What to do with 15 1TB Drives?

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frankhuzzah

Weaksauce
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Apr 18, 2007
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At work the previoius IT regime had some crazy backup solution utilizing like 15-1TB WD Green drives. They are the older WD10AECS models. My boss doesn't have any interest in them, so I said I'd take them, but, I really don't know what to do with them! I do have a home media server, and I could probably use more storage.

What do you all think? What would you do with a free 15TB?
 
Sell it? Upgrade slower systems? Donate to charity?

Get a enclosure that could hold that many and just use as a backup for everyone in family... Or use to make multiple backups of important data and store in different locations.
 
Sell and buy fewer larger drives.

Or make 15 backup copies of your most important data..
 
I'd build a file server.

15 1TB drives in RAID-Z2 or 3 is still 12-13TB of storage. You can do it with fairly cheap hardware.
 
and here I am short storage with drives dying......and no budget :) I accept donations :)
 
First thing I'd do is check the smart info on them. My first WHS drives are the WD10EACS and they are starting to die off now. Mine have 35,000+ hours on them. If these were in an IT environment and running 24/7 they probably have that much if not more.
 
2 IBM M1015s from Ebay for a total of like $80-200 (deals vary), either ZFS RAID-Z3 them all or RAID-Z 5 of them + RAID-Z2 10 of them or 3xRAID-Z of 5 each. From left to right you get the most flexibility of drive failure allowances, but rebuild speed from left to right is slower to faster. Personally I think one huge RAID-Z3 is fine for home purposes, as the long rebuild time when a drive fails shouldn't be a big issue.

Or sell them if you have no use for 'em.

It's just too bad that the Greens are crap.
 
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I'd buy a couple! My home media server could use some storage space, nearing the end of my 4TB system.
 
Thanks for the ideas, I'll be taking them home and checking the SMART info on them. Anything good will likely go to the For Sale Section.

Luckily, they weren't running 24/7. In fact, I know they haven't been in use for at least 2 years, probably longer. I actually don't even think they were ever run 24 hours a day either, from the looks of things they were put in for nightly backups and rotated daily.
 
They're almost not worth it to put into a single server. M1015 SAS cards on ebay are $150-ish these days, two of them is going to be $300, plus you'l need cables so another $40, and now you need a case that'll hold 15 HDDs which you probably don't have on hand so there is another 100-200 if you can find some tower, or $300 if you get a Norco 4020. In the end you spent a lot of money and have a huge loud and heavy server. Maybe you create two RAID5 arrays and get 13TB of usable space or so.

Or you go to costco and buy 4 4TB drives for $160 each, put them in pretty much any computer you currently have in RAID5 and have 12TB usable space. Smaller lighter quieter. Plus you still have 15 1TB drives.

I'd either try to sell the 1TB drives, or use 1-2 at a time time when building random computers. Something like that. Or what I do with all my old 500-1TB drives, I use them like tapes. I've got a 40TB file server. To do backups I pop in one of the old drives at a time file it up and then put in the next.
 
bexamous said:
They're almost not worth it to put into a single server. M1015 SAS cards on ebay are $150-ish these days
Click to expand...

Nah, it varies. Take a look at the completed listings. Plenty for $70ish. Several of them don't include the bracket (I want to punch all of those sellers in the face right now) but some did for a good price.

I do agree with the "almost not worth it" unless OP was looking to start a large-ish storage server anyway and has most of the spare parts necessary. Seriously, WD Green drives are crap.
 
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Yeah it varies but if you want to go buy one right now there is currently one at $70 but is being bid on with no buy it now. Lowest buy it now is $120 with $10 shipping plus another $10 to buy a bracket. But yeah if you wait a bit you can most likely get them for less.
 
Too bad they are green drives... they usually don't do well in raid because they go to sleep then the raid will think they failed. Been there done that, never again!

