Buy a spare disk?

[kanewolf]

How many of you buy a cold spare disk when buying a disk set for in a NAS? I am thinking about getting a DS409 after the relatively positive review and was thinking about buying a fifth disk so that I have a matching set spare available for when a disk fails. Anybody else buy N+1 disks???

 

[Osamede]

Why would you do that? The price of storage goes down by the week. By the time you need that disk - and you dont know when, the price will haev dropped a lot. Buy it when you need it. Takes a day, two at the most to get a replacement.

You are supposed to be backing up your data regularly anyway. So extra disk is neither here nor there.

 

[kanewolf]

Assuming you can still get the same model of disk you started with. Theoretically is shouldn't make a difference, but you never know. Who knows when Samsung (or any manufacturer) is going to decide to get out of the disk drive business?? Maybe it is just me, but 100 bucks seems like cheap insurance for $1K investment.

This NAS is my backup device, so the "backup" is the original computers hard drives.

How much different is this than having a "hot spare" configured in your RAID device? Maybe I have been in enterprise data centers too long

 

[MrFixit]

I am with you kanewolf. I have a spare of exactly the same type in my desk draw for both my Raid 5 and Raid 1 arrays. If a disk goes down I want it all back up and running sweetly as soon as. Waitng a couple of days or having a problem with a different drive is not somwthing I want to contend with.

 

[cdrsteve]

How many of you buy a cold spare disk when buying a disk set for in a NAS? I am thinking about getting a DS409 after the relatively positive review and was thinking about buying a fifth disk so that I have a matching set spare available for when a disk fails. Anybody else buy N+1 disks???

Ditto. I have two QNAP TS-509P's with five WD 1T RE3 drives in each. One NAS is in RAID-5 and the other is setup as individual drives (used as share backup device). I keep a spare RE3 available jjust in case a drive drops out due to mechanical issues. I have already RMA replaced on drive due to noise and random errors and having a spare available kept me running with no system degradation. Even though the RE3's are a bit pricey at times, it is worth the peace of mind to have one at the ready.

 

[Osamede]

Assuming you can still get the same model of disk you started with.

Why would you want the same model and size of drive that you bought a year or two ago, locked in at the old and higher price per GB? Thats like paving the cowpath - if I followed such practice I would right now be installing an 18 month old 500GB "spare" drive at a purchased cost of $100 plus interest on the cash - instead of acquiring a 1TB today for less than the same price

Dunno about you but I am always upgrading drive size anyway. And if you have many drives, they will gradially die over time as expected, so replacing at time of death gives you a natural and steady upgrade.

There are many things one should buy and keep unused in a closer for ages - but IMO hard drives are not one of those things.

 

[corndog]

Hello all,

Just to add a different thought here, I've read in a few places that some storage experts are shying away from the idea of always getting exact matched disks for RAID sets.

If you get all the same disks, they have presumably been made all in the same factory at roughly the same time, under the same conditions. This MAY mean that whatever quirks or defects that result in failure later on could be in all the drives, which raises the probability that more than one will fail at the same time.

Best way to mitigate this risk is to get very different drives - different manufacturers even. But try to match performance specs as best you can.