Not our usual question here since this is more of a dev site, but since we have a general advice area for non-programming topics, I'd be interested in some input on this.
The machine in question is my media center / network storage rig. It does double duty for gaming and NAS since it's the machine that's easiest to just leave on 24/7. And is in the room that has the most stable power, the fuses blow out most of the time that room stays on. Living in NH power isn't the most stable/reliable thing hence it also being on a UPS This is separate from my low-power multi-display workstation I do... well, work on, but is where all my long-term network storage (on a RAID 1 mirror) is.
Current specs in terms of CPU and RAM are fine. i7 4770k with 24 gigs of RAM, it's just not the money to switch over to even a step sideways in tech yet despite being a six year old CPU. (and I have a spare CPU and mobo just in case).
What REALLY needs changing is storage, and if I list out the configuration and the hours it becomes apparent WHY.
1TB WD Caviar Black, 60% full, 78,905 hours
This has been by go-to as a boot drive since it was the fastest standard HDD of its day and never failed me, but with NINE YEARS continuous uptime it's time for it to retire. I didn't care it was a slow old SATA 2 drive, for the simple fact that I don't care how long this machine takes to boot/reboot since it almost never does! Where I don't understand the whole "use a SSD for fast boots" malarkey. Go get a coffee while waiting ONCE a day.
2x 4TB Seagate M000 in Raid 1 (mirrored), 40% full, 42,453 hours
This is set up as a network share and is where I keep all the business related stuff I work on. These have almost five years continuous 24/7 uptime on them. Given the mission critical nature of these they should probably get the boot as well.
4TB Seagate M0000, 67% full, 47,830 hours
Games, OS ISO's, Downloads
4TB Seagate M005, 93% full, 10,420 hours
Movie and audio storage, again LAN facing network share.
2tb Hibachi, 81% full -- 72,022 hours
Anything high fragmentation -- browser cache, torrents, downloads, etc. This is disk is hammered pretty hard and, well... 72K hours is over 8 years of again continuous uptime. Aka "replace BEFORE it fails"
That's a LOT of uptime for consumer level drives. That trusty old 1tb WD is ready to be put out to pasture, as is that 2tb hibachi deathstar. I'd also like to proactively replace the RAID array.
My original plan was for two 6tb drives to replace the raid array, a 12 tb for mass storage replacing the scratch drive and media drive, and a 1tb SSD... coming to around $900 USD.
But I just cannot justify the $170 to $180 per TB of that SSD, particularly when the entire config works out to 17tb total free space at $52.94 a gig...
So it got me thinking... IF I'm going to have a RAID array, just build a freaking raid array! It's not like this Asrock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer mobo doesn't support it.
As such, I'm looking at four 6tb 7200 RPM 256 meg cache Seagate Ironwolfs or Enterprise Capacity. Not sure yet which I favor and the price difference is negligible. In RAID 5 that gives me 18tb, all my storage would have single drive failure tolerance same as the RAID 1 would have given me, and drops the total price to around $700 -- that's around $39 per TB, spitting distance from the cost per TB of the single 12tb drive I was considering at $35/tb.
6tb drives are the optimal price to capacity right now at $29/tb.
Even better, the read times would be faster than any SATA SSD I could put in the rig! Though write times would still be at normal HDD speeds because... reasons. (parity access).
... and I'd still have two drive connectors free meaning I can make the low hours 4tb the new scratchspace and have one free for... the future.
I also like the idea because I have a rabid distrust of SSD's -- probably because I've replaced too many broken ones for other people. Since SSD's became the 'norm' I've seen ten times as many failures from people needing hardware help than I have ever seen in standard HDD's. EVEN from brands I'd expect to be on the ball like Samsung and Crucial. The brands constantly pimped as best performing and reliable!
But adding that all up it got me thinking... what about going SAS? It ends up $400 more bringing me up past the price of my original plan and does come with some heavier duty configuration headaches, but I would get 12gb/s throughput and 10K rpm enterprise class drives -- though I'm NOT convinced the performance increase of that is sufficient to justify the cost jump.
Only issue is that a good controller needs a PCIe x4 slot, which would drop my video card (GTX 1070) to x8 as there's only 16 lanes available... I know the performance difference on video cards with x16 is more placebo than fact, but still...
Though I could just go totally nutters and go with a RAID 10 array -- NOT financially viable.
I dunno, I'm having trouble deciding so that's why I'm asking for opinions. Attaching relevant poll. I afford any of the choices, but is it worth the extra money for either of the other choices? I'm leaning towards the cheapest of these options because it looks like the least headaches, highest reliability, and, well... it's cheaper. I mean, in theory that SHOULD give me sequential reads twice that of the best SATA SSD given the read speeds of 7200 RPM 6tb drives. Close enough?
