[User X0S5]

Can someone post a picture of this harddisk that goes inside this synology NAS thing.

They look as your typical 3.5" (or 2.5") SATA drives.
But search for harddisks that are specifically meant for a NAS.
You'll see it soon enough in the descriptions.

Thank you very much. This is really helpful. I really appreciate that I was not thinking about search for NAS drives so I did what you said and got the info I need. Thanks again

[the_other_guy]

https://www.howtogeek.com/324769/how-to-...al-drives/
These days, however, there is a significantly increased emphasis on external drive reliability and longevity, as many of the products on the market are meant to be left on 24/7, come with backup software, and are used much more heavily than the external drives of yesterday. To deliver on the promise of reliability and performance under such conditions, many manufactures have quietly switched to using premium drives in their external enclosures to avoid premature failure.

[Harro]

My question is, what could be a good hardware solution also that can just store the media data and stream it through the USB cable to my laptop and not through the network

Just out of curiosity, why are you against using the network? Seems to me that with your requirements, streaming through your local network, would be a better solution. If having 10 external drives laying around with cables and such, you might be better off with a NAS that could hold them all and expand when needed.

[clarkss12]

Jaqo. I am in the same boat as you and still have not found a good solution.  I also have several external drives scattered across my network.  I can never seem to have enough storage, so I purchase another external HDD.

Now, my problem is, what device to attach all those HDD's to? I am NOT going to purchase a NAS with a HUGE capacity, and toss my existing external HDD's.  Right now, I have a real old Synology DS 211j, that I added two 4 TB drives a year or two ago (used for data backup).  Have a Synology DS 216 Plus, and WD My cloud.....

I have one external HDD connected to my router (not a good solution), one external HDD connected to my DS216 NAS, and one drive connected to a Beelink Gemini X55 mini PC.  I also have one external HDD connected to my Beelink GT King running CoreELEC which has a native Samba server.

I can't find a device that I can "attach" all my HDD's to.

So, I am watch this thread to see what advice you get, that I can use.

[brazen1]

I presently have 38 HDD's plugged into my W10 PC.  I used to have more.  11 are SATA using the provided MB ports.  18 are in 3 port duplicators plugged into 4 eSata ports (2 on the MB and 2 on a PCI card).  9 external HDD's are plugged into USB 3.0 ports using Windows Storage Spaces.  This array contains 1:1 local iso rips and 1:1 backup of those rips.  All the backup drives are off until needed.  They turn on/off with one flick of a switch via an x10 module.  This PC is a workstation as well.  I've shared drives NFS in the past for client access using WiFi.  I've been doing this for over a decade.  I've never had a problem.  Folks have suggested I build or buy a NAS and use a RAID setup.  I've no idea what that would gain me except debt for nothing, another unnecessary device to maintain taking up room in my home, adding to my utility bill, and have a much higher probability of losing data.

[selfcontained]

This is the eternal struggle. I too am facing a storage conundrum. The "best" solution is usually a NAS with some sort of data-redundancy (e.g. RAID) along with drives dedicated to backup. I wish I had done this early on, instead what I'm doing is storing my media on seven un-connected 5TB external drives. One of these drives has the "best of" assets from the other six. I call this drive my "backup". The other six drives are like an un-connected JBOD array. What I do is copy stuff I want to see onto a much smaller (512GB) external USB-connected drive to my Mi Box 3. There is one advantage to this approach - navigating the "active" drive's assets is much easier and faster as it is a tiny subset of my grand collection. I use Evernote to list the assets I have and on which drive they are stored. Currently I have different Evernote notes of assets separated by genre. Not an ideal system but I can find stuff quickly and copy to my active drive pretty readily. Still, I wish I had invested early on in some sort of NAS + NFS server solution.

[clarkss12]

I presently have 38 HDD's plugged into my W10 PC.  I used to have more.  11 are SATA using the provided MB ports.  18 are in 3 port duplicators plugged into 4 eSata ports (2 on the MB and 2 on a PCI card).  9 external HDD's are plugged into USB 3.0 ports using Windows Storage Spaces.  This array contains 1:1 local iso rips and 1:1 backup of those rips.  All the backup drives are off until needed.  They turn on/off with one flick of a switch via an x10 module.  This PC is a workstation as well.  I've shared drives NFS in the past for client access using WiFi.  I've been doing this for over a decade.  I've never had a problem.  Folks have suggested I build or buy a NAS and use a RAID setup.  I've no idea what that would gain me except debt for nothing, another unnecessary device to maintain taking up room in my home, adding to my utility bill, and have a much higher probability of losing data.

Would like to see some pics of your setup.

