01-08-2026, 04:12 PM
Since your primary use is photo and video storage with light streaming, you don’t need extreme performance. You only need capacity and redundancy that won’t force another rebuild too soon.
Sticking with two more six terabyte drives is the cheapest option, but it locks you into a limit of twelve terabytes usable once you switch to RAID5 or RAID5 equivalent. Given that your current drives are from 2014, mixing old and new six terabyte disks works, but you’ll still end up planning another upgrade fairly soon.
Your second idea of adding two twelve terabyte drives is the smarter long term move. In a RAID5 pool the array will shrink all disks to the smallest size, so yes, the twelve terabyte drives will behave as six terabyte drives for now. But you gain a clear path forward because when your old six terabyte drives eventually get replaced, the pool will expand automatically to the larger size. It also means you are already halfway through a full capacity refresh without spending it all at once.
As for brands, WD Red Plus and Toshiba N300 remain the best balance of price, reliability and low noise for home environments. Just avoid WD Red drives that use SMR. Red Plus are CMR and the right choice.
If your total budget is around five hundred pounds, then two twelve terabyte WD Red Plus drives will fit nicely and give you the future expansion you’re after. It keeps you on mirrored style redundancy once you convert the pool, gives you more headroom and avoids having to redo everything again in a year.
Sticking with two more six terabyte drives is the cheapest option, but it locks you into a limit of twelve terabytes usable once you switch to RAID5 or RAID5 equivalent. Given that your current drives are from 2014, mixing old and new six terabyte disks works, but you’ll still end up planning another upgrade fairly soon.
Your second idea of adding two twelve terabyte drives is the smarter long term move. In a RAID5 pool the array will shrink all disks to the smallest size, so yes, the twelve terabyte drives will behave as six terabyte drives for now. But you gain a clear path forward because when your old six terabyte drives eventually get replaced, the pool will expand automatically to the larger size. It also means you are already halfway through a full capacity refresh without spending it all at once.
As for brands, WD Red Plus and Toshiba N300 remain the best balance of price, reliability and low noise for home environments. Just avoid WD Red drives that use SMR. Red Plus are CMR and the right choice.
If your total budget is around five hundred pounds, then two twelve terabyte WD Red Plus drives will fit nicely and give you the future expansion you’re after. It keeps you on mirrored style redundancy once you convert the pool, gives you more headroom and avoids having to redo everything again in a year.