I'd definitely buy a few as backup drives to add to my backup pool if the price is right though. ;)
 
There's nothing wrong with the WD Greens. I'm running 5 of them in RAID-Z with absolutely no issues. You just have to use wdidle to disable the head parking.

As for the controller, it may be cheaper to use SATA port multipliers ($~40 for a 5 port multiplier).
 
Same here, running mainly Seagate LP's and WD Green 1.5 and 2TB's in RAID 0, never had it failed in any RAID config....
 
tocket said:
There's nothing wrong with the WD Greens. I'm running 5 of them in RAID-Z with absolutely no issues. You just have to use wdidle to disable the head parking.

As for the controller, it may be cheaper to use SATA port multipliers ($~40 for a 5 port multiplier).
Click to expand...

AFAIK WD stopped allowing wdidle from disabling that, forcing you to buy more expensive drives for a basic "feature"

Refuse to buy any more WD drive because of this.
 
Fill them up with some of the craziest stuff you can find or make and then just leave them around for people to find...get curious about....Plug in....get confused.

Like super high quality footage of a foot
or record your hand flipping a light switch and after each flip you do write the roman numeral for each flip on your hand I II III IV V VI.
Or Record yourself doing nasty things to the hard drive they just picked up like rubbing raw chicken on it or something.
Or create thousands of digital missing hard drive signs describing that hard drive serial number and all.
or Eat Them.
 
i could use them in my esxi box im building. if you want to sell a few for cheap, let me know.
 
I'm in a similar situation, inherited 15x750GB drives, but also an MD1000 Array. Nobody would give me good value for the drives and they are enterprise quality so I'm just going to use them.

9TB is plenty of space for me, don't feel like going out and buying $700-800 worth of 2TB drives.

Unless peeps here want to buy em, mostly Constellation ES 750GB and a few 1TB. I live near Vancouver BC Canada.
 
While you can use them in a RAID array I would find them a waste of Bays. Sell them and buy some of those 4TB drives that are on sale Since there the older model you can change TLER and stop head parking making them as good as RED series in NAS. Sell and buy other drives.
 
stevedave said:
Fill them up with some of the craziest stuff you can find or make and then just leave them around for people to find...get curious about....Plug in....get confused.

Like super high quality footage of a foot
or record your hand flipping a light switch and after each flip you do write the roman numeral for each flip on your hand I II III IV V VI.
Or Record yourself doing nasty things to the hard drive they just picked up like rubbing raw chicken on it or something.
Or create thousands of digital missing hard drive signs describing that hard drive serial number and all.
or Eat Them.
Click to expand...

These are some of the best ideas ever!
 
stevedave said:
Fill them up with some of the craziest stuff you can find or make and then just leave them around for people to find...get curious about....Plug in....get confused.

Like super high quality footage of a foot
or record your hand flipping a light switch and after each flip you do write the roman numeral for each flip on your hand I II III IV V VI.
Or Record yourself doing nasty things to the hard drive they just picked up like rubbing raw chicken on it or something.
Or create thousands of digital missing hard drive signs describing that hard drive serial number and all.
or Eat Them.
Click to expand...

Win!

On that same route, some more ideas:

- Nyan cat, in 1080p, as long as it takes to fill up the drive. In multiple copies named something different, scattered across random folders
- video of you filling up the drive with cash, and closing it back. Preferably done to a broken drive that is the exact model. Open it up in a clean environment, glue a picture of the troll face inside. Or draw it, better than a piece of paper that can potentially unglue itself.
- A customized Linux installation that is made to look like it is from a police computer. Have lot of folders that look interesting, and are empty.
- Write "Chris Dorner, LAPD" on one with a sharpie. Put a single password protected zip file called "lapd data.zip" with a weak password that has another protected zip file inside with another or the same weak password. Have it contain a single episode of Care Bears in a file format that uses lot of disk space to beef up the file.

The only downside with doing something funny like this is you don't get to see the person's reaction. :p
 
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