Number of drives?

WD Legacy Products Sentinel Products
1

I am looking into getting a sentinal dx4000. I’m trying to decide which size to get. I understand they come with 4 drive bays. When you buy the machine, does it just come with one hard drive, allowing you to install 3 additional?

2

It either  comes with 2 drives in a raid 1 mirror or 4 drives in a raid 5 array.  If you get a 2 drive box you may add 1 or 2 (special) drives later and it will convert itself to raid 5

3

Thaks for the prompt response.:smiley:

I guess the number of drives is related to the size you get? ie when I try to shop online for these, they list the size of the machine - 4,6,8,12 or 16 TB. But I don’t see any specs as to how many drives are in it.

I am trying to determine how much space I need now, while also thinking of needing expansion in the future.  If I get a machine that already has 4 drives in it-I assume I can’t expand it, right?

4

The Sentinel does have two USB 3.0 ports included for additional storage. This storage could be shared over the network but will not be included in the built-in RAID functionality.

As for size & number of drives:

4TB = 2x 2TB

6TB = 2x 3TB

8TB = 4x 2TB

12TB = 4x 3TB

16TB = 4x 4TB

5

To add to what he said.

So a 4tb box gives you 2tb of storage.  A   12tb box gives you 9tb of storage.  you “use” one drive for redunancy.

If you get a 4tb  box today it will give you 2tb of storage.  Add one 2tb drive and get 4tb of storage, add another drive and get 6tb of storage.

But if you add drives they must be the proper wd server drives.  Not the sale price 2tb drives from Online Shops

It is normally cheaper to purchase the capacity now rather than add it later.  Of course that depends on when later is.  Two years from now there will be something, newer, diff, and cheaper as always.

6

Thanks that is just what I was looking for…

7

Yeah I guess I always try to plan for future expansion-and generally when I need to expand it is cheaper to just switch to the latest solution :wink:

Thanks for the additional info. If I understand correctly, if I get a 6TB machine, it will have 2x3TB drives. When it is set up with redundancy I will actually only have 3TB of storage, right?

3TB sounds like plenty now, but I still remember upgrading from a 10mb to a 40mb drive and thinking -I’ll never run out of space…then again that was back when I was using 5" floppies…

8

You are correct.  a 6tb box will have 3tb useable