Yesterday, 11:16 AM
Yeah I get where you're coming from — been in a similar boat myself. Prices are no joke lately, and when a big drive goes outside warranty, it definitely stings harder than losing a smaller one.
You're spot on weighing more bays with smaller disks vs fewer bays with big ones. Personally, I lean toward more bays with smaller drives if the NAS cost doesn't completely blow the budget. Reason being — flexibility. If one disk fails, it's cheaper to replace, and you’ve got room to shuffle things around in the future. Also, RAID5 or SHR-1 with smaller drives tends to rebuild faster and with less stress on the array, compared to something like 18TB+ drives.
That said, I totally get the appeal of sticking with a 4-bay and just putting in bigger drives — especially if your data footprint isn’t massive and backups are already sorted. It’s cleaner and keeps noise/power/space down. Just gotta accept the drive replacement hit if something fails after warranty.
You mentioned SDR-1 and SDR-2 — if you're leaning toward SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID), that’s a good middle ground. If you're going QNAP or TrueNAS or whatever, then yeah RAID5 or 6 decisions depend a lot on how paranoid you are about double disk failures. ?
TL;DR:
Bigger NAS with smaller drives = more flexibility, easier on the wallet when disks fail
Smaller NAS with big drives = less upfront NAS cost, but pricier per disk and longer rebuilds
Maybe think of it this way: would the extra NAS bays now save you stress later if a big drive fails, or is your setup light enough that it just makes more sense to roll with 4 big ones and solid backups.
Good luck choosing — sounds like you're already thinking ahead more than most!
You're spot on weighing more bays with smaller disks vs fewer bays with big ones. Personally, I lean toward more bays with smaller drives if the NAS cost doesn't completely blow the budget. Reason being — flexibility. If one disk fails, it's cheaper to replace, and you’ve got room to shuffle things around in the future. Also, RAID5 or SHR-1 with smaller drives tends to rebuild faster and with less stress on the array, compared to something like 18TB+ drives.
That said, I totally get the appeal of sticking with a 4-bay and just putting in bigger drives — especially if your data footprint isn’t massive and backups are already sorted. It’s cleaner and keeps noise/power/space down. Just gotta accept the drive replacement hit if something fails after warranty.
You mentioned SDR-1 and SDR-2 — if you're leaning toward SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID), that’s a good middle ground. If you're going QNAP or TrueNAS or whatever, then yeah RAID5 or 6 decisions depend a lot on how paranoid you are about double disk failures. ?
TL;DR:
Bigger NAS with smaller drives = more flexibility, easier on the wallet when disks fail
Smaller NAS with big drives = less upfront NAS cost, but pricier per disk and longer rebuilds
Maybe think of it this way: would the extra NAS bays now save you stress later if a big drive fails, or is your setup light enough that it just makes more sense to roll with 4 big ones and solid backups.
Good luck choosing — sounds like you're already thinking ahead more than most!