Used Ebay SAS enterprise drives=pool suicide? or useful budget option?

[Yamelesswrench]

I searched for this but unlike most other subjects I did not find any discussion, probably means its a bad idea or I am not using the right terms.

I am currently looking at used supermicro 846 24 bay X9 systems, they are all over ebay right now and this happens to give the ability to use SATA or SAS drives and I notice that used SAS drives are very cheap on Ebay, I am pretty budget limited and this is very attractive.

I am looking at $13 vs $40 per usable TB, used 3TB SAS at z3 vs 4TB WD reds at Z2, a very substantial discount that has me considering used drives. used SAS drives make hot and cold spares readily affordable.

I have a mix of replaceable and irreplaceable data, the irreplaceable data will be backed up to my existing sinology NAS. (family photo's are also "in the cloud") the replaceable data is tv shows and movies etc, and comprise the bulk of my data, the potential loss would be annoying but not mission critical.

What has been your experience with used SAS drives? I figure there will be failures but will it be one every once in a while or will they be a constant problem? in a pool of 8 drives I could handle a drive loss per year and be ok with them at that price.

Any particular models to look for? I figure 15K is a waste of energy, my network is is currently 1GBe but a 10GBe will be in my future within the lifetime of the NAS when components come down in price.

 

[Constantin]

I’d go directly with a known vendor with a track record like goharddrive.com.

I’d buy direct with a credit card to avoid the eBay/amazon/etc surcharge.

I would avoid buying a huge array (846) unless you really need the room / # of hard drives. Don’t get me wrong, the case is beautifully built. But if you’re buying it solely to store a lot of small drives, you may up wasting money due to electricity costs.

There is nothing wrong with building a big pool of disks if there is a use case (lots of IOPS, for example)... but you better go in with open eyes regarding the operational cost of keeping all those disks spinning.

If this array is for permanent storage, consider a Z3 like I did, with a limited number of disks. The $/TB is not that different whether you buy 1,4,6 or 8TB drives and the performance difference in your use application between SATA and SAS is likely negligible.

So I’d buy fewer drives at higher capacity, used if necessary, and count my savings. At least up here in the northeast (0.25$/kWh) it does make a difference.

 

[Yamelesswrench]

Mods: thank you for the move, I had not yet found the hardware subforum before I posted this question.

Thank you for the reference to a drive vendor, used drives are certainly a risk and a known souce is helpful.

My interest in the 846 is primarily for cost and format reasons not necessarily for any desire to have 24 drives. although taking the fear of ever running out of drive bays is reassuring.

Plan A: I do have a very old but quality PC power and cooling full tower with 8 5.25 bays, it could work. but by the time I buy the board, cpu, memory, power supply, 5.25 to 3.5 drive bay adapters, cables and fans etc. even going used 2 gens back on the board and CPU etc it runs into the price of a used 846. the plan may come back to this more traditional tower, its biggest advantage is better noise control. but:

Plan B: I have been interested in rack mount for a while now, we just moved here and last year the house has no ethernet at all, a problem but also a blank canvas! I quickly cobbled together a rats nest on a shelf, modem, router, Synology NAS, 2 switches, wifi AP and cat 5 cables literally strung along the walls to key places just to get up and running, Thank god my Wife loves me and has put up with it this long.

Along with this NAS project is a proper home network, rack mount patch panels, UPS/115Vac, modem router switch's etc either on rack shelves or direct rack mount, to organize the wire mess and get more stuff into less space cleanly. a high mounted 1/4 rack could really clean things up and not take up floor/desk/shelf space. and having a rackmount NAS plays into this well, the 24 bay is mostly because I hear 2u is quieter than 1U, and 4U quieter than 2U, although noise is still a problem in rack mount that must be addressed. the 24bay 4U also gives flexibility for full height pci cards and aftermarket full size CPU coolers etc, I am hoping to work with the existing fans though through the fan control scripts linked here.

I referenced 3T used SAS and 4TB WD red just because of they are the bottom of the price curve for their respective class, with both larger and smaller drives being more expensive /TB. while 3/4TB is the price per TB sweet spot drive electrical cost seams basically fixed no matter of capacity, so north of that is the total cost of ownership sweet spot but I haven't figured where yet.

we pay i think we pay $0.12 per KWh, but we buy a lot of it, AC runs 9 to 10 months of the year here in FL. waste heat is also a consideration, it has to be paid for twice, once to make it, and again to move it outside.

I really don't know what I want for a pool yet, I have about 6TB of Data right now, thinking I need at minimum 10TB to start possibly 16TB as I have been deleting things to make space for new things for 2 years now. every drive in the house is full and disorganized, only the NAS has any automatic redundancy, its mostly basic media and backup storage, about the most IO intensive thing I do is search for duplicates, and that is where I find the limits of the synology NAS, it takes nearly a week.

I also want to run Plex, the kids can currently on get their movies on the living room PC, and the three of them fight over it, would love to be able to stream to their own TV's,

I would also like to set up a surveillance system, and that will be at least stubbed out in the network, but that is out of the budget for the foreseeable future.

At the upper limit I hear 11 drives is a maximum for z3 Vdev, I haven't figured out why yet. but 11 drives and a hot spare makes for a %50 occupancy in a 24 drive chassis and seams like a logical maximum number of drives for my use

 

[nephri]

In server appliance (datacenter, ...) generally they moves out their disks every 3 years
So, you will see generally SAS used disks and most of times they works just "fine" and with very attractives prices

Personally, i never had issues with them but when i bought them, i always take more than needed for having spares (1 or 2 disks)

 

[John Doe]

my personal experience in the past 4 years (looking for a proper case) is, that I do not want to have enterprise stuff.
it is loud, sometimes hard to replace (maybe won't find the same PSU etc. or really expensive if you need to have it now)

for me 8x 5.25 & atx is the very best tower, you can just use conventional atx PSUs, combine it with sharkoon vibe fixer (link) and you could use it in your living room. 2x silverstone 180mm fan (link) will cool everything down. since I have this set up, temperature of the drives have never reached 40 degrees celsius (even with 31°C inside and during pool scrub)

enterprise server racks are nice to look at, all parts can be exchanged very fast but they are loud, heavy, power consuming and most of the time just far beyond what is really needed.

can recommend to go with 6-8 drives each 10tb (raidZ2) and you will be happy for a long time.

sometimes you can find rack mountings for atx towers on ebay, that might be a good alternative for you.