The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Dead_Cowboy_ on 2025-03-28 01:36:45.
Hello there,
I am currently in the process of reworking my network storage. As it happens I am now in the need for some new drives. As an avid used buyer I was also looking into some older HDDs to do the job. However I am now wondering if a new drive would not give more bang for my bug.
My main problem however is that I don't actually need That much storage of high quality. I have a bunch of data I would not loose any sleep over missing, so I will just slap that on some drives and call it a day. For the data I actually care about 4TB would be plenty and for those small sizes new drives are pretty expensive per TB. So I wanted to run some older 3x2TB drives in RAID 5. I even found an offer for 6x2TB drives for 100 bugs, giving me plenty of spares at around the price for a new 4TB drive. However these drives are around 10 years old. Similar things hold true for some other platters I found with a bunch more than 50k hours, so those spares will likely be needed.
The usage however will be pretty light. This is not stuff I need to read or write to often, so most of the time the drives will be off. On average I access it maybe once a week or there about.
Eventually I will also setup a true, independent backup for the data, so I am not terrified of either the Raid nor single platter failing, but I want to delay playing that card for as long as possible.
With that said, the issue I am optimizing for is reliability per cost. I don't really care about speed. What could be exprected to last longer, redundancy with the life left in three crap HDDs with some spares or one fresh new drive? Or am I just too cheap and sould bite the bullet to fork over the necessary cash for a RAID of new disks?
Thank you for any advice :)
Tl;dr
What is more cost-effective as reasonably safe storage, bad drives in Raid or one single new drive?