Question Storage-question: adding a NAS or just add hard drives to a desktop to increase my storage?

thedighubs · Jan 23, 2025

dear friends, good day,

well its a storage thing: the question i have is: should I set up a NAS or should i to the cheap way:

just add hard drives to a desktop to increase my storage?

I want to expand my storage. Previously I had just 400 or so GB off my hard drive for example for popular movies I wanted to stream.
Well - i guess in these days no one would add a Hdd to a PC would one!?

Well - my use-case: i have lots of movies - and i want to store them some how.

would ou do this on a extended PC (where i add some more HDDs)!?
and yes: Looking at reviews it seems they have a horribly high failure rate. This is very very bad.

So the question is: Would it be worth my time to just remove files I never touch from my old externals or what would you do!?

look forward to any and all ideas of you expert guys

cheers

manly · Jan 23, 2025

Personally I don't believe in deleting data. Storage is generally cheap enough that I'd rather not be efficiently organized (but that's how hoarders are created).

Unless you honestly believe your media library is "disposable," I'd recommend some redundancy against HDD failure (i.e. mirroring). Whether it's two local drives in your PC, or a small NAS, that's as simple as RAID-1. Keep in mind that "RAID is not backup."

It depends on what your budget and needs are, but HDD are really cheap nowadays. Currently I have an old NAS with 4TB usable storage, but I'm supposed to upgrade that to 12TB. The NAS has been reliable, but I'm a bit concerned if the PSU ever goes out. It's a SFF box, and I have no idea if you could even source another PSU. At that point, I'd probably have to consider buying a new Synology.

Oh it's an external power supply brick, so that should be replaceable. So the likeliest critical failure point would be the mainboard I guess.

Ultimately I'd like to consolidate my various hard drives (external and old desktop PCs) data all onto the NAS. I've had hard drives die before (we all have), and although it's rarely "mission critical" data, it's still not a fun feeling.

thedighubs · Jan 24, 2025

good day dear Manly

many thanks for the heads up - thanks for your answer - which is very helpful

manly said:
Personally I don't believe in deleting data. Storage is generally cheap enough that I'd rather not be efficiently organized (but that's how hoarders are created).

good idea - food for thoughts. Thank you'!!

manly said:
Unless you honestly believe your media library is "disposable," I'd recommend some redundancy against HDD failure (i.e. mirroring). Whether it's two local drives in your PC, or a small NAS, that's as simple as RAID-1. Keep in mind that "RAID is not backup."

fully agreed. Good ideas.

manly said:
It depends on what your budget and needs are, but HDD are really cheap nowadays. Currently I have an old NAS with 4TB usable storage, but I'm supposed to upgrade that to 12TB. The NAS has been reliable, but I'm a bit concerned if the PSU ever goes out. It's a SFF box, and I have no idea if you could even source another PSU. At that point, I'd probably have to consider buying a new Synology.

interesting example you provide. !

manly said:
Oh it's an external power supply brick, so that should be replaceable. So the likeliest critical failure point would be the mainboard I guess.

Ultimately I'd like to consolidate my various hard drives (external and old desktop PCs) data all onto the NAS. I've had hard drives die before (we all have), and although it's rarely "mission critical" data, it's still not a fun feeling.

thanks - fully agreed., Your ideas were helpful - they guide me into a good direction - i will have a closer lloot and will try to keep the data safe - and will try to avoid all the risks of loosing data..

thank you for your help!!

jamesdsimone · Feb 17, 2025

Depends on how many computers you have. I run 5 at any given time. I need them all to be able to access my data so my mass storage is on NAS's. I have a 2 and a 4 bay USB dock attached to one of my computers in my network which I share so that is an option too.

dave_the_nerd · Feb 17, 2025

Yeah if you only have data on one computer now and don’t access it from other machines there’s no additional benefit to a NAS, just buy some hard drives.

Question Storage-question: adding a NAS or just add hard drives to a desktop to increase my storage?

thedighubs

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manly

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thedighubs

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jamesdsimone

Senior member

dave_the_nerd

Lifer

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