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2012-05-07, 08:16
(This post was last modified: 2012-05-07, 08:17 by LittleFatMan.)
I am running into a problem that seems to be common in my life. I am running out of space!
Now, I am not as weighty as some of your hardcore users out there. I have 2 external drives that total 5TB of space. I am contemplating buying yet another external, but I have been thinking, "There has got to be a better way."
Any advice? I am not super tech savvy and tend to doubt my ability to build a RAID doohickey. Not do to lack of intelligence, but lack of time. Also, I travel and move a lot so lugging about a huge tower like contraption is out.
Is there some simple consumer level product that could help me out? A few months ago a friend had a nifty gadget: plug it into a USB port and swap in an internal hard drive like it was an old school Nintendo and the internal drives were game cassettes.
Thanks for your help, I do appreciate it!
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um, where to start?....
if you want to keep a bunch of drives and have them kinda portable, then your only real option is a N.A.S. system. you can buy them already populated with hdds, plugin, configure shares with web browser, has single gbit lan socket and a power socket, couldnt be any simpler.
when you fill the drives, you simply buy another NAS, and plug it into the lan,setup new shares and away you go.
if you move, the nas is usually much smaller then your desktop computer and only has 2 x cables to pack.
if money is an issue, why not just plug your 2 or 3TB drives internally in your desktop pc, then only have to move one box when its time to move on. most desktops will fit minimum of 5 3.5" hdds internally, also this option will help conserve energy, since the drives can be managed to spindown when not in use by your OS.
i hope this helps,
Dam0
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Sounds like your friend had something like a Drobo. Very easy to use, hot swappable, and you can mix drive types and sizes.
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I had an unraid build which sucked back a bunch of my time and energy, and ended up having 4 cooked western digital drives. It was mostly my mistakes, the drives were not ideal for an unraid environment. But the software made troubleshooting very painful.
In the end I bought a QNAP 419p+. LOVE this unit. Stuffed it with 4 x 2TB drives.
Buy one with 3 brand new drives, transfer over all your data from your external drives, then use your external as a secondary backup for your important files.
There are similar products from other manufacturers such as Dlink and Drobo. The QNAP is quite popular, and works very well for me and others. I set it up (very quickly and easily) for RAID-5 with a hot spare. This way if I have a drive die, then the hot-spare instantly comes online without intervention.
I also installed "crashplan" on it, which is a very affordale cloud backup system. It keeps my 'photos' share continuously backed up to the cloud. I also sync a share which contains system images of all my computers, which I replace monthly.
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Diggs
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2012-05-07, 23:34
(This post was last modified: 2012-05-07, 23:36 by Diggs.)
I faced this same issue and jumped in with an unraid server. Unlike vinistois, my experience has been great. Granted I have only been running Unraid for a few weeks now, but it resolved my storage issues and was really easy to set up. It did take some time to get all the drives ready, then copy the data over and for it to complete building parity, but it did all this while I was sleeping or at the office. So, yes it can take some time, but if you can follow some basic directions (and if you are running xbmc you can) it's not difficult and is a great solution.
Cost was a bit high, but I am happy I didn't go with a Drobo which was even more expensive. The main cost was the actual drives, so all NAS solutions are a bit pricey simply because of the current cost of hard drives. Glad they are starting to return to reasonable prices. I almost jumped on the QNAP NAS as well, but prefer the unraid parity method versus a typical RAID 5 setup. IMO it just seems a better solution for redundancy if that is your goal. If not, then the speed of a RAID 5 setup might be the better solution for you.
TapRackPull is very likely correct about what your friend has. I have a Dual version of the BlacX which can handle 2 drives at a time via USB 2.0 or Esata. Works great for a quick easy desktop solution for swaping drives externally. I have noticed my drives tend to get a bit warm in it for some reason, but it does what it advertises and does that very well.
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2012-05-08, 00:07
(This post was last modified: 2012-05-08, 00:11 by couto27.)
currently i have 2x 3 TB inside the htpc.
i still have 4 x3.0 ports + 2x 2.0 + 1 x sata
but im also considering a NAS
I've check the best models around and I'm considering the synology 712+ ( 2 bays) possible to expand to 21TB, this model because its superfast in streaming with 2x ethernet gigabyte ports.
NASes with similar performance cost double.
its future proof for 3D streaming.
by the way... avoid the wd caviar green to RAID or NAS.
if money is a issue, i would go to 3TB seagate goflex, seagate sells a thunderbolt adapter (2,5 or 3,5) also future proof.
Anthem MRX310 | XTZ 93.23 DIY 5.1 (Seas Jantzen Mundorf) | DXD808 | Oppo 103D | LG OLED 55EC930V | Nvidia Shield | ATV3
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Dips
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Will an OpenELEC system running with 2GB RAM slow down much if you start using some of its 500GB space to store movies etc?
My external USB is starting to get filled and all this sounds complex.
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rcloud
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I am using and have been happy with the Sans-Digital hard drive enclosures, which range from 4 to 8 hard drive bays.