mdrabble Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 My techie is just finishing off replacing 50 HDD with SSD drives - which mean we have 50 x 250Gb hard drives going spare and rather than let them gather dust, I did wonder about creating a large array of some kind. Any one any suggestions how I can connect 50x250gb drives in to some array.
sted Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 i looked at it once. there are motherboards that can take a lot of sata drives and you can get raid cards that can take a lot but in the end i came to the conclusion what am i doing it for, am i solving any problem or am i just trying to find a use for old stuff and diddnt take it any further. sure a couple in a nas box etc might be a handy way having an extra backup but is it actually worth doing? at best you would have 12tb capacity in an array with disks that are desktop drives so probably not best suited to the job anyway. so raid 1 them and its 6tb of probably slow storage. unless you have a need for it id be tempted to just let them gather dust
djm968 Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 I looked at one of these for a School who did something similar, they decided against it based on the cost. (a big hammer and the skip was their preferred and the cheaper option to dispose of them) https://www.ballicom.co.uk/qnap-ts-1635-4g-.p1297953.html?ref=PLA&gclid=CjwKCAjwj4zaBRABEiwA0xwsP7Q5g8CKz472jwfb1hoBtmGFiOlW4rEE99cgjWIrl0tF1Y1f_XGcURoC4WkQAvD_BwE
difinity Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 Backblaze have 60 drives in a each of their pods. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/
sonofsanta Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 We went through this a few years back with 140 or so HDDs, mostly 250GB. Looked at the motherboards that can support 12 drives or whatever, but you ended up spending more money on them than you would on a single 3TB drive anyway. In the end, this was the best use I found for old hard drives: * Dismantle outer casing * Remove one of the magnetic platters * Get a 10p coin and place it in the hole in the middle. Should fit almost perfectly. * Tape it in place with insulation tape (gaffa tape would probably also work) * You now have a very reflective lid that balances perfectly on top of your mug and keeps your hot drink warm when the phone inevitably rings just as you finish making a brew 1
Arthur Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 Any one any suggestions how I can connect 50x250gb drives in to some array. What about a motherboard designed for cryptocurrency mining (£60-£200) + lots of cheap SATA PCIe x1 cards (~£40 each)? That would work, wouldn't it?
mdrabble Posted July 9, 2018 Author Posted July 9, 2018 Some good suggestions...… ultimately I think cost will be against me Was nealry tempted with the QNAP TS-1635 NAS server as I have some 60GB SSD gathering dust
christhetech Posted July 9, 2018 Posted July 9, 2018 For what you are going to gain in terms of storage space, it's really not worth the hassle. Desktop SATA drives are going to be either 5400 or 7200 rpm, so not the quickest, and 250GB per disk would give you at the very most 6TB of really slow storage space. The cost of putting together an array like this would outweigh the benefits.
synaesthesia Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 With 120GB SSD's now at £20 I'd rather keep a few spare SSD's on the shelf. We're chucking away anything under 1TB and no doubt the vast majority of 1-2TB drives we have lying around will sat unused in a cupboard until they finally get chucked. Just get rid.
Arthur Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 (edited) Keep them on the shelf for when the SSD's fail No one is going to want to use a PC with a HDD when all of the others in the classroom have SSDs. They are so sloooooowww! HDDs are like 512MB or 1GB DDR3 DIMMs. Next to useless these days. Like @synaesthesia I would also bin them (after erasing). Edited July 10, 2018 by Arthur
3s-gtech Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 Keep them on the shelf for when the SSD's fail Could take a while. We were losing maybe five HDDs a year, now we lose one SSD maximum (touch wood). IMO, ditch the lot. We managed to sell our main batch when we upgraded to SSDs, but I still have a large number left, with no value at all.
ricki Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 You could put them in a Nas but to be honest they are small and old and likely to to unreliable Richard
chrisakak9 Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 (edited) wipe and keep a couple spare then Dispose/ebay the rest Sent from my SM-A510F using EduGeek mobile app Edited July 10, 2018 by chrisakak9
ADMaster Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 I've had a bad experience with SSD I'm hoping this year's batch are better. I've had more than 1/3 fail. The HDD was a quick fix to keep the machine running while the SSD was RMAed.
3s-gtech Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 ...that's way beyond the norm. I had a high failure rate with our initial small batch of Crucial M4s some years back, but I have 300+ Kingston V300s and they've been reliable. Some controllers and SSDs don't play well together, but that's unusual.
synaesthesia Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 Aye, we had a batch of nasty Crucials a while back but I think we've had 1 failure now with roughly 300 SSDs over the last couple of years. Majority are Kingston V300s and A300s with a few Sandisk Ultras and Samsung 840s. Oh, and a crap batch from Origin Storage (TLC drives) but they immediately replaced the whole lot with MLC counterparts instead
ADMaster Posted July 10, 2018 Posted July 10, 2018 I finally got them to send me replacements for the remaining 2/3 so that's a summer project. So far none of the replacements have failed.
PotNoodleTech Posted July 11, 2018 Posted July 11, 2018 I've had a bad experience with SSD I'm hoping this year's batch are better. I've had more than 1/3 fail. The HDD was a quick fix to keep the machine running while the SSD was RMAed. What SSD make and model?
mtillbrook Posted July 11, 2018 Posted July 11, 2018 I'm guessing you are looking for something more intelligent than me saying "eBay"?
ADMaster Posted July 11, 2018 Posted July 11, 2018 What SSD make and model?EDGE 240GB SE847 SSD They have a sandforce controller. The bios would reportSandforce 200026bb instead of EDGE SSD when they failed. I suspect a bad batch none of the replacements have failed and they just sent me enough to replace the ones that haven't failed yet. The other SSD fail I had the voicemail server no idea what model though.
Arthur Posted July 11, 2018 Posted July 11, 2018 (edited) They have a sandforce controller. SandForce controllers were notorious for issues back when OCZ was still around. It really isn't surprising you had lots fail. Unfortunately I reckon the replacements will fail at some point too. Major flaw in SandForce SSD controllers OCZ fails to kill off Blue Screen Of Death issue If you purchased the SSDs from CDW could you get them to supply an alternative make/model given the high failure rate? Like @3s-gtech and @synaesthesia, my school has over 300 SSDs (mostly Samsung, but also SanDisk, Intel, Crucial, SK Hynix, Toshiba, AData) and I have only had one or two failures where the drive was completely dead. Edited July 11, 2018 by Arthur
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