Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Advice on my storage dilemma (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by blind-panic@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum

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Until recently, I had been managing my data using large HDD's in my desktop and external usb drives. I should say that I'm mostly using this storage to backup personal data (photos/code/other data). I've gotten to a point where external drives probably aren't the best option, and I'm looking to convert an old mini-itx home-theater computer into a NAS on a tight budget. Because the PC has no 3.5" bays, I'm left with a few options:

(1) Fill the 2.5" bay with 4 tb SSDs over time (~$180-$720)

(2) Buy an appropriate ATX case and get some enterprise/NAS large spinning drives ($100 case, ~$100-$500 in drives)

(3) Use a USB 3.5" sata dock/enclosure

(4) Just buy a NAS

I realize this is small beans to this community, but I would be okay with an additional 4-12 tb of storage at this point, but realize I will want more in the future. I like option (1) based on the small footprint and simplicity, though I'm obviously overpaying for the storage. Options (2) and (4) are probably the most future proof and would have the most storage. Option (3) is likely the easiest/cheapest and could be used to expand option (1) in the future. Thanks for your thoughts.

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[–] dcabines@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

You can get HDDs at under $15/TB while SSDs can be over $50/TB. Option 1 is more than just overpaying; it is a waste of money. SSDs are great, but they are not for bulk data storage. With that said I do own a few 4TB SSDs and a few 2TB NVMes, but none are for bulk data storage. They mostly hold the OS and my installed games and the working set of files I'm actively using.

Option 2 is good, but can probably be improved upon.

Option 3 is what I do and recommend to you. I'll explain next.

Option 4 is the same as Option 2, but you pay more for the out-of-the-box convenience. It isn't for me, but plenty of people like Synology, so no judgement here if that is for you.

Your two real options represent a dilemma so many people encounter: Do I want an external enclosure, or do I want a NAS?

I use a 5 bay external enclosure plugged into my desktop PC. I use DrivePool to pool the 5 drives together and I use its duplication feature for redundancy. It has 5x12TB refurbished Seagate Exos in it. If I need more space I'll probably replace some 12TB drives with larger 18 or 20TB drives. I keep it powered off when not in use and I am the only user. I may never need more space than 5x20TB drives can offer and I think it is the best option for my use case. It sounds like your needs are similar to mine.

I'm also interested in network storage and server services, but I don't need all of my storage available on my network. I have a small mini pc with 6TB of storage on it and it is all I need for a NAS or home server. 6TB is plenty for temporary storage and streaming videos.

So, my external enclosure was $200 and the mini pc was $200 (but $337 for both today, Cyber Monday). You could build a NAS for $400 with the same N100 processor and a case with enough space for the drives. The difference between that and my setup is I can turn the external enclosure off while the mini continues to run 24/7 and it uses very little electricity. However, only a small subset of my data is available on my network. There are tradeoffs either way. I can wipe and reinstall Linux on my mini without impacting my bulk storage, for example. My mini is silent and small enough to take with me on a vacation to stream movies; it would be too big for that if it had a bunch of HDDs in it, however I can stream videos from it from anywhere in the world using Tailscale already, so no good reason to bring it anyways.

You'll have to decide which you'd prefer, but I'm happy with my external enclosure and mini combo. I doubt I'll ever build a tower desktop full of HDDs ever again.

[–] bobsim1@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

On a tight budget id go with 2. A even cheaper case and drives that can be used in a NAS in the future.

[–] blind-panic@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks everyone, because I'm exceedingly cheap and lazy (and this is a backup solution), I ended up getting a sabrent usb dock and 4 tb HDD for now. This will also allow me to use all of the smaller drives I've been accumulating over the years. Also picked up some nice plastic drive cases to organize all of it. This is definitely the lowest tech solution, but I'm happy with it.