(Part 3) Top products from r/DataHoarder

TLDNR; Without having more info on what I described in the first paragraph. I'd say just buy a couple 10TB Easystores on sale ($180ea) and use your current SBCs and smaller server setups. After I wrote all of this I saw that you are from AUS(I think), so no clue if you can get close to $18 per TB in your area, but prices are coming down every year so sometimes better to just save $$$. It is super fun to think about a new and more powerful setup, plus buying it and putting it together, but as you can see I've done a lot of this thinking already. You are also probably feeling guilty that you have to make use of all your 2TBs, but lots of little HDDs do require more electricity to power up and cool. You need storage density and you cant get around that. Upgrade to 10TB and use the 2TB as a cold storage (backup). You are at a heck of a crossroads because the cost to go from SBCs to a "Proper" server plus buying storage isnt a cheap one. Currently there are limited stepping stones, but more powerful SBCs and Ryzen Embedded are here and on the way so wait if possible. Either way you go, you will spend more money and use up storage faster than you planned... The more powerful SBCs arent always cheap either, once you factor in cost of: memory card, power supply, case, possible heatsink/extra heat sinks, a fan, etc. Their lower price starts creeping into the middle range...


What brand, how many, and how long have the 2TBs been powered on for? It sounds like you are currently swapping out the 2TBs for others depending on what you want to watch and on which HDD it is? Do you have any projected storage numbers and what is your current and future budget? You mentioned that you have a small dedicated server? Is that another SBC or what is with that setup and how many sata ports? I'd forgo the transcoding ideas and nix buying any sort of new "Server" options. Focus on reusing what you have or going with a "Used" setup, so you can start saving that money for when 8TB or 10TB Easystores go on sale.

IMO for a true new build you'd want to price in ECC RAM, UPS, and I personally prefer a case that has hot swap access to HDDs. The Rosewill that meemo linked cant be beat for the price especially since it comes with 7 fans, but it requires extra steps to access the HDDs (internally only), which may be fine for you. There is Mediasonic (JBOD version only) that you could plug into your SBC, but that technically isnt hot swappable either, plus it is USB 3.1 to USB-C which isnt the worst but it isnt the best... I know you wanted to get away from SBCs, but if you disable transcoding there are some SBCs that use SATA to SATA connections that are very viable. Any SBC or standalone storage that uses USB is a potential risk, since USB can suffer connection issues when doing rebuilding, parity, and scrubbing maintenance (same if your power goes out, hence a need for UPS). Helios4 is a time restricted option, since they only open up orders once or twice a year (they are currently taking orders). *I saw a post saying that since the Helios4 is a 32bit processor, so it is limited to 16TB volumes. You get 2GB ECC + 4x SATA and I believe you can use any HDD size with that (double check tho), so 4 separate 10TB volumes (4x$180sale=$720+tax), not including parity... I'm not sure how the 32bit and the 16TB volume limit effect drive pooling... I gotta research more into that. I'm not familiar with the UnRaid, FreeNAS, or the other options that you mentioned, but OpenMediaVault4 has MergerFS drive pooling and Snapraid plugin, you could run 3x storage HDD and 1x parity or you could forgo parity for now. If you prefer Windows (You can also run omv4 on windows in a VM) there is Stablebit Drivepool (Not free) for pooling and then Snapraid (not completely novice friendly) for parity. Depending on the HDD type you could reuse the discarded Easystore enclosures and put your 2TB drives in there (still USB connection). If they are a different brand (non WD/HGST) I think you have to desolder something on the Easystore board? I lost the link on how to do that. You could also just keep the 2TB as cold storage backups, but that still carries a risk, but it's cheaper. You could also get 2nd Helios, but for about the same price you could use that money on a 10TB. That would replace 5x of your 2TB drives... Not too mention the extra electricity to power and cool 5x drives vs 1x drive... As you can see, storage density starts coming into play here, big time.
UPS https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00429N18S/
Mediasonic https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078YQHWYW/
Helios4 https://shop.kobol.io/collections/frontpage/products/helios4-full-kit-2gb-ecc-3rd-batch-pre-order?variant=18881501528137
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/as17od/helios4_batch_3_available_for_preorder/

There are other SATA SBCs that you could use and you could also do a janky setup and put the SATA SBCs inside a hot swappable case like this Silverstone one. There are other cases, but this is the only name that came to mind. This case also doesnt have any power supply or fans to cool the HDDs so there will be extra cost there, plus you'll need a power supply, PLUS a way to turn on your power supply (with a power board), since that SBC setup wont have a motherboard. You can also make your own "Dumb" JBOD HDD enclosure and connect that to your mini server. Another option to SBCs is the ASRock cpu+mobo line: J3455-ITX, J4105-ITX, annd J5005-ITX. The issue with this that it appears you are still limited to 4x SATA or other variations of these boards have a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot at x1 or x2 transfer lanes/speed instead of x8 or x16... Also you have to factor in the price of ram and a mini PICO power supply. There is a subreddit+website that focuses on used parts for cheap server setups, but you might want to verify the power consumption of those setups when they are idling. With the NAS killer option, you gotta make sure all of the parts are still available on ebay or refurb sites, plus make sure you have time to build your setup to verify everything is working plus stress test it before the return window closes to weed out any weak used parts.
Silverstone https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IAELTAI/
HDD enclosure option https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-5-25-Inch-3-5-Inch-Hot-swap-SATAIII/dp/B00DGZ42SM/
Power Board https://www.amazon.com/Super-Micro-Computer-Supermicro-Cse-ptjbod-cb2/dp/B008FQZHZE
J3455-ITX https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-157-728
https://www.serverbuilds.net/nas-killer-v30/

