Advice Please....

[MVC]

My current file server has 8 250GB WD RE2 drives in it for about 1.4 TB of storage in RAID 5. Now, I'm not out of space yet but I'm getting there so I'm looking at upgrade paths. If money were no object I'd just buy 8 1TB drives and replace the whole array. But, money is tight right now so I'm looking to upgrade in stages.

First, right now all 8 drives are in one array. I'm thinking that the next revision of this machine will see groups of 4 drives in separate arrays so I can run on 4 of them and use the other 4 for "upgrades" swapping between them. To that end, I'm thinking I could move all the info on the array to storage existing on other machines and at most I'd need one new 750GB drive for temporary storage. I could then take the array apart, replace 4 of the 250GB drives with 500GB drives (which are very cheap right now) and rebuild a new array the same size as I've got now, but only using half the drive bays. Then, when the 750GB drives (or even 1TB drives if I can hold off that long) come down in price I could swap out the remaining 250GB drives. Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary.

So, my question is: price wise, am I better off upgrading now using 500GB drives or should I wait until the 750GB drives come down a bit more in price and replace 4 drives with 750s rather than 500s? Currently, four WD 500GB RE2 drives are about $520 (4 x $130 at Newegg, though they may be cheaper elsewhere) and four 750GB WD RE2 drives are around $1,036 (4 x $259, also at Newegg). So, a 50% increase in space, 2GB nominal vs 3GB nominal, would cost almost twice as much $520 vs $1,036 right now. But, how soon will the price on the 750s drop? Especially since WD just came out with their own 1TB drive.

If the price on the 750s dropped down to $195 each they'd be the same price per GB (about 26 cents) as the 500GB drives. But, how long will that take? And, is it worth waiting for that to happen?

Opinions?

[Goshawk]

How close are you to filling your array? If your not super close, i would wait until the 750s drop in price a bit more.... it shouldn't be too long, Seagate is close to releasing they're 960gb ( at least the last time i checked ) That will drive the prices down quite i bit i'd imagine.

Have you thought about archiving the stuff you don't access a ton? What i try to do is archive the items i don't use that i want to save on an external enclosure with a large drive in it.

I've got a P5B Deluxe that is a folding rig / file server, running 2 RAID 1 arrays, one being 320gb for apps and other misc data, and the other being 500gb for music, video, and images. Once a week i grab my 500gb WD thats in a vantec Nextar3 eSATA enclosure and backup everything... then drag and drop my stuff that i don't use onto it.

Something like this might stave off upgrading you whole system and dumping a ton of money into an upgrade right now... you know as well as i do that it pays to wait ;)


~ Gos

[MVC]

Well.... I don't need an immediate upgrade, which is the main reason I'm pondering the issue rather than buying more hard drives right now. I've still got about 175GB free on the array and I could free up another ~300GB on other machines for "emergency" storage if I needed to.

FWIW, I do have all "critical" data backed up to a 750GB RAID 0 array on another machine so it would take a really strange set of occurrences for me to loose anything really important. But, I hate waiting until the last minute to make changes because then I'm limited to what's available at that point in time and to the then current prices. I'd rather do incremental changes at "good" price points. This is a file server, it doesn't need the latest and greatest, it just needs to work correctly every time.

Four 500GB drives (along with the four 250s I'd be retaining) would hold me for at least another 6-8 months and maybe longer. But, if the 750s are going to be dropping in price in the next couple of months it would probably be worth it to wait.

Decisions, decisions....