[THRobinson]

Hey guys...

Been debating this for years now, and thinking I may finally go this route.

I have a PC setup as HTPC1 (Primary) on my TV. I have a few tablets setup with access, and another PC (HTPC2) in the living room for the family to use as well. Problem is, some days I leave the HTPC1 on and no one streams anything, other days I turn it off and people complain they wanted to watch a movie or series and it was off. 

Was thinking of getting one of those 2-4 bay enclosures and attach it to the router and just leave it on 24/7 instead.

I have a 3TB HDD for movies, a 3TB HDD for TV-series. I also have a pair of 3TB external drives that I hook up every month or two to make a mirror copy of each drive as a backup, and keep those safe on a shelf. That way if a power surge kills the system, virus, or something like that... the backups are not attached to anything and safe.

Both HTPC1 and HTPC2 are now running LibreElec, but I know absolutely nothing about Linux/Unix. My main PC (which I will use to maintain the files with) is Win10.

Can anyone recommend a good cheap solution that will work with this setup?

Other reason I want to switch is that my HTPC1 is getting on in age. Core2Dual Quad... nice but BIG Silverstone case. In a trade for something with a buddy of mine I got an iMac Mini (2016) plus I have a Raspberry Pi... would be nice to switch to something smaller and far more quiet and energy efficient.

[mcelliott]

What about getting a NAS? Much more flexible as you don't have to connect it directly to your router by USB, and you can configure everything over your network.

After years of PCs with loads of drives, I went down this route a while ago and my setup takes much less space now! And the NAS drives are designed for 24x7 usage.

[Klojum]

A NAS can have its advantages. Synology has basically up to 5 year support for their Diskstation products. You will get much more firmware functionality then you'll ever need. But ... there is also that price tag. If you're gonna use a NAS, you will likely have to reformat the drive(s) to the NAS native format, possible a soft-RAID version. So keep your backups ready, or buy new harddisks.

Cheap? Get/build a simple or old PC as a server, put your drives in as single drives, install the free 18.04.1 Ubuntu Desktop (or Server) ISO onto a separate HDD/SSD/USB stick. Plenty of tutorials for installing Ubuntu. Then install NFS and/or SMB services (enough tuts for that too), and start serving/sharing. Once you know how, you're ready in 30 mins tops. Just set up an old test PC without your media drives, and see what happens during an OS installation only.

Put the server somewhere in a closet so you can't hear it from where your TVs are. NAS or PC, they always make some noise.

Just to make sure: a server and a NAS are not backup solutions. When a drives in a server or NAS have terminal issues, be sure to already have proper backups of your important files.

[the_other_guy]

i use ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 External 4-bay JBOD system for 3.5 Inch SATA HDDs     for backup of my media                                                                                                                   
https://www.amazon.com.au/ICY-BOX-IB-364...B009DH5Q2S

[THRobinson]

I came across a Western Digital MyCloud EX2 Ultra, which was about $200 CAD, but had a decent amount of positive reviews and the software looked good. Quite a few of the ones I've been looking at, the reviews have been scattered, but often lean towards a really poorly done software gui.