Another option if you really want transcoding and a more powerful "Server" would be a Dell Optiplex 7010, which are used business computers that are "Refurbished", but I think they just take them from that company and wipe the hard drive, nothing else. The Minitower Desktop version is roomier than the slightly cheaper SFF (SmallFormFactor) version, which might be important if you want to swap out the power supply, watch the youtube video to get an idea of what you are getting into. Since a cheap power supply is a weak point plus a potential hazard I'd recommend swapping in a new power supply, but you could risk it with its current power supply. Everything else should last for a good while. You'll also need to install a HBA card. You can get Genuine used cards that were in good working order or you could get a new knock off from China. Both options are viable, but personally I prefer the used option. Theartofserver, ebay seller, also has a youtube channel, so I purchased from him, but I have also purchased from other sellers and got good working parts (I think Ebay still has the most honest and accurate rating system out there?). Since the Optiplex doesnt have room for internal HDDs then you are left with a few options with various HBA cards (internal vs external), expander cards, and adapter setups (SFF-8087 to SFF-8088). If you want it to look "Proper" there will be a lot of wasted money on 2x adapters (1x Optiplex + 1x external HDD enclosure) and an extra SFF-8088 cable between the two. I'd just go janky with it and get a longer reverse breakout cable of 3.3feet (4x SATA to 1x SFF-8087), which should be long enough to go from your external HDDs setup into the Optiplex case and internally connected to the HBA card, like the popular 9201-8i. The janky part being that you'll have the reverse breakout cable snaking directly into each case, instead of plugging into an adapter in the back.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K0GNUOG/
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-Breakout-SFF-8087/dp/B018YHS9GM
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-LSI-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-LSI-9201-8i-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162958581156
Single adapter https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133055
Double adapter https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GPD9QEQ/
SFF-8080 cable https://www.amazon.com/Norco-Technologies-C-SFF8088-External-SFF-8088/dp/B003J9CZCK/

Raw storage:

• 72TB (9 x 8TB RAIDZ2)
  
  
• 36TB (9 x 4TB RAIDZ2)
  
  Total 108TB(18 drives)
  
  Actual storage:
  
  
• 48TiB
  
  
• 24TiB
  
  Total 72TiB
  
  Case:
  
  
• Nanoxia Deep Silence 6 Rev. B
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DSFDSUS/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  
• Nanoxia Deep Silence 3 for parts
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Nanoxia-Computer-Controllers-Motherboard-NXDS3B/dp/B00M49SNVI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1497552150&sr=8-2&keywords=nanoxia+deep+silence
  
  Used the two bay 3.5" cage, and three bay 2.5" cage from the Deep Silence 3 case.
  
  Fans:
  
  
• 2 140mm top
  
  
• 2 140mm front
  
  
• 2 120mm middle
  
  
• 1 140mm back
  
  
• 2 140mm cpu
  
  Used two 120mm case fans from the Deep Silence 3 case between the two stacks of drives.
  
  Motherboard: Supermicro X10SRA-F
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O7ZK10S/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1620 v3 3.5GHz
  
• https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117512&cm_re=intel_1620-_-19-117-512-_-Product
  
  Heatsink: Noctua DH-D15
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L7UZMAK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  RAM:
  
  
• Micron ECC Registered - 8gb x 4
  
  
• Mircon ECC Registered - 4gb x 4
  
  Total 48gb
  
  PSU: Corsair AX1500i
  
  Controllers:
  
  
• Motherboard - 10 ports
  
  
• LSI 9211-8i - 8 ports
  
  • https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RL8I7M/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
    
    
• Marvell - 2 ports
  
  Total 20 ports
  
  NIC: Mellanox Connectx-2 10g
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0178CNZ9U/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  OS Disks: 2 x Intel 330 60GB, mdadm RAID1
  
  Storage Disks:
  
  
• 9 x Western Digital Red 8TB WD80EFZX
  
  • http://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401
    
  • https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BYLY4DM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
    
    Seven shucked from Best Buy WD easystore externals and two from Amazon as internals.
    
    
• 9 x 4TB drives, mix of Seagates and HGST NAS
  
  • 2 x ST4000DM000
    
  • 2 x ST4000DX000
    
  • 4 x HGST_HDN724040ALE640
    
  • 1 x HGST_HDN726040ALE614
    
    • http://www.frys.com/product/9112138?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
      
      I originally shucked the Seagates from externals. I have replaced the Seagates as they fail, and I had one fail during this upgrade. Yes, I have had five Seagate failures.
      
      SATA/SAS cables:
      
      
• 10 36" SATA cables
  
  • http://www.frys.com/product/8057794?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
    
    
• 2 24" SATA cables
  
  • http://www.frys.com/product/8057804?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
    
• 2 SAS four port breakout cables
  
  • https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018YHS8BS/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
    
    OS: Fedora 25 with ZFS for Linux
    
    Cost:
    
    
• Around $2800 without storage
  
  
• Around $3200 for storage
  
  
• Around $6000 total
  
  The cost was spread across years. This is more like two builds in one. My old build with the motherboard, memory, heatsink, CPU, and 4tb drives combined with my new 8tb build. With the 4tb drives I have replaced five of nine drives over time, which has driven up the real total cost.
  
  The case is huge, but all the space is nice. You don't feel like you are cramming anything in. I used a Fractal Design R5 for my previous build, and prefer Fractal Design cases to Nanoxia cases. But the biggest Fractal Design case wouldn't quite suit my needs. Even this was a stretch for the Deep Silence 6 case. I wish the Deep Silence 6 had spots to mount 2.5" drives on the back side like the R5. It is a feature I miss.
  
  I have a few issues. The trays and the screw holes on the WD 8tb drives don't match. The WD drives are missing the middle bottom screw holes. My temporary workaround is strong 3M double sticky foam tape with two screws. I may use a drill and drill holes in the sides of the trays. I had to tape down the 2.5" cage, but the drives are so light it is not a big deal.
  
