I have an old computer that I use for storing and streaming my media. It has an attached external drive. I would like to increase my storage and build something that could be extensible to at least 100TB. I am not worried about backup.
I looked and I think I need a HDD rack or enclosure. Some people gave me links to good deals on ebay and some other sellers but they are based on the US and shipping fees are high. I saw this HDD enclosure and it seems to be what I am searching but I don’t if they are good.
Do you have some advices for me?
If I where you I would just buy a regular case that can fit a decent amount of HDDs like a fractal define 7 or one of its older versions and transplant your current computer into that with some new drives. 100tb is 5 20tb drives so you don’t need that many.
USB enclosures are not a great way to handle storage as USB tends to be unreliable.
I have the Define 6 stuffed with 8 or 9 drives in it right now. I started with 3 and just add drives as needed as my storage pool fills up.
100TB, external enclosures, no backups 🤔 I would pickup a used storage server with a lot of drive bays from eBay. The external bays seem attractive but I’ve never heard good stories about performance or reliability.
That’s what I am afraid of, some people told me that you end up having issues when you fill it up, so few years after if you buy an HDD a year.
I don’t understand why some says they don’t support HDD of more than 16TB.
For 100TB it’s worth looking into a dedicated storage server – there are tons of them available for cheap. labgopher makes it easy to track sales on ebay by price/storage/ram/whatever.
The majority of servers there are shipped from the US and shipping for me is triple the prices.
I have a couple of servers (all 2.5" drives) and a disk shelf (for the much easer to get large volume 3.5" drives) attached to one of them with an external sas PCIe card. I could push that to 300+TB if I had the cash
Does your “old computer” have usb3 or usb c? If not you’ll find it very slow to access all that data over usb 2
I only have USB 2 but it is OK for my need right now.
You’ll be better off trying to get a proper network attached storage (NAS) rather than an enclosure. Either buy a pre-made one or make one out of parts. That way you can use the network speeds. Or you could get a usb3 pcie card, they are very cheap these days.
If you’re in it for the long haul buy a “cheap” used server off of eBay and upgrade it.
If you want something more inexpensive buy the cheapest case you can find with the most HD mounting points. Then get yourself a SAS controller from eBay and connect everything up.
Then go look at installing unraid. Done.
I got an HP DL380 with 16 drive bays, and I basically just dump any old hard drives in it whenever I upgrade. I have 24TB in it, had it for years, and I’ve only ever lost one drive at a time, and I just shrink out the dead drive, and then toss another one in if I get a new one. “I’ll move your files to your new computer if I can keep the old one…” I even 3d-printed a couple of 2.5"-3.5" adapters to stuff old laptop drives in there. Caddies? Uhh… I think it was 120$ from the local electronics recycler. It’s old, it’s slow, it’s basically a giant samba share.
I have 120TB in my unraid server so far and it grows every year.
Running a supermicro chassis now which is amazing if power hungry and a bit loud.
And at over 100lbs, a thief is gonna blow out their back trying to steal it.
not usually too hard to fine older Norco and similar cases with 16+ drive bays.
I got one on FB Marketplace for less than the cost of a new 10tb drive.
