Drives
HDD
Here are the hard drives used in my homelab. These drives use XFS with MergerFS to combine the JBOD pool into a single filesystem and SnapRAID for software parity. Managing your own storage is not without some risk, but overall this has been a fairly easy endeavor.
| Drive | Qty | Size | Price/unit | Date | Active | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate (ST3000DM001) | 1 | 3TB | $81 | 5/11/2016 | ❌ | My first drive in the terabyte range and the first to retire on 12/21/2025 |
| HGST Deskstar (0S03660) | 3 | 3TB | $119.99 | 8/24/2016 | ✅ | |
| Seagate BarraCuda (used) | 1 | 2TB | free | 2019 | ❌ | Salvaged from IT dept |
| HGST Ultrastar (0F23269) (refurbished) | 1 | 6TB | $129.99 | 6/27/2019 | ✅ | |
| Toshiba S300 Surveillance (HDWT360UZSVAR) | 1 | 6TB | $174.99 | 6/27/2019 | ✅ | |
| Seagate external HDD (STEB10000400) | 1 | 10TB | $169.99 | 1/10/2021 | ✅ | My first time “shucking” |
| WD Red Plus (WD101EFBX) | 2 | 10TB | $159.99 | 11/24/2022 | ✅ | |
| Seagate (ST4000NM0025) (used) | 2 | 4TB | free | 2024 | ✅ | Salvaged from IT dept |
Case
Originally I could fit 8x 3.5" drives in a Node 804 which was a great apartment server. Later, I moved into a hotswappable Supermicro 2U rackmounted case.
Price watch
If you’re shopping for new storage, check out DiskPrices.com.
History
Update 12/21/2025: Drive failure
After some SnapRAID and SMART errors, I retired my first single-owner disk from my NAS.
$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb | grep -E "Reallocated_Sector|Current_Pending"
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 099 097 000 Old_age Always - 168🫡