size.

I might be over thinking it -

I'm hoping to buy drive spread out because then they won't fail all at the same time vs buying them in one shot (which I did initially)

 

[Dice]

Yup - I know, I need to replace ALL drives before I get the new size.

I might be over thinking it -

I'm hoping to buy drive spread out because then they won't fail all at the same time vs buying them in one shot (which I did initially)

In order for that to happen you'll need massively bad luck, more so related to the particular batch you received. For example if they were magically of lesser quality (not likely imo) or poorly handled in the supply chain (more likely imo).
Buying at different times (somewhat in the same ball park) from the same place does not guarantee you're free from the problem.

I remember facing the same "optimization craving" as you, several years back. I bought from different vendors, and spread out the purchases.
I wasnt as impressed when I found out the manufacturing dates ...did not match the same timeline as I procured the drives.
Ie, the amount of control I hoped to gain, was lost in inventories out of my control.

I will never bother with spreading out in time again, but I'd consider buying from different vendors - only to spread my chanes in terms of supply chain handling, and letting inventory-turnaround times be the "time factor".

Good luck.