  After building this beast I had the window closed, the door shut, and no room fan for one day. The room was quite warm. I have since opened the window, turned on the fan, and left the door open.
  
  My Kill-a-watt peaked at 450 watts during boot. It idles between 200-220 watts. So I could go back to my AX760 from my previous build with SATA power splitters.
  
  I still have one tray free, but no extra drive or SATA port.
  
  I was originally going to move the four bay 3.5" cage from the Deep Silence 3, but it was just too integrated into the case. I tried adapting it, and it didn't come out well. Even if it had, the bottom tray was going to sit below the lip of the side of the case. So that tray would have been less accessible.
  
  I am currently copying 18tb from the old array to the new array as a burn-in test.
  
  I got the original idea to build with this case from someone else's post. I probably would have just bought another Fractal Design R5, and run two systems otherwise. I have run two systems for storage before, connected them with 10g, and used iSCSI. When I did I used, https://romanrm.net/mhddfs , to merge the filesystems together. I am considering doing the same again.
  
  With the right cages you could probably fit around 26 3.5" drives in this case.
  
  Over time I have gone from 250gb to 500gb to 1tb to 1.5tb to 2tb to 4tb to 8tb drives. I didn't think I would be upgrading to 8tb anytime soon, until the Best Buy easystore deal. In the past I mostly purchased on Black Fridays. In more recent years externals from Costco.
  
  TLDR: I built a new server combining an existing 24TiB ZFS with a new array of 36TiB ZFS for the win!

Haha sorry I got a little carried away in my response.


After going through your response, I would have to agree with you that you probably wouldn't benefit from having a NAS at the moment.


If you have a good CPU in that Optiplex(I doubt it) or a good motherboard, I think you should just try to use the Easy Stores via USB as external drives.


Once you get to 4-6 drives and it gets a little difficult to manage so many external USB non-raided pool of storage, you should get a used cheap computer case that has a lots of 5.25" Bays and get something like ICYDOCK to fit more drives.

Now find used cheap internal parts from eBay. Don't worry about getting fast CPU or a MoBo with bells and whistels. We just need something to plug in our drives.


Until you run into this issue, I think you should be good with your current setup + more USB drives.
I wait until I had like 5 x 2TB WB passports, 2 x 4TB WD EasyStores and like 4 x 2TB internal drive before I decided to setup a proper NAS. Now my NAS is almost full with 120TB storage haha.


Let me know if you have any questions now or in the future and I can try to help out.

WD Mybook 8TB for £119.99 (until midnight UK time on the 16th of July):


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LWVT81X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01LWVT81X&linkCode=as2&tag=amoves-21&linkId=109e41ed89969139d870a312cd99835b



We can finally feel like Americans for a day with these bargain prices. You need to sign up for Prime as well but if you don't have an active prime membership, you can also start a new Prime trial if you haven't used your 30-day trial in the last 365 days. I just checked and these are the lowest prices these 8TB hard drives have ever been sold for in the UK.

They also have the WD Elements Desktop 8TB on a Prime Day sale for £124:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FNK6QMT/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amoves-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07FNK6QMT&linkId=7a13bc41e7e1867b91417ef49df553e1


From what I've read it's quite similar to the MyBook but doesn't offer backup, encryption and password protection by default. Both are good for schucking. The main advantage of the Elements Desktop 8TB seems to be the ease of adding another drive in its case later on if you decide to schuck it.


The Seagate Expansion 8TB is on sale for only £109 and I've heard only good things about it in comparison to their smaller drives which seem to be problematic. I went with the MyBook 8TB myself.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DQBFQ2D/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amoves-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07DQBFQ2D&linkId=28f3f183cd50ec9d3adf5c102ece5daa

The only other good deal I found was the Western Digital My Passport 4TB Portable. Still debating whether to buy it as well or get another Mybook 8tb. It is currently on sale for only £75 which is the second lowest price ever for it in the UK:


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LQQH86A/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amoves-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01LQQH86A&linkId=54e3c55ae8c90b3e6a3f373dfb0b7335

I'm a fan of the IBM M1015 which is commonly recommended for FreeNAS builds; it's a rebadged LSI card and can be easily reflashed to run in HBA mode.

They're pretty cheap for RAID cards, and I've had good luck finding free ones in decommissioned servers at work. I also have heard they're relatively easy to find cheaply on ebay.

I recommend the DS414j stuffed with WD Red 3TB for price performace or WD Red 6TB for max storage.

This meets all your criteria:

• ( 4*3TB=12TB or 4*6TB=24TB ) > 5TB.
  
• DS414j supports RAID 5 or SHR, which both allow single disk hot swap redundancy and hot swap upgrade.
  
• DS414j stuffed with WD Red 3TB comes to $844, $14 over your price range. If you really can't overbudget, I suggest going with 3 drives, or even non-nas drives.
  
• Synology is Plug and Play.
  
• Synology supports RAID 0,1,5,6,10,JBOD and SHR.
  
• Yes, it's a file system :p It stores everything ever and probably streams it too.
  
• Synology GUI is very comprehensive.

That budget makes this hard.

You have 2 options, DAS or NAS. A DAS would attach via usb, or a simmilar interface, while a NAS connects over internet.

For the DAS option, Id probably get something like the segate archive drives https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1480446876&sr=1-1&keywords=8tb+external+hard+drive

These are really cheap because they use SMR on the hdd. SMR makes it so that writes can be very slow, but reads are fine. I probably buy a second one or use a clould service like amazon's unlimited acd to back it up.

For NAS, Id probably get this https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS216j-NAS-DiskStation/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1480446978&sr=1-2&keywords=synology+nas

And 2x 4tb hdd's to go with it. Any hdd will work, but there are nas optimized drives like wd reds, that are lower power, have longer warranties, and have firmware that is designed to handle errors better.