I do have the money for any of these three options... so it really comes down to which is the best bang for my buck. Explaining why YOU would favor one over the other choices will help too.
Just an update, I missed an obvious configuration option that will allow me to test. The 1tb SSD and the four 6tb HDD's. Still comes out well under the $900 of my original plan.
I have another machine that doesn't need a massive drive, but I was planning to toss in the 4tb I have with only 10k hours on it. (only). What I think I'm gonna do is order a 1tb SSD and the 4x 6tb HDD's and actually do an Apples to Apples comparison. If the RAID 5 array wins for my uses I'll put the 1tb SSD in that other computer. If not, I'll stick to putting the 4tb with "only" 10k hours on it in there.
It's a sound plan and gives me the chance to have an informed opinion instead of wildly guessing.
But thanks all around for the input. I was actually surprised at the number of pro SSD responses, and it only reinforced the fact I felt I was second guessing myself with the all HDD response I was initially favoring.
I'll post results in a few weeks when I have all the parts in hand and have a chance to take them head-to-head.
Get SSD to have speed. I replace my 6 years old HDD with SDD. It is 3 times faster for Android development studio. Especially build time where smaller size files are copied. Even copy of big files are three time faster in my machine.
It still use my old HDD for backing up files which I rarely uses.
Not an expert in this field, but after trying an SSD I'll never go back!
I use the combo. SSD for OS and other software. A normal HDD for media files.
Defo get SSD and HDD.
SSD for OS, programs + core games
HDD for other games and standard files. + RAID.
For the HDD's I defo wouldn't go any lower than 7200RPM.
Also, Have you considered the hybrid or helium drives? They might be a slightly better option for long term media storage.
Another option to consider might be moving it to a microserver? Like this HP one? That way you can move all your shared stuff and just access it without further degrading your full rig.
I've not done/seen anything with the SAS models so couldn't comment on those apart from the 12gb/s is quite appealing, but unless you can get a deal it's probably not worth the extra dosh.
Finally, nice CPU. Really wouldn't bother switching to a new one any time soon unless you need the extra cores, in which case probs a new mobo and hexacore/similar CPU might be in order. :)
So, I think I'd go with the $900 approach but I don't think I'd go for a 1TB version, I'd drop the capacity and just optimise file/program/game locations. And I'd probs get the microserver and just stick all the RAID HDD's in there.
For compatibility issues:
uk.pcpartpicker.com
hmm if you really use the storage for database access or gaming or things that need high throughput I would go for the SAS one.
else I would go for SATA and for the main 'hard disk' I would go for a SSD raid 1 with just 1 TB each.
And I would use a software raid because hardware raids with a raid controller take away the parity calculation from your cpu but still most of the articles and forums I raid mentioned that they sometimes fail in a way where your raid basically is worthless.
So I take the performance impact over the possible data loss.
Oh and since I am not sure what you want to achieve I didn't vote :)
Ok, little update -- I bit the bullet and went SSD... but not just any SSD.
I could not justify the cost of the write increase over the RAID on a SATA SSD. Couldn't do it. $170 a tb is nuts for barely a hair over twice the read time of a single HDD (where at 6tb $30/tb) it's even if the writes are spectacularly improved.
However, 14x the speed of a HDD? I'm willing to go to $300/tb for that... so I did. M.2 PCIe x4.
Now, I'm on a Asrock Z87 Fatal1ty Killer motherboard, which doesn't even officially support NVME, without which you can't boot from it. The board is six years old and NVME is bleeding edge.
... but their beta drivers DO theoretically add support, so I decided to try it. Got a cheap Syba M.2 to PCIe x4 converter and a 500gb WD Black NVME 3D drive. Used AKOMEI to copy the existing boot partition from the decade old WD Caviar Black HDD (hey, black to black!) and sure enough, boots right up... to the point that I think windows now starts up in less time than the bloody EUFI firmware does in dicking around. From end of BIOS to the login page I doubt it takes more than three seconds.
... and the numbers? Well, not what is advertised or the theoretical limits, but I'll take it.
Yeah... SATA can go suck an egg. THIS is what it takes for me to embrace SSD's as a technology.
Though honestly we've been hobbled by ATA's legacy -- land's sake at the heart of it the core protocol is still built on the concepts of the 16 bit AT / ISA Bus with nothing more than kludge upon kludge and hack upon hack layered atop it.
Sometimes you just need a clean break in technology.
Otherwise I'm just sitting here with my thumb up my backside waiting on the HDD's since they (NewEgg) could only ship ONE of them to me due to low stock levels. :/
That said, I really wasn't expecting the parts to arrive TODAY since I ordered them around 1PM yesterday. That's service.