Is 4x4TB internally on Mac Pro 3,1 in RAID10 a good idea?

[trqchw]

I currently have four 1TB Samsung F3s internally in RAID10 configuration, for a 2TB volume. Has worked great so far.

Thinking about replacing all four drives with hitachi's 4TB internal drives, using the same software RAID10 configuration for an 8TB volume.

Any reason why I shouldn't do this? For some reason the thought of four such densely packed drives internally makes me nervous. As it is I get a resonance hum with my existing drives which can't be ignored but I've learnt to live with.

Advice would be much appreciated!

Edit: I should add that my boot disk is a separate SSD connected instead of the secondary optical drive. That'll obviously stay as it is.

 

[dave-tx]

I currently have four 1TB Samsung F3s internally in RAID10 configuration, for a 2TB volume. Has worked great so far.

Thinking about replacing all four drives with hitachi's 4TB internal drives, using the same software RAID10 configuration for an 8TB volume.

Any reason why I shouldn't do this? For some reason the thought of four such densely packed drives internally makes me nervous. As it is I get a resonance hum with my existing drives which can't be ignored but I've learnt to live with.

Advice would be much appreciated!

Edit: I should add that my boot disk is a separate SSD connected instead of the secondary optical drive. That'll obviously stay as it is.

I've been running 3x3TB drives in the same RAID configuration for quite a while now, and I've been pretty happy with it. Booting SSDs on a Sonnet Tempo.

I think you'll like this configuration.

 

[VirtualRain]

I currently have four 1TB Samsung F3s internally in RAID10 configuration, for a 2TB volume. Has worked great so far.

Thinking about replacing all four drives with hitachi's 4TB internal drives, using the same software RAID10 configuration for an 8TB volume.

Any reason why I shouldn't do this? For some reason the thought of four such densely packed drives internally makes me nervous. As it is I get a resonance hum with my existing drives which can't be ignored but I've learnt to live with.

Advice would be much appreciated!

Edit: I should add that my boot disk is a separate SSD connected instead of the secondary optical drive. That'll obviously stay as it is.

I'm sure it will be fine. It's a good solution for redundancy and performance. I'd still recommend you occasionally backup anything that's critical to an external that you store offsite.

 

[deconstruct60]

As it is I get a resonance hum with my existing drives which can't be ignored but I've learnt to live with.

Depends upon where you think the resonance is coming from. The interaction between the drives or just the mountings individually adding up to a resonance.

NAS optimized drives have features to help limit with the first. For example:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7258/battle-of-the-4-tb-nas-drives-wd-red-and-seagate-nas-hdd-faceoff

If on fixed budget probably would have to shift to a lower capacity drive. If not having audibly noticable issues then mainstream drive probably not much difference. But if have very noticalble resonance symptoms then drives designed for that context are probably have better long term outcome if going to target keeping them for entire length of warranty/expected lifetime.


For the second issue, may just want to simply check the mountings and with 1-2 drives during your transition. Some of that can be from just loose fit in the sleds. Some passive damping could reduce that a bit.

 

[slughead]

I've been using Apple's software RAID for about 8 years now with RAID 10's in 4 drive configs and it's been perfect. Even when I've had faulty PSU in my enclosures, killing drives and messing things up, the rebuilding process has been painless and has never resulted in a single lost file. Could not be happier.