Terms of service

These terms govern your use of homeservercalc.com. By using the site you accept them. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site.

The calculators are guidance, not a guarantee

No calculator on this site can promise your data is safe. The capacity, parity, power, runtime and failure-probability figures here are computed from standard formulas and published manufacturer specifications. Real arrays differ: filesystem overhead, reserved space, vendor-specific block allocation, firmware behaviour, drive firmware revisions and simple bad luck all move the result. Verify capacity, drive compatibility and power figures against your own manufacturer documentation before spending money or committing data.

Probability figures deserve a specific warning. Unrecoverable read error rates published by manufacturers are warranty floors rather than measurements, observed rates across large fleets run substantially better, and both ZFS and mdadm survive a single such error rather than aborting a rebuild. Use those numbers to rank layouts against one another, never as a forecast that your particular rebuild will succeed or fail.

No professional advice

Nothing on this site is professional data recovery, information technology, engineering or electrical advice, and no relationship of that kind is created by reading it. In particular:

• RAID is not a backup. Parity protects against a drive failing. It does nothing about accidental deletion, ransomware, a controller writing corruption to every member, theft, fire or flood. Keep verified backups regardless of what any page here says.
• If an array is degraded and holds data you need, stop writing to it and consult a professional data recovery service before attempting a rebuild. A failed rebuild attempt can make recovery harder.
• Mains electrical work must be done by a licensed electrician. Power and UPS figures here are for sizing equipment, not for designing circuits.

Prices, availability and product information

Prices shown are the listing prices recorded when a product was last verified and change frequently. Specifications are taken from published manufacturer data and can be revised by the manufacturer without notice. We make a reasonable effort to be accurate and cannot guarantee that any price, specification or availability statement is current at the moment you read it. Always confirm on the retailer's page before ordering.

Affiliate relationships

This site earns commissions on qualifying purchases made through links to Amazon, as set out on the affiliate disclosure page. Your purchase contract is with the retailer, not with us. Returns, warranty claims, shipping problems and order disputes are between you and that retailer.

Intellectual property

The text, tables, calculators, code and design of this site are the property of HomeServerCalc.com and are protected by copyright. You may read, print and share pages for your own use, and you may quote a reasonable extract with a visible link back to the page it came from. You may not republish substantial portions, scrape the site to build a competing dataset, or present the material as your own.

Product names, model numbers, trademarks and images belong to their respective owners and appear here for identification and comparison. Their use does not imply endorsement of this site by those owners, and this site is not affiliated with any storage manufacturer.

Acceptable use

Do not use this site to break the law, to interfere with its operation, to attempt to gain unauthorised access to any system, or to submit content through a form that is unlawful, abusive or deliberately misleading. Automated bulk requests that degrade the service for other readers are not permitted.

Limitation of liability

This site is provided on an as-is and as-available basis, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, HomeServerCalc.com is not liable for any loss of data, loss of profit, hardware damage, business interruption, or any indirect or consequential loss arising from use of this site or reliance on anything published here.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Third-party links

Pages link to retailers, manufacturer documentation and other external resources. We do not control those sites, do not endorse everything on them, and are not responsible for their content, terms or privacy practices.

Changes

These terms may be revised as the site changes, and the revised version applies from the moment it is published on this page. Continued use of the site after a change means you accept it.

Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent through the contact form. See also the privacy policy and the affiliate disclosure.