When to replace hard drives in my file server?

[jhu]

I have file server running FreeBSD with 2x 2TB drives with ZFS. The drives are 4 years old. There have not been any errors during filesystem scrubs and smartctl does't show any drive issues either. So when is a good time to replace these drives?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

When they fail or when you need more space.

 

[Elixer]

OP, you don't say if you have backups or not.
You also don't say if this is (Z) RAID 0 or RAID 1, or how exactly you have things setup, and what HDs are you using anyway?

 

[Shmee]

I would if(when) there are any smart errors. Or until you need to upgrade for space or speed reasons.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

4 years is nothing. Still have original industry 1st-gen Hitachi 1TB drives still spinning 24/7/365 w/o issues (no SMART errors, bearing noise, bad sectors, etc.)

That said, I'd replace a drive when one of those things above happens

 

[nk215]

I just had a 4TB HDD with SMART error (20 bad sectors) replaced on my Synology last night. I am running 2-drive redundancy setup (SHR-2 - a RAID 6 basically) so I didn't replace it right away when then error showed up 3 days ago. The HDD has less than 8000 hrs on it.

I should be able to continue to use the HDD as a scratch/temp download drive and keep track of the bad sector count.

 

[PliotronX]

4 years is nothing. Still have original industry 1st-gen Hitachi 1TB drives still spinning 24/7/365 w/o issues (no SMART errors, bearing noise, bad sectors, etc.)

That said, I'd replace a drive when one of those things above happens

+1