More smaller drives, or less larger?

[TheSiege]

I have 6 drives in my enclosure, between 1.5 and 2TB and it all comes in around 8TB total. I was given 4 3TB constellation e.2 enterprise drives and I was thinking of replacing what I have with the new drives. I would probably put the 3x3TB in the enclosure and then just the third drive and the others for backup externally. I have no raid or anything like that, its just a server for my house.

all 4 3TB drives are identical and my current setup is just a potpourri of drives.
This is my enclosure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811352019
This is my MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131732

What would you do?

 

[Charlie98]

Put the new 3TB drives in and call it a day. I just upgraded my HTPC from 4 different sized drives to 2 2TB drives... far simpler to deal with...

 

[tweakboy]

Hard drives are going to very thin in the near future. Unless its out already. gl

 

[CakeMonster]

What are your concerns? Power, space, temperature? Or redundancy? Regarding the latter, don't buy into the faulty logic that you should spread your stuff over several smaller disks for "safety". If that is the case, I have 15+ 20mb-400gb disk to sell you. Make backup of what you need to have backed up, and then go for bigger, more efficient disks.

 

[Carson Dyle]

You have the capacity to run n drives before you need to start adding controller cards or additional external enclosures. So use the largest drives you have and gradually replace the smallest ones. Sell the small ones or keep them for backups.

If you don't need all of the capacity that all those drives gives you, remove or pull the power to any unused drives. If 3 x 3TB covers your needs, leave the other 3TB drive and the smaller drives powered off until you need the capacity.