Newegg WD Red 4TB Sale and the Math

[cmfisher4]

As I continue to fight with myself and shop around for the hardware I am going to finally purchase for my FreeNAS system, a Newegg sale on WD Red 4TB hit my mailbox this morning (promo code
EMCWXTW22). I did some math (prices, excepting this sale, for Amazon are comparable though in my experience I expect Amazon to follow the price within a few hours) for a RAIDZ-2 setup (4 disks) for the entire Red line of WD HDDs:
4x1TB (1.8TB usable) ~ $156 per TB
4x2TB (3.6TB usable) ~ $110 per TB
4x3TB (5.5TB usable) ~ $98 per TB
4x4TB (7.3TB usable) ~ $99 per TB (~$109 without sale)
So, with the sale, the price permium for the 4TB (look how big my hard drive is) is essentially wiped out.

- Chris

 

[jgreco]

I have often pointed out to people that they should consider the entire cost of the server vs the amount of usable space as the correct way to help determine the appropriate size of disk to acquire. Turns out that even for many relatively pricey selections, the larger drives are winners.

 

[cmfisher4]

Yup, it was either you or cyberjocks' posts where I got the idea for this holistic-approach math. Should have given you credit.

 

[jgreco]

Credit irrelevant, not my originsl idea. Just bringing business logic to a world where DIY'ers often focus on individual component cost. Makes sense for video cards or CPU's, less so when the ultimate goal is xxTB storage...

 

[cyberjock]

Also you can throw RAM into the mix. If you go with 10TB and 16GB of RAM that's a good match. But what about when you want 40TB of storage? Better include the price of the RAM in your "pool upgrade".

That's why when we get random users that show up with 8GB of RAM(the max their board can use) and they spent every dime they had on hard disks and we politely tell them how stupid they are. They argue that they are such hot stuff because they have 30TB of disk space, saved some money bybgoing through Newegg or Amazon while on sale. But you also have another cost.

You're about to be forced to buy a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM because 8GB won't give you anything resembling good performance with 40TB of storage. Then:

1. You didn't take our advice and you bought a motherboard that has an Realtek NIC and that doesn't work with FreeNAS? Oh, AND you bought a mini-itx box that has only 1 slot and you are forced to put an Intel NIC on it? Poor baby....$20 for a new NIC

2. What was that? Not all of your SATA ports work in FreeNAS? So now you need to buy an M1015 for your server so you can use all of your disks? Poor baby... $100 for a new M1015.

Wait.. your mini-itx already has that Intel NIC in the one slot it has so you can't use the Intel NIC and your M1015 at the same time? So now you're going to ship back all of the hardware you bought so you can buy the stuff we told you to buy in the stickies and probably in your own thread anyway! Poor baby...

And we see this stuff so regularly I could retire if I got $100 every time someone had this exact situation. I don't bother anymore. I'll tell you once. Don't listen, that's your time and money for not listening. I don't care if you buy Asus or MSI. I just laugh at the schmucks(no offense to jschmuck) that "knew better" than the more experienced builders and hand to mail back all of their hardware because they didn't listen to start with.

I've never had to return any hardware for any reason except that it was broken. But I have friends that work in the IT field and with every build, without exception, have to return a part and take the 15% restock fee hit because they really don't know better.

 

[SmallGuy]

I ask myself how to put 40TB in a mini-itx chassis? :D

 

[cyberjock]

you don't have to use a mini-itx chassis to use a mini-itx board. ;)

 

[jgreco]

well the u-nas chassis has support for 8 drives and is mini-itx... 32tb is close ;-)

 

[cyberjock]

Oh, but since I work for NASA and we have secret high tech hard drives(you know.. just like how we faked the moon landing and you morons bought it!) I have 100PB drives in my chassis ;)
/sarcasm

 

[Johhhn]

FYI- those same drives were on sale just a few weeks ago at the same place (Newegg).. I'm hoping Black Friday brings some real deals.

 

[cmfisher4]

Yes, I'm holding out for now. Slowly putting the system together. Going to order the mobo soon (X9SCM-F-O). Then, some ECC RAM, THEN the HDDs (unless they put up another sale that's too good to pass up).