NAS & RAID Calculator

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Region Focus · US

US 4x 8TB RAID 5 Calculator

Estimate usable capacity, fault tolerance, and efficiency for US homelab buyers using 4x 8TB in RAID 5.

Capacity Snapshot

Raw Capacity

32.00 TB

Usable Capacity

21.60 TB

Fault Tolerance

1 drive

Efficiency

75.0%

Balanced capacity and redundancy, but rebuild stress can be high on large disks. This scenario applies a 10% filesystem reserve.

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Alternative Mode Comparison

Mode Usable Tolerance Efficiency
RAID 5 21.60 TB 1 drive 75.0%
RAID 6 14.40 TB 2 drives 50.0%
RAID 10 14.40 TB 1 drive per mirror pair* 50.0%
RAID-Z1 21.60 TB 1 drive 75.0%
RAID-Z2 14.40 TB 2 drives 50.0%

US Buyer Context

US buyers often evaluate frequent pricing swings and promo cycles. Capacity planning should account for staged purchases instead of one-time all-disk upgrades.

Brand / Region Glossary

Cost-per-Usable-TB

Planning metric that compares real usable capacity after reserve and parity.

Promo Window

Seasonal pricing period used for phased drive purchasing strategies.

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FAQ

Why include a 10% reserve when planning NAS storage headroom?

Keeping free space improves filesystem behavior for snapshots, metadata, and write performance. Full arrays often perform worse and rebuild more slowly.

Can this calculator replace real-world benchmark and rebuild testing?

No. Use this page for pre-purchase sizing, then validate with workload benchmarks, SMART health policy, and a tested restore plan.

How many disk failures can RAID 5 tolerate in this setup?

This setup can tolerate 1 drive. Real-world survivability depends on mirror placement, rebuild stress, and drive health.

Should I optimize this 4-drive plan for storage headroom or resiliency first?

For long-lived NAS pools, resiliency first is usually safer. Capacity can be expanded later, while a risky parity choice can force migration sooner.