Having run completely out of space, I was all ready to start my next array with 2TB hard drives. Surprisingly, the same day, I read on Engadget that Western Digital had started shipping 3TB drives.
With the cost overhead of housing each drive, and the limit on the number of drives I can accomodate, using the highest capacity drive available for an array is the best option.
Now, I haven’t yet explained how My NAS Server 2 evolved, but to give you a sneak-peak – it uses SATA port-multipliers. This brings me to the point of this post…
The Engadget post regarding these drives seemed to indicate there could be some issues seeing all the space without special drivers. After doing a bit of research, I think there is only a problem when you are trying to boot from the drive. As my NAS boots off a CF card, it’s a non-issue for me. More importantly, I read a conversation on the linux-raid mailing list which seems to indicate there shouldn’t be a problem with Linux, or the port-multipliers supporting these drives right out the box.
This is good news as I will be able to use them to build my next array. Unfortunatly, they are vastly more expensive than 2TB drives, and on top of that, they don’t seem to be available in the UK quite yet. Hopefully I will find a way round my lack-of-space until I can get my hands on a couple.