New Server Hard Drive Question

[MrBitey]

Hi there,

 

we will be upgrading our server in the new financial year (primary school, around 450 children). The folks we have a tech contract have quoted for a system with Server 2012 and a 1TB hard drive. I suggested that 3TB might be better (after all our 5 year old server has 600GB so 1TB doesn't seem like a huge upgrade).

They seem reluctant to do that saying it will cost lost more and that a larger drive will be slower.

 

Now I may be being foolish but looking on Amazon, basic 3TB drives seem to be about 40-50 pounds more than 1TB which is not prohibitive.

Am I missing something there?

 

Big question though, in your experience, does a larger drive bring with it a performance hit?

 

thanks very much in advance for any help!

 

MrB

[Michael]

No it doesn't slow it down and it's perfectly OK to use 1TB drives in RAID1 or RAID5 with newer controllers.

 

If it's just a single 1TB hard disk and not 2 x 500GB, then where's your redundancy? Personally I'd go for 3 x 1TB, giving you 2TB useable in RAID5.

[twin--turbo]

I would not touch a production server without RAID.

[Arthur]

does a larger drive bring with it a performance hit?

Larger hard drives are almost always faster since they have a higher areal density (assuming you are comparing drives with similar RPMs).

 

Increasing storage density of a medium almost always improves the transfer speed at which that medium can operate. This is most obvious when considering various disk-based media, where the storage elements are spread over the surface of the disk and must be physically rotated under the "head" in order to be read or written. Higher density means more data moves under the head for any given mechanical movement.

 

basic 3TB drives seem to be about 40-50 pounds more than 1TB which is not prohibitive.

As others have already mentioned you will want some form of RAID for redundancy (1, 5, 6 etc.) and ideally drives that are designed for RAID arrays such as the WD Red, Se or Re HDDs.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Arthur

[dhicks]

we will be upgrading our server in the new financial year (primary school, around 450 children). The folks we have a tech contract have quoted for a system with Server 2012 and a 1TB hard drive.

 

You need to check if that's actually a single 1TB harddrive. Most likely (I'd hope...) that's actually a RAID array of fast 300GB SAS drives or something and they've just said "1TB harddrive" to simplify things. You'd also hope that the "Server 2012" part of things means a VM system based on Server 2012, with the capability to run several concurrent virtual machines. If they are actually selling you a server with a single 1TB harddrive then you maybe need to start looking for a new company to provide support.

[Roberto]

If they are actually selling you a server with a single 1TB harddrive then you maybe need to start looking for a new company to provide support.

 

This. A million times. Though I'd personally add that the whole "adding a bigger hard drive will make it slower" thing would already make me doubt their competence to build/sell me a server.

Edited February 4, 2014 by Roberto

[localzuk]

I think we need to see the spec of what they've actually suggested before judging.

[PotNoodleTech]

Exactly, what's the exact spec of the server? They might have specced the server with 16 x 10k SAS drives in Raid 50 with Hot spare giving 1TB usable space, upgrading the 16 SAS drives to give 3tb space would be VERY expensive!