Here is a drive id pick https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1480447066&sr=1-1&keywords=wd+red

I don't know of any guides, but for the home user, it's really not expensive or difficult.

What you need, besides HBA in your host machine, is just a bunch of cabling. If you don't have an HBA...cheap and available on ebay.

Just an FYI: Most hard drives don't use a lot of power. (you can look up the max power requirements for specific drives through their manufacturer spec sheet) A 500 watt power supply can often supply the vast majority of that over the 12v rails. Your power supply can run many more disks than it has provisions for, so splitter cables are often the only way to maximize your chassis disk space. As I mentioned before: don't use cables with molded connectors. Cables like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086OGN9E - you can see they are plastic and snap around the cables themselves and aren't a molded piece.

The super quick and dirty to expand your storage past your server computer's space or power capabilities is:

• A second computer case or disk chassis with it's own power supply
  
• A way to trigger the power supply to turn on with the machine, such as: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074DGPL85/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1 (when the molex port receives power, it triggers a relay to power on the power supply connected to the 20/24 pin)
  
• A way to connect the drives, which is just SFF-8088 from host to disk chassis. You can install a bracket like https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B01GPD9QEQ - or you can just pull an SFF-8088 to Sata through a hole to the chassis. Depends on how cheap you are. (I'm pr gd cheap) You can route an internal sff-8087 out of your host chassis with that kind of bracket too.
  
  GL fellow data hoarder
  

> Are tape systems really that expensive?

Well have you looked?

LTO-4 was like the best price value wise last time I looked. An LTO-4 Tape drive is about $300. Tapes are maybe $15 per tape and hold 800GB each.

So 30TB costs say $300 + (3815) = $870.

For HDD you could buy 6 of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-7200rpm-3-5-Inch-Internal-PH3500U-1I72/dp/B00OP2PKH2

So 30TB costs say $1446 = $864.
Or 32TB in 4 of those 8TB drives you linked for $892.

Guess the break-even point of LTO-4 is about 30TB at the moment.

But with HDD you have random access and they work everywhere. Tape you have to use very specific software and get it all set up and working right. You might also need to buy something like a SAS controller to connect the tape drive to your system. Plus you are having to managing 20-40 tapes compared to 4-6 HDDs.

I'll look at LTO-5. An LTO-5 drive might be found for $500 at the lowest. Then it's $20 per tape. Each tape holds 1.5TB.

30TB = $500 + (2020) = $900.

LTO-6, well its $1000+ already just for the LTO-6 drive.

note, all the prices are eBay for tape drives and tapes. HDDs are retail prices at Amazon/Newegg.

Get this external storage instead, because seagate has higher failure rates as proven in the past.

Idealy you would want an Internal HDD, but for some reason your friend has everything on USB.

If you would like to use internal HDDs (and get wayyyy faster transfer speeds) but have no space left you can buy this or this or any other one you would like and then you just plug it into an eSATA port or USB. If you have an internal SATA available you can buy this and have a nice place to plug it in, or just buy long eSATA to SATA cable and shove it through a slot.

Note: To protect your data you need to put more money into it, currently you have 0 data protection.

I've looked a little into HBAs, since you mentioned them, and I'm definitely intrigued! Probably a dumb question, but I had trouble finding an answer: Would I be able to use an HBA in addition to the onboard SATA ports or does it replace them? If I were to follow your setup, I'd need to do the following:

• Pick-up a IBM 1015M off Amazon, eBay, or get a one pre-flashed to it mode.
  
• Pick-up two SFF-8087 mini-SAS to SATA cable (Amazon)
  
• Flash the IBM 1015M using the steps outlined on Serve The Home to convert the firmware from LSI9240 to LSI9211-IT mode.
  
  Does that seem correct or did you follow a different set of steps?
  
  Once again, thanks for taking the time to help me out with this! If I can get an HBA working, it seems like it would be a major improvement, allowing me to get the most out of my setup! :D

My case supports 36 drive bays. I paid a good amount for it.

As for power... make sure you have enough "room" on the +12VDC line on your power supply for all of your drives. IIRC, 2A per drive is a good idea (plenty of room for spin up, and other components).

As for space, the 5 in 3 or similar backplanes allow you to convert the 5.25" bays into hard drive bays.

SAS is another way to go. If you don't mind the sound:

• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LSQOY6G
  
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002QJZLCA
  
  That gets you at least 24 bays, and possibly more. And some nice looking enclosures.

After seeing so many poor experiences with hard drive shipments from Amazon I was hesitant on upgrading my storage. I had bought two sets of HDDs from Amazon prior (2014 & 2016) and also had great packaging. I entered this community some time last year and one of the things that sticks out is the “HDD packaging sucks” posts. Also, the EasyStore shucking.

I went and bought 4 EasyStores so I could shuck them when the price dropped to $150 last August but I ended up using them as regular externals for back ups, and for family stuff instead.

I had these hard drives sitting in my wishlist for a long time, I got notified about a $29 price decrease ($254 to $225). It still wasn’t as great as an EasyStore but it made me feel better about buying a bare drive. The night I ordered, I had a dream that I had already received the hard drives. One came in retail packaging, the other was just a bare drive in the box, the third was a 2.5” drive with no packaging either. The rest were a mix of cables and adapters.

My eight HDD’s appear to be healthy and I can’t wait to plug them in this evening when I get home from work.

These are 8TB SeaGate IronWolf drives, I was bummed about the deal they offered was only for the Pro, so when I saw the regular IronWolf drop in price I pulled the trigger. Not sure how much longer the sale will last so here’s the link to the drive.

