SAS Unknown age vs new 7200 SATA drive for server?

[DCUK6]

Hi All,

 

I need a server for a few month to allow me to reinstall the entire network.

 

We have a old admin server thats coming out of retirement as we cant afford a new server.

 

This server will be the DC,Print and file server for a little while whilst i get everyone testing this new domain before finally wiping the existing servers and relieving the load on this temp server.

 

Question is, not sure when this server was taken out of action.

It has HP 146gb SAS drives in of unknown age.

I have in their wrappers some new WD black 750GB SATA 7500rpm hard drives

 

Which would you use for a raid 10?

 

Im tempted to stick with the sata's and a external backup drive because i know the age and history.

[3s-gtech]

Generally, the SAS drives will be designed to run 24/7 and will be more reliable. If you need space though, needs must. I put a set of four WD Black 7200rpm 500GB 2.5" disks in our Exchange server four years ago (RAID 10, holding the mailstore). In that time I've had one fail, and the server is fast and reliable. Cheap too, of course. I also lost one of the much older SAS drives that hold the OS, so in reality the failure rate for the SATA drives has been lower than these SAS drives. YMMV.

[mikkydoos]

I know this isn't any help to you, and I'm not being sanctimonious, but have you tried explaining to your school that if they don't invest in their IT then they cant expect much out of it.

 

Anyway, what I'd think of doing would be use the WD's - as they're new by the sound of it. Put them in a RAID10 array. At least then you can suffer two drive failures (if you're lucky).

 

Or 2 in RAID 1 with 2 spares for more failure tolerance - if you can take the storage hit.

 

In any case, I'd junk the old SAS drives.

[DCUK6]

Its a tough one to choose. Wish there was a crystal ball.

 

For the data drives im going to have to use the SATAs, The WD black have a 5 year warranty so hopefully last 6 month before i can use the 14 300gb sas in the newer server.

 

Need to think up some new passwords to.

Edited March 23, 2017 by DCUK6

[mavhc]

RAID 10 SATA should be fine for a few months, assuming it's not expecting masses of IO, if you only have 1 server I guess it's a primary.

 

Update the firmware for everything and soak test the drives with spinrite or similar