How Many Drives Do You Need for a RAID Array?

Published: 29 de julio de 2026

Live answer · Amazon.com

Pulling live prices…

Live data across PricePerGig listings. Prices may change; Updated every few hours.

📊 A 2 de agosto de 2026, el NAS típico en Amazon.es cuesta 212 €/TB o 0,212 €/GB entre los 2,885 anuncios en vivo que seguimos, con la mayor oferta de unidades en torno a 53,7 €/TB o 0,054 €/GB. Las mejores ofertas en Amazon.es parten de unos 329 € para 8TB (41,1 €/TB), 479 € para 14TB (34,2 €/TB) y 557 € para 20TB (27,8 €/TB). La mejor relación calidad-precio ahora es 20TB a unos 27,8 € por TB.

Sourced from real discussions on r/homelab, r/zfs and r/DataHoarder, cross-checked against live PricePerGig listings.

Planning an array and trying to work out how many drives to buy? Let me make the maths simple.

Two things decide it. How much usable space you actually want, and how much redundancy you want on top.

The catch is that parity drives do not store your data. So you always buy a little more than the raw data needs.

The table above shows the live price per TB on your marketplace, so once you know your drive count, you know your budget.

Usable is less than raw

This is the number one thing people get wrong, so let me nail it.

In a redundant array, some of your drives hold parity, not your files. That parity is what lets a dead drive be rebuilt. But it means your usable space is less than the raw total.

So if you want a certain amount of usable space, you buy that much in data drives, then add the parity drives on top.

A simple worked example

Numbers make this click.

Say you want roughly four big drives’ worth of usable space, and you want to survive two failures.

That is RAIDZ2. Four data drives plus two parity drives equals a six drive array. Two of the six are redundancy, so you get about four drives of usable space and can lose any two without tears.

Want the same usable space but only single failure protection? RAIDZ1 with five drives does it. One less drive, one less safety margin.

Minimum drive counts

You cannot build every level with any number of drives.

And here is a nice efficiency point. The more drives in the array, the smaller the percentage lost to parity. Two parity drives out of six is a third. Two out of twelve is a sixth. Bigger arrays use redundancy more efficiently.

How to budget it

Putting it together.

That gives you a real budget, parity included, with no nasty surprises.

The bottom line

How many drives you need is your usable target plus the parity for your chosen redundancy. RAIDZ1 adds one drive, RAIDZ2 adds two, and bigger arrays lose a smaller share to parity.

Work out your usable goal, pick your safety level, add the parity drives, and cost it all using the live price per TB above. Then you build with the right number of drives the first time, no guesing.

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