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.
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.
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
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.
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.