Hey, there are also few other deals:


WD MyBook 8TB single drive for 135€: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01LWVT81X/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_ivdlDbA8P5VWQ?th=1

My Cloud EX2 Ultra 16 TB 2 drives for 390€: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01CENX44E?language=pl_PL&tag=pepperpl09-21

My Book Duo 20 TB for 450€: https://www.amazon.de/WD-Book-Duo-AES-Hardwareverschl%C3%BCsselung-WDBFBE0200JBK-EESN/dp/B0752HSBP4/ref=sr_1_9?fst=as%3Aoff&qid=1563184862&refinements=p_89%3AWestern+Digital%2Cp_n_size_browse-bin%3A10857678031&rnid=187129031&s=computers&smid=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF&sr=1-9


Which are best for shucking?

I must have over 100 USB sticks now, everything from 512MB up to 1TB. Like you I used a lot of them for bootable ISOs. Had 6-8 of them on a large keyring too, just for emergencies.
Can I make a recommendation, though? Two actually. First is the IODD2531. It's an external USB HDD caddy, but you can drop ISOs on it and you can select them individually from the unit and it'll emulate an optical drive. I've installed everything from Server 2019 on big-box HP and Dell servers, to Windows 98se after some tinkering. You need to supply your own drive, but mine has a 256GB SSD and I've never looked back.
The other is something I've not tried and only found recently called Easy2Boot. I like playing retro games which means retro machines need building, and this comes recommended by lots in the community. Similar idea to the IODD, but USB based.


Edit: For clarity, the IODD box is the OEM version of the Zalman VE350. When I was looking into getting one, I found the Zalman was a similar price, but the stock IODD firmware more flexible. You can flash between the two at will, though.

Pair of 10TB Seagate IronWolf drives as a mirror will do the trick for WAY less than $2,000.

Note that you said ARCHIVE, and I am responding as such. These are not super high performance drives. This is also live storage only, and does not include backup. But hey, good news - since you're only spending $800 on the pair, you can afford to buy two pairs of them instead, and back up from one mirror to the other, preferably in separate machines! Problem solved!

I strongly recommend building a proper NAS (well, two, really). This doesn't have to be hard - standard PC parts will do the trick, including "the older machine I have lying around". You said "safest", so I'm recommending ZFS. If you don't know what the hell that is - that's ok, google NAS4Free. (FreeNAS is also an option, but in my opinion is a lot more fiddly to deal with. NAS4Free is very, very straight forward.)

If you build two of them and back up from one to the other, you'll want ZFS replication to handle it. This will want a little command line help. I built a tool called syncoid that can do the trick pretty easily, if you aren't allergic to the command line. If you are allergic to the command line: I recommend investing a couple hundred bucks in getting somebody more technical to assist you with this part of it.

I ABSOLUTELY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT DO NOT recommend RAID5 as a "safe" way to store your data. No way, no how, don't do it.

If performance is a concern I would definitely NOT choose Synology or UnRAID. Synology will have a slow CPU and limited RAM. UnRAID will be limited to the performance of just 1 disk for reads and writes because it doesn't stripe. (as you said, they don't span the file system across multiple drives).

I would buy a 24 bay 4U chassis, put in whatever motherboard that's in your price range made by Super Micro that has expansion slots, 16/32/64GB of ECC RAM, a low-grade Xeon CPU (or 4th gen i3), 1-3 IBM m1015 sas/sata controllers in IT mode to support software raid (or use sas expanders with just 1 m1015), and start building your ZFS pools in 8x10TB RAIDZ2 bunches. This way you can eventually get to 180TB usable with 3x 8x10TB RAIDZ2 in that box.

Use either CentOS 7 with ZFS support or Ubuntu Server. For production data, ZFS or gtfo imo.

I bought 3 on Amazon for about $350/ea a month ago - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IA9GU0Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Running great so far in my Synology NAS, runs as cool as Red drives while being 7200RPM, so not bad. - Registered for 3 year warranty as well on Seagate's site.

I guess it has somewhat to do with people not needing larger harddisk. Faster: yes, smaller: yes.

But looking around my social bubble most people just don't need more then a SSD and maybe a 2TB disk.

Camelcamelcamel is a good website to check price history from amazon. For example 8TB IronWolf has gone from 340 to 233 EUR. WD Red 4TB from 181 to 133EUR

Your best USB-powered external hard drive option is the WD 4TB Elements for $99.

Western Digital 4TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0713WPGLL

Seagate has a 5Tb usb powered external but seagates reliability is more questionable so I’d go with the WD.

All external drives bigger than that are not USB powered and require an AC adapter be plugged into a separate power source.

I am shucking STDR4000100's. There's an older-ish article on them. They now have the newer SKU of internal drive, ending in 24 instead of 16, no longer the exact same as article but might as well be. They are low wattage and run cool which is nice.

le edit: There's a 5TB model now too. Can't personally vouch for them, but same enclosure so they're shuckable. Is almost certainly a ST5000LM000 internally.

Snappy Driver Installer Origin

Download the application, download the indexes only then download the printer driverpack. Portable program and everything is stored in the file structure and already compressed. Occasionally launch the program to download updates.

Or, in the true spirit of this sub, download the full driverpack torrent and have most (Windows) drivers you could need on a USB stick.

Alternatively, a live USB of a Linux distro that includes CUPS and non-free packages by default (eg. Mint or Solus) will boot on just about anything and print to just about any printer without updates.

Further down the rabbit hole: Get an Iodd 2351 or similar and drop in 120+ GB SSD and have multiple bootable Linux ISOs, a WinPE rescue disc (one I like), every windows install media and all the driverpacks available to any computer that can boot to a USB CD-ROM. Since you're talking apocalypse scenario, better hang onto Windows Updates as well... You never know what you may need, right?

