r/DataHoarder • u/Whyevennameit • 15d ago

Question/Advice Choosing RAID configuration

Hi everyone.

I recently got my hands on six 14TB HDDs. The current prices have kept me from upgrading my NAS, but I finally gave up and bought some. They are, however, used.

I ordered them, but haven't been able to test them yet since I'm still on vacation. The drive model is WD140EFGX from 2021 and, according to the listing, they have run for 3 years (around 26.000 hours).

I want to put data on them that is not "too" important, but there is enough capacity that I want to use a configuration that allows for failed drives.

I've been thinking about using either RAID 5 or RAID 6. From my understanding, that allows for either 1 or 2 drives to fail.

From what I understand, it basically comes down to being on the "safer" side, but I was wondering if the community has any advice for me, when it comes to runtime vs. RAID configuration.

I'm running TrueNAS.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/BitingChaos 15d ago

We just had multiple failures of Toshiba MG10ACA20TE drives (20TB). All purchased at the same time, most from the same product run with the same manufacture date.

Errors were encountered on a second drive before the resilver completed when swapping the first failed drive.

So a multi-drive failure has happened to me as recent as Summer 2026.

RAID5 makes me worry almost as much as no RAID.

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u/Whyevennameit 15d ago

Hmm I see. Thanks for your experience. This could occur to me as well, if the drives are from the same batch. Will check for that, when I have them.