Storage solution

[=adrian=]

I'm running out of space

There is also one more external 2TB HDD 3/4 full (not connected). As I can't connect any more internal drives (no SATA connections / power connections left) I was again looking at buying just another external drive, but it is getting quite messy.

Instead, maybe I should think about a dedicated storage solution. I have quite a lot of crap on my PC, some more needed then other but I don't want to delete anything at this stage. I would need at least 10 Tb, ideally more.

Could you recommend something? It would be used as storage and back up unit. Ideally not too expensive and as future proof as possible.

 

[jassco]

4tb drives to replace all of yours? Gives 16gb and can recoup some costs from selling the old ones

 

[Member 55145]

Get a qnap. Expensive but really good and you can put all your drives in it.
Alternatively delete your prawn and have loads of space.

 

[=adrian=]

4tb drives to replace all of yours? Gives 16gb and can recoup some costs from selling the old ones

At around £100 each it would cost me £300+ Wouldn't a dedicated external solution be a better idea? It would pretty much free up all my internal HDDs.

 

[=adrian=]

Get a qnap. Expensive but really good and you can put all your drives in it.
Alternatively delete your prawn and have loads of space.

I must be doing something wrong. 24 Tb for £1.3k?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-453...1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446920675&sr=8-1&keywords=qnap

 

[Mr Incredible]

Is your "C" drive a mechanical drive or a SSD? If it's mechanical I'd be looking to get a larger SSD because if your OS is writing the pagefile to a drive which only has over 3GB free, it'll be slow. That said, even if it's an SSD, you could do with increasing its size anyway! That or doing some major cleaning up on it!

if it were me I'd be tempted to buy two 4TB drives - unplug "H" and plug 1 x 4TB in its' place. Copy E & F to the new drive. Remove E&F, re-connect "H" and the remaining 1 x 4TB. Copy "H" to the new 4TB. Disconnect "H" and install the external 2TB you have at the moment.

 

[jassco]

At around £100 each it would cost me £300+ Wouldn't a dedicated external solution be a better idea? It would pretty much free up all my internal HDDs.

What do you mean by dedicated? If you're thinking a server solution, then you'd have to buy the server + the drives anyway and would be at least double the price

 

[Member 55145]

I must be doing something wrong. 24 Tb for £1.3k?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-453...1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446920675&sr=8-1&keywords=qnap

Buy an empty one for £350? IIRC, add a 4TB drive and move your prawn drives to your NAS.

If you have two network cards in your PC you can get a bonded 2gb connection.

 

[=adrian=]

Is your "C" drive a mechanical drive or a SSD? If it's mechanical I'd be looking to get a larger SSD because if your OS is writing the pagefile to a drive which only has over 3GB free, it'll be slow. That said, even if it's an SSD, you could do with increasing its size anyway! That or doing some major cleaning up on it!

if it were me I'd be tempted to buy two 4TB drives - unplug "H" and plug 1 x 4TB in its' place. Copy E & F to the new drive. Remove E&F, re-connect "H" and the remaining 1 x 4TB. Copy "H" to the new 4TB. Disconnect "H" and install the external 2TB you have at the moment.

Thanks for the diagram Bob

As mentioned above, 4TB drives are around £100 each and will be full again in a couple of years. I would prefer to invest the money into a dedicated storage / back up solution. I would prefer to buy something that would give me a lot of space so I don't have to come back to the same problem every 2 years.

H: is external drive. It is one of the external back up drives and usually is disconnected.

 

[=adrian=]

What do you mean by dedicated? If you're thinking a server solution, then you'd have to buy the server + the drives anyway and would be at least double the price

I don't really know much about them, but those are external devices containing a set of HDDs (running in RAID I think?)

 

[Mr_Wistles]

I'm a big drobo fan (as you can see).

 

[=adrian=]

Buy an empty one for £350? IIRC, add a 4TB drive and move your prawn drives to your NAS.

If you have two network cards in your PC you can get a bonded 2gb connection.

Hmm interesting solution. I could then add more drives as I go. The only bit I don't like is the price. £350 for the device + 100 for one drive. A lot of money.

 

[=adrian=]

I'm a big drobo fan (as you can see).

Looks great. Care to say more? Which one do you have and how much it was (if you don't mind me asking) / how much space it gives.