[clarkss12]

This is the eternal struggle. I too am facing a storage conundrum. The "best" solution is usually a NAS with some sort of data-redundancy (e.g. RAID) along with drives dedicated to backup. I wish I had done this early on, instead what I'm doing is storing my media on seven un-connected 5TB external drives. One of these drives has the "best of" assets from the other six. I call this drive my "backup". The other six drives are like an un-connected JBOD array. What I do is copy stuff I want to see onto a much smaller (512GB) external USB-connected drive to my Mi Box 3. There is one advantage to this approach - navigating the "active" drive's assets is much easier and faster as it is a tiny subset of my grand collection. I use Evernote to list the assets I have and on which drive they are stored. Currently I have different Evernote notes of assets separated by genre. Not an ideal system but I can find stuff quickly and copy to my active drive pretty readily. Still, I wish I had invested early on in some sort of NAS + NFS server solution.

ARggggggggggg!!!!!!

[the_other_guy]

maybe you should look at this
ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 External 4-bay JBOD system for 3.5 Inch SATA HDDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpyyKiRBwOk

[User X0S5]

I presently have 38 HDD's plugged into my W10 PC.  I used to have more.  11 are SATA using the provided MB ports.  18 are in 3 port duplicators plugged into 4 eSata ports (2 on the MB and 2 on a PCI card).  9 external HDD's are plugged into USB 3.0 ports using Windows Storage Spaces.  This array contains 1:1 local iso rips and 1:1 backup of those rips.  All the backup drives are off until needed.  They turn on/off with one flick of a switch via an x10 module.

Hi brazen1, I totally understand you and why you will not change your setup for NAS, but for me my external USB drive is failing and giving me error says USB device descriptor failed and another one failed without any error message even though I formatted it and start copy stuff on it then it keeps failing again. if my drives were not failing I would have never thought of another solution

[brett301968]

I presently have 38 HDD's plugged into my W10 PC.  I used to have more.  11 are SATA using the provided MB ports.  18 are in 3 port duplicators plugged into 4 eSata ports (2 on the MB and 2 on a PCI card).  9 external HDD's are plugged into USB 3.0 ports using Windows Storage Spaces.  This array contains 1:1 local iso rips and 1:1 backup of those rips.  All the backup drives are off until needed.  They turn on/off with one flick of a switch via an x10 module.

Hi brazen1, I totally understand you and why you will not change your setup for NAS, but for me my external USB drive is failing and giving me error says USB device descriptor failed and another one failed without any error message even though I formatted it and start copy stuff on it then it keeps failing again. if my drives were not failing I would have never thought of another solution  

Have a look at the multi HDD USB enclosures, I've seen them with space for up to 10 disks and you connect by a single USB cable. There are quite a few manufactures who make them (google is you friend).

[Topken]

AKA Look into DAS devices AKA Directly Attached Storage devices similar to NAS ones but using USB/Thunderbolt instead of ethernet

[Edworld]

I presently have 38 HDD's plugged into my W10 PC.  I used to have more.  11 are SATA using the provided MB ports.  18 are in 3 port duplicators plugged into 4 eSata ports (2 on the MB and 2 on a PCI card).  9 external HDD's are plugged into USB 3.0 ports using Windows Storage Spaces.  This array contains 1:1 local iso rips and 1:1 backup of those rips.  All the backup drives are off until needed.  They turn on/off with one flick of a switch via an x10 module.  This PC is a workstation as well.  I've shared drives NFS in the past for client access using WiFi.  I've been doing this for over a decade.  I've never had a problem.  Folks have suggested I build or buy a NAS and use a RAID setup.  I've no idea what that would gain me except debt for nothing, another unnecessary device to maintain taking up room in my home, adding to my utility bill, and have a much higher probability of losing data.

Would like to see some pics of your setup. 

+1

[User X0S5]

thank you very much guys. These are great suggestions really and helped me a lot. I purchased the NAS synology with 6 drives. It has not arrived yet, but I think it has what I need. I will remove the two failed external drives from their enclosure (I think it is called chunking) and insert them into the NAS. Hopefully they will work and hopefully the reason they fail is something with the powered enclosure or the circuit that converts the data connection, etc. and not the disk itself. The reset of the external drives I will leave them as they are connected to the laptop through the USB hub (if it's working don't touch it sort of thing) which means I will have 4 more slots in the NAS for expansion. I guess it is enough till I die
special thanks for Klojum who suggested me the synology and for Topken for translating all the tech stuff that others say to a language I can understand

[DNKK]

thank you very much guys. These are great suggestions really and helped me a lot. I purchased the NAS synology with 6 drives. It has not arrived yet, but I think it has what I need. I will remove the two failed external drives from their enclosure (I think it is called chunking) and insert them into the NAS. Hopefully they will work and hopefully the reason they fail is something with the powered enclosure or the circuit that converts the data connection, etc. and not the disk itself. The reset of the external drives I will leave them as they are connected to the laptop through the USB hub (if it's working don't touch it sort of thing) which means I will have 4 more slots in the NAS for expansion. I guess it is enough till I die
special thanks for Klojum who suggested me the synology and for Topken for translating all the tech stuff that others say to a language I can understand

You can never have enough storage as the empty space calls you to fill it up faster. I would recommend buying 2x8 or 10tb drives first if you can and attaching to your synology nas use shr (synology raid). Or at least 1 new drive to setup your nas.