Recommendations for a HDD RAID + FreeBSD compatible RAID storage enclosure

SDK Chan

SDK Chan

Up until now I had HDDs in my PC case, but swapping out defect HDDs, and only being limited by 4 HDDs made me think about another solutions to get a HDD RAID system.
I don't know whether a hardware RAID makes any sense in 2025, but I want to create a RAID with 6 HDDs, 3 for the actual data, and 3 for mirroring.

I have two HDD brands in mind for NAS HDDs:
-> WD Red Pro
-> Seagate Ironwolf Pro
Are there any other recommendations, for long durable HDDs ?
Or, which of these two is a better money for value solution ?

As for the enclosure, it should of course be FreeBSD compatible, and preferably store up to 6 HDDs.
Enclosures are a new topic for me, and I don't know how I can get a software Raid to work with them.
Is it even possible to get a software raid at all with only one enclosure ?
Another thought of me would be to get two enclosures, putting the first 3 HDDS into one enclosure, and the other 3 HDDs into another.

The set up would be ZFS specific I guess.
 
The problem is finding a case with enough 5.25" slots to put the cage.

These are the cages I use right now:

I would not run Seagate, but I don't know whether there is current data confirming that.

There's no software problem. Just get a LSI SAS controller and plug it into that cage. Works out of the box.
 
cracauer@ said:
The problem is finding a case with enough 5.25" slots to put the cage.

These are the cages I use right now:

I would not run Seagate, but I don't know whether there is current data confirming that.

There's no software problem. Just get a LSI SAS controller and plug it into that cage. Works out of the box.
Click to expand...
Hmm...
I didn't find anything with 6 bays, but a interesting device with 5 bays.
One of my drives actually died 2 days ago, and I have a ZFS raid lvl. 2.
The 3 drives (WD Red WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0) which are still alive have 4 TB each.
It seems that the 3 drives left are plain WD RED drives.
If I get a WD Red Pro with the same size, could I just replace the plain WD Red with the WD Red Pro and expect that my RAID still works ?
 
hi, the knowledge we gained on ( SPARC ) servers is that a 7 HDD vdev RaidZ2 ZPOOL on a non-raid SATA/SAS controller will yield the most beneficial performance characteristics.

So you can grab a motherboard with 8 SATA connectors and run a 7 HDD Raidz2 with one spare HDD: TWO small mirrorred ( 128 / 256 GB ) SSD /NVME devices should be used as ZILOG intent log in front of the main RAIDZ2 vdev. Memory is cheap , so RAM is better than a L2ARC SSD.
This is what im running FreeNas/TrueNas on today using a supermicro board with 4 core XEON CPU + 64 GB Ram.
 
As suggested by others, finding a case with 3 x External 5.25" Bays will be an adventure.

There's plenty hot swap bays to choose from. Icy Dock gets mentioned, as does Silverstone.

I settled for a Fractal Design Define R5 case which had 2 x External 5.25" bays, in which I installed a three bay 3.5" hot swap enclosure from StarTech. The StarTech enclosure is cooled by a single integrated fan. It's connected to the motherboard SATA controllers.

I then put 8 x 3.5" 3TB cold-swap disks in a vertical stack, each directly behind a pair of 140mm fans. They run in a stripe of 4 mirrors, using two LSI SAS/SATA controllers (one for each side of each mirror).

The hot-swap bays are usually vacant. I need just one hot-swap bay to write the off-site backups to a 12TB disk. To deal with a dead RAID disk, I can slip a replacement into one of the hot-swap bays, partition it up, insert it into the ZFS configuration (a third mirror), and re-silver it. Then, at a convenient time, I can shut down the server, and switch out the dead disk for the new one. This minimises risk, as I always have a two good disks before removing the dead one.

Don't forget to enable SATA Hotswap in the BIOS...
 
cracauer@ said:
Yeah I don't think you want to hang 5 drives in RAID behind a single USB plug.
Click to expand...
Definitely not, but I want to create a ZFS RAID on the software level.
I think it is much more safe than using a hardware RAID, because once the controller breaks, all data is lost, I think.
I read somewhere that software RAID with todays hardware should be the preferred way.
 
Do not get SATA.
Get a SAS raid controller and connect SATA drives to that if needed. But you can get cheap SAS drives (both 2.5'' and 3.5'' if you know how to look)
Let me know if you want good used hardware stores.
 
SDK Chan said:
Definitely not, but I want to create a ZFS RAID on the software level.
I think it is much more safe than using a hardware RAID, because once the controller breaks, all data is lost, I think.
I read somewhere that software RAID with todays hardware should be the preferred way.
Click to expand...

Hardware RAID is out of the question for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top