 

[IronGiant]

Other NAS's are available from the same company: http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-431...1_7?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1446923371&sr=1-7
But if you want future proofing you may want a faster NAS from the off

 

[Mr_Wistles]

Looks great. Care to say more? Which one do you have and how much it was (if you don't mind me asking) / how much space it gives.

You can buy a secondhand drobo fs off ebay for £100 and then move all of your drives into it.

Throughput (I think that is the word) is good, I can stream three 50gb rips simultaneously.

Also peace of mind in case one of the drives ever goes.

 

[Member 55145]

Hmm interesting solution. I could then add more drives as I go. The only bit I don't like is the price. £350 for the device + 100 for one drive. A lot of money.

Thing is, it's an investment. And they do have a lot of features including CCTV, web/ftp Server, vpn, torrents if that's your kind of thing. It will also let you know if your hard drive is on the way out or a backup failed.
Be nice to access your home storage while on holiday for backup/document retrieval.

I have my blu-ray collection streaming from my LG nas with built in blu-ray burner. Has most of the functions of the qnap.

 

[=adrian=]

Thing is, it's an investment. And they do have a lot of features including CCTV, web/ftp Server, vpn, torrents if that's your kind of thing. It will also let you know if your hard drive is on the way out or a backup failed.
Be nice to access your home storage while on holiday for backup/document retrieval.

I have my blu-ray collection streaming from my LG nas with built in blu-ray burner. Has most of the functions of the qnap.

To be perfectly honest I am not really interested in the network feature. We don't really have much of a network at home. We don't stream, don't watch movies, don't have smart TVs (we don't watch TV at all), no servers, no HTPCs, etc. All I need it to be is a storage / back up device. In fact, I don't want that to be connected to web / network at all. So why pay for features I won't use. It will only be connected to one PC and that's all.

 

[IronGiant]

Makes it even more intriguing why you have so much data stored

In that case just buy an effing big external hard drive

 

[imightbewrong]

Get a qnap. Expensive

I'm a qnap fan - got three two-bays. One offsite for remote backups. Last one cost me £35 on here Just add drives.

My advice is not to go mad on buying space. If you buy loads most of it will sit there empty for ages and by the time you get to it the cost will have plummeted

 

[Member 55145]

Makes it even more intriguing why you have so much data stored

In that case just buy an effing big external hard drive

Just what I was thinking.

Maybe he is FZR's "creepy" neighbour and he is storing all the CCTV of cat behaviour from the cats he traps in his garage.

 

[DVD-Man]

You already know how much simple non fault tolerant storage costs, the opposite is £££ for a reason you know your data is gonna be OK.

 

[=adrian=]

Ha! I'm a photographer and a photoshop junkee. Hundreds of thousands of RAW photos. Hundreds in not thousands of massive PSD and TIFF files. Lots of unedited (family) videos in lossless format (1080p @ 60fps). Lots of music. At the moment everything is duplicated over the internal drives (twice) and external drives. It's a mess.

 

[=adrian=]

You already know how much simple non fault tolerant storage costs, the opposite is £££ for a reason you know your data is gonna be OK.

That's the thing. I like the RAID solution, because of its reliability and peace of mind. Buy each drives needs to duplicated. Making it rather expensive solution.

 

[IronGiant]

Ha! I'm a photographer and a photoshop junkee. Hundreds of thousands of RAW photos. Hundreds in not thousands of massive PSD and TIFF files. Lots of unedited (family) videos in lossless format (1080p @ 60fps). Lots of music. At the moment everything is duplicated over the internal drives (twice) and external drives. It's a mess.

Then your data is mostly irreplaceable?. You need a proper back-up protection solution. This will cost a bit for that much storage. I think I'm at the same stage as you lots of stuff duplicated over lots of drives

 

[=adrian=]

Then your data is mostly irreplaceable?. You need a proper back-up protection solution. This will cost a bit for that much storage. I think I'm at the same stage as you lots of stuff duplicated over lots of drives

Yes, exactly. Irreplaceable is the word. I need a proper storage and back up solution. I don't need the network features though. Most of those solutions are designed for network. I am struggling to find a device that will have RAID configuration, won't have network features and be within reason (price wise). I think £700 for a device with no drives is a bit **** taking.

I've looked for second hand Drobo FS or QNAP but can't really see much on Ebay.