Raid

Day 50 of #100daysofhomelab (this was stuck in a draft folder, so this is a couple of weeks old… I decided to recycle this as day 50, but it was originally day 37 or something…).

Just about 13 days ago: After running ZFS on my Mac for a few hours, I removed it and installed a trial of the SoftRAID software. I am not sure what was going on, but with ZFS installed, my machine just kept crashing. less than an hour and bang. So, I installed SoftRAID, and the speed ok. Not massive speeds, but not 100% sure I am using the right cables. More testing with cables soon.But in reality, this is software RAID 5 over 5 spinning disks. 270Mb/s read ain’t bad. 115Mb/s write ain’t great, but it’s RAID 5.

Day 35 of #100daysofhomelab and I have been trying to clean up some stuff for my Mac Book Pro. I have an external enclosure from Yottamaster that has 5 3.5" bays and connects via USB C (USB 3.1). I got 5 8TB Seagate IronWolf drives in there. Currently, I have it set up as RAID 10 with 16Tb usable, which is named Archive, with 1 extra drive non-protected 8Tb drive. The details on setting up RAID 10 on MacOS is in the links section. I was looking at using RAID 5 for the archive pool, but the only option that seems to be available is SoftRAID but it’s USD250 for a license unless you have an OWC enclosure. Given the enclosure cost me that much in the first place, I think I will keep with RAID 10 for the while. RAID 5 would, potentially, give me 32Tb usable on my Archive, but 250 is a bit steep. for now…