> they are big

Wow, amazon even refers to is as a "gigantic big tower". They really want to make sure you realize it is big.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-WDBFBE0200JBK-EESN-Desktop-External-Software/dp/B0752HSBP4?ref_=Oct_DLandingS_PC_ddf4074c_4&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE with WD Reds inside as well!

Amazon doesn’t seem to carry it anymore, but it’s a rosewill b2 spirit. Same case as the deep silence 6 but without sound dampening. Here’s the link to the deep silence 6. Only thing you have to do is get 5.25 to 3.5 converters. But the 4 dvd drive bays convert to 6 hard drive bays


Deep Silence 6 Super Tower HPTX Case for Sensitive Audio Workstation and Storage Dense Applications, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSFDSUS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_M2BpDb5EPDDV1

Before ceph:
Two bay dns323 with raid1 and two 3TB disks. Power supply died recently.

With ceph:
I have one server, for now, with three 3TB disks and one SSD for the journal in a hotswap bay. I have ProxMox installed in the server and used that to manage ceph instead of ceph-deploy.

I created a ceph filesystem with one disk and mounted the raid to copy data to ceph. At this point my pool size is 1 (no replication) to allow a healthy state. My crush map is set to allow replication across disks instead of requiring replication across hosts. After the data was migrated, I added the other two disks to ceph and set the pool size to 2 for replication (raid5 equivalent?). It took some time for the data (~1.5TB) to balance out over the disks. I now mount ceph via fuse on my virtual machines. Still figuring out how to automount on boot as there's a bug in my installed version.

I've had some help in understanding how to set this up. I did some initial testing using manual deployment, ceph-deploy, and then proxmox; scrapping my progress each time till I learned how each worked.

I had some trouble using rbd images for my end use. During testing I created a 1TB image, mounted it in opemMediaVault, put a filesystem on it, and shared that to my network. I then ran into the issue or resizing. Expanding the image is easy, expanding the filesystem while it was mounted was not easy. I wanted something I could add more disk or another server to and have more space instantly. I wanted to get rid of doing data migrations to larger disk pools.

Gutted I missed out. As the WD 20 TB My Book Duo for £333.99 is out of my budget, is the Seagate 8 TB Expansion (STGY8000400) for £109.99 a good value consolation prize?

​

EDIT: Removed unintentional Amazon affiliate links.

Check out the different drive sizes on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008JJLW4M/?tag=pcpapi-20
You'll see the 1, 2, and 3 say "NASware" on them and the 4GB says "NASware 2.0". They're all clearly marked as Red's so it looks like that alone is a good indicator of whether a drive is a Red or a Network.

Does this also work with the 2.5" WD passport like this? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0713WPGLL/

This is a significant jump in price, and perhaps overkill, but the Deep Silence 6 case will fit 13x3.5" + 4x5.25". With slight mods it could fit another 4x3.5" drive cage.

With a sas card (or 3) this would provide lots of storage while not being a rack server.

Just a thought.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Photography-STDR5000100/dp/B01LZP2B23/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1538241919&sr=8-2&keywords=seagate+5tb+backup+plus

i used those and an icy hot dock. Since the first pair is already showing uncorrectable errors, I'm going to run the mirrored pair until failure but nix my plans of expanding another pool of storage on them.

I had plans of 6 x 5tb in 2 icy hot docks, using 2 5.25" bays that are currently idle in my nas case, and utilizing a dell h310 flashed to IT mode for pass through. it looks like for reliablity in the smaller size I'm limited to WD blacks.

Litterally the first link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LNJBA50/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500074677&sr=8-1&pi=SL75_QL70&amp

They are no WD Red, but I have had 5 of them running in a rig 24/7 for about 16 months now with no issues. The fact that they are almost half the cost of a WD Red Pro of the same capacity means (at least to me) it makes sense to run RAID6/Z2 and buy a few spares in case SHTF.

If you want to do a lot of that kind of thing, and you don't mind spending more (Especially if you have a 2.5 inch drive laying around!) you should consider getting an IODD 2531.

It has a physical switch and menu to mount and unmount ISOs and VHDs, and they show up as actual devices to boot from. I've got mine set up with an old 128GB ssd that I wasn't really using, and I've got all the ISOs I might use with a 60GB VHD windows install with a bunch of repair tools and such on it, as well as a 10GB linux install with the same. Mount VHD, reboot, select to boot from that VHD, and it boots like a regular hard drive. It's only SATA 2 internally, so it doesn't hurt all that bad to stick in an old laptop drive either, but it's still waaay faster than any USB stick you are going to get, even most of the 'ssd with USB bridge' ones you can buy assuming you stick in a cheap-as-possible SSD.

If not for the windows installer having a specific check for installing to a drive connected over USB, you can literally mount a blank VHD and iso, then install windows to the VHD. Linux doesn't care either way, so you can happily do that.

I have four that I shucked from:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZP2B23/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and put them in one of these:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998243

Do they work fine?

Yep.

I have had them almost a year and no complaints. They are trouble free enough that when I sit down and plan expansion I forget they are there and think "WTF? I could swear this pool was supposed to be 20TB bigger." Where I come from, that's a good thing.

Keep in mind, I am using them in a pool with Stablebit DrivePool so I can't vouch for performance in a true RAID or ZFS setup.

The only thing that caught me off guard was that they are 15mm thick so adapters and bays made for your standard 7-9mm drives won't work.

10TB WD Red on a 3.5" enclosure?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072F422FW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_lx59AbACGGFJQ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LS5NFQ2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Vy59AbJJRMTKR

There is also a 2.5" bus powered version of the WD Elements 4TB.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B0713WPGLL

Hmm... So two of these right now work out to roughly $615CAD once accounting for taxes and duties. Alternatively, these Seagate 8TB IronWolfs (ST8000VN0022) work out to about $620 after taxes, and I don't have to spend three hours driving to Buffalo to pick them up.

Are these Seagate drives any good? For me, they'll be like 90% music and movies/TV shows.

For the price, these Toshiba 5TBs are great!

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-7200rpm-3-5-Inch-Internal-PH3500U-1I72/dp/B00OP2PKH2

I have 4 of them now. They seem to just be rebranded HGSTs which are just WDs now.

I have one of [these] (https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Ultrastar-HUS724030ALE641-Enterprise-Refurbished/dp/B01LYVD7ME/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493744194&sr=8-1&keywords=hgst+3tb) Enterprise grade refurb HGST. Apparently Amazon has the good batch of these. I've had mine for 5 months and it only has about 700 powered on hours. Not bad for $69.99.

WD 10TB Elements 220eu 213 from amazon.de
Just bought this 3 days ago also for 220., all of them came with EMAZ Drives. Need the enclosures for my other drives which are naked right now >.>

otherwise i would just have bought the WD MyBook's for 20 less.
WD MyBook 10TB 200€ From Amazon.de was not so long ago for 175. which is the lowest GB/eur ever?

But Mybooks has hardwareencryption.. which makes it impossible to read it on desktop if you are swapping around without formatting the drive..

Edit:
Amazon.de has a nice offer..

Seagate external 8TB for 135€

WD Elements 8TB for 155

WD MyBook 8TB for 161

WD MyBook DUO 20TB for 463 (amazon.fr) Guranteerd REDS! no whities

I got this HBA and flashed it. Working great. UNIX Surplus included the SFF-8088 cable you'll need. Mine was short though and only 1 m long so I'm getting a longer one.

If the drive is failed chuck it, it's not worth trying to recover a bad drive.

A 3TB Red costs about £100 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M.

If the other drives are good you've lucked out massively, 4 used reds are worth at least twice what you paid for the whole thing.

Maybe put the failed drive in an enclosure and run SMART tests on it for a day, see what comes up.

Make sure to RAID5 that thing, you don't want to lose all your data and end up like the guy that sold it.

I just picked this up yesterday for $99 and it's 4TB. Looks easily shuckable too if I weren't using it as a backup.

I'd also check out /r/buildapcsales for good deals on quality hard drives.

4TB is the best value per terabyte when I looked at prices last week

Edit: I was wrong, I was thinking about the Seagate BarraCuda!

CD/DVD-R media.

-There are also USB HDD/SSD cases that can make the media look/act like a Optical drive, making it read only as well. It can also load multiple OS

https://www.amazon.com/Iodd-Iodd2531-Black-Virtual-Enclosures/dp/B00TDJ4BJU

Standard SATA. Here's some that I've ordered https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LYVD7ME eBay has them as well. $44/$45 is the usual price. $40 when they go on sale. They'll usually have a few thousand hours on them, but the vast majority of those drives, if not all, are data center drives that have been run 100% on with clean power.

I wouldn't buy one for my main hard drive, but these have been my go to drives for my Drobos for years.

If its for important stuff family related 1 copy on the 1tb drive (ext) off site and on a nas like https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491200099&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=synology
Then run rclone on it automatically and sendit to acd

it is also $399 for a new one on Amazon... free shipping (https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01IA9GU0Q/)

A QNAP nas like this one http://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-431-Personal-Mobile-Support/dp/B00O4DKAVS/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1458501449&sr=8-9&keywords=Qnap should be good, and it has just enough bays to accommodate your 4 3.5" drives, but if I were you I'd buy 4 WD Red 3TB drives http://www.amazon.com/Red-3TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458501721&sr=8-1&keywords=WD+red+3tb (3TB due to it being the lowest cost per GB) for a total cost of $700 for a reliable QNAP nas that can run plex filled with high quality drives. This also means that you can reduce power usage since the Mac mini is no longer needed 24/7. As long as you use a pc or raspberry pi, transcoding should rarely be needed, but the QNAP can handle a bit if it needs to. *EDIT /u/gnartung owns one of these and says that the QNAP CPU can't reliably be trusted, so take that into consideration.

I use https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Lay-Flat-Docking-EC-DFLT/dp/B00LS5NFQ2 but if I got one now I'd get the same model with a fan (https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Lay-Flat-Docking-EC-DFFN/dp/B013WODZH0)

Thanks, although I was referring to the card that he's pairing this with. Most likely in this sub the IBM ServeRaid m1015

cheap easy not SMR
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN/dp/B00E3RH61W/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449635827&sr=1-1&keywords=wd+4tb

1. Move on to a bigger case (I went from cheap $20 gaming computer case with 6 bays to a $100 case with 12 bays to a $350 case with 24 bays)
   
2. Buy another case and do what /u/AshleyUncia stated
   
3. Buy another case with just the drives, a power supply, and some cards like these: https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B01GPD9QEQ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1542731683&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=sas+card&psc=1 that connect back to your main storage server with some SAS cables
   
4. Run externals connected to the server

Sabrent makes a nice enclosure for 3.5 drives:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LS5NFQ2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_uQxwCbJ4MXK1T


Now if you're wanting a docking station:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H11KXCL/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_MSxwCbMEFG8NX

Cool, this might work. Can I run the card with this?

​

Edit: I do not plan to have a motherboard in the case. Besides what I stated above, how would I power the card? Generally, I see that these cards have SAS outputs. How would connect this to my main PC. Would I need a SAS input on main PC or would I get a SAS to USB cable?

​

Edit2: I think I misunderstood how the card is being used. The 9201-8e card would go into my main PC and it will simply connect to hard drives using SATA to SAS cables. Or I can use something like this to terminate the cable at eh PCI slot.

Icy Dock makes one like that.

I would guess, something like this

you can build a file server using a old desktop and freenas. recommend starting simpler and buy a retail NAS.

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS216J-NAS-DiskStation-DS216j/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=s9u_simh_gw_i1

Amazon.com was the seller of that herring, and in the US at least, they also directly sell 10TB Ironwolf drives like the one in the OP's picture. ADDED: which he's confirmed was also the case with this disk drive shipment.

How about either of these:

Seagate 8TB: £119 @ Amazon (today only)

Seagate 6TB: £89 @ Amazon (today only)

Are you looking for hot swappable drives? Because if you are it ends up being pretty expensive, but still cheaper than buying a new server. If you are just looking to fill up a tower it's been done before to extreme levels before..

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Security-Local-Backup-WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN/dp/B00E3RH61W

Same thing, same cost, but with Prime on Amazon.

The lowest $/TB for a good drive right now (has been for a few months now), not counting shingled, are the 5TB Toshiba HDDs. They are $145 from amazon or bestbuy.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-7200rpm-3-5-Inch-Internal-PH3500U-1I72/dp/B00OP2PKH2

I also see that B&H has the newer model 5TB Toshiba for $140.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1182860-REG/toshiba_hdwe150xzsta_x300_5tb_3_5_desktop.html/sid=1_6_7d9159c2-cf79-b6ad-9a40-9d43d9da2081

This bad boy was delivered today and it has indeed proper red drives (WD80EFAX-68LHPN0) with 256 cache. I'm really impressed.

This drive is the 3rd fastest 8tb produced by wd only behind the gold (datacenter WD8003FRYZ and WD8002FRYZ) drives. And only by 86 points.

https://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/low_mid_range_drives.html

>I'll just leave this here...

>http://www.amazon.com/SAS9200-8E-8PORT-Ext-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002QJZLCA

>http://www.amazon.com/Ably-Feet-SFF-8088-26Pin-Cable/dp/B00VYVS7EK

Know you're trying to help, but that's an external sas card. Not what the OP needs/wants.

107 USD or 133 CAD on Amazon last week.
https://camelcamelcamel.com/Seagate-Backup-Portable-External-STDR5000100/product/B01LZP2B23

this is apparently the listing in question, from the original thread: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LNJBA50

Sounds like the UK/european warehouses need to get their shit together.

I was/am looking into Lenovo SA120s and LSI SAS9200-8E for my expansion. My only concern with the SE3016 is the backplane & max drive capacity.

M1015 apparently was what I was thinking of:
https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Serveraid-M1015-Controller-46M0831/dp/B0034DMSO6

You can (almost always) find them cheaper on ebay.

Here's the guide I used to flash mine:
https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

This isnt the most accurate resource, but according to CamelCamelCamel (Amazon price monitoring), most drives seem to go down almost steady overtime: WD RED 3TB, Seagate 4TB

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DSFDSUS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 <- I use this. Currently has 20 3.5" drives and 2 2.5" drives. I can hold even more but my GPU is in the way.

https://www.amazon.com/Silence-XL-ATX-Dampening-Radiator-Mounts/dp/B00DSFDSUS?th=1

You can get a window too.


Something maybe a bit more stylish:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139055

http://www.norcotek.com/product/ss-500/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DWHLFMA

These 5-in-3 hotswap cages use regular 5.25" bay mounting points.

You could consider a case with alot of 5.25 bays and put 5 HDD bays in these 5.25.

https://www.amazon.com/FatCage-MB155SP-B-EZ-Tray-Hot-Swap-Backplane/dp/B00DWHLFMA/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1464295714&sr=8-6&keywords=5+hdd+3+5.25

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN/dp/B00E3RH61W/ref=sr_1_20?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1539711407&sr=1-20&keywords=4tb link for mobile

https://www.amazon.ca/Sabrent-External-Lay-Flat-Docking-EC-DFLT/dp/B00LS5NFQ2/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=sabrent+hdd+dock&qid=1563957930&s=gateway&sr=8-4

That is the dock

Put one in each of these for your IT guys. (https://www.amazon.com/Iodd-Iodd2531-Black-Virtual-Enclosures/dp/B00TDJ4BJU/ref=pd_cp_147_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00TDJ4BJU&pd_rd_r=EP0B7XHJC0EYCQ47XN2Q&pd_rd_w=V86cD&pd_rd_wg=gLtWG&psc=1&refRID=EP0B7XHJC0EYCQ47XN2Q)

And then scrap the rest.

How about;
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496069850&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=synology&dpPl=1&dpID=31d8-qntl9L&ref=plSrch

My experience has been all HGST drives, usually this one.

> up to 4 TB.

Up to 5 TB: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZP2B23

Again, they're 15mm so check first.

Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN/dp/B0713WPGLL/

For Canadians, $258 CAD : https://www.amazon.ca/Red-8TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07D3MWMNZ

Slightly more than a direct conversion, but probably breaks even with the shipping.

edit: back to regular price

£174 Deal of the Day, from US global store, saving another £30 or so in import and shipping

uk link for english speakers

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-External-PlayStation-STGY8000400/dp/B07DQBFQ2D

This 8TB drive for €138.99 maybe: https://www.amazon.de/Seagate-STGY8000400-Portable-Festplatte-Exclusive/dp/B07DQBFQ2D?ref_=Oct_DLandingS_PC_8097cc00_NA&smid=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF

I'll just leave this here...

http://www.amazon.com/SAS9200-8E-8PORT-Ext-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002QJZLCA

http://www.amazon.com/Ably-Feet-SFF-8088-26Pin-Cable/dp/B00VYVS7EK

also 20TB for £399.99 (£20/TB)

​

WD WDBFBE0200JBK-EESN My Book Duo Desktop RAID USB 3.1 External Hard Drive and Auto Backup Software - 20TB - Black

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-WDBFBE0200JBK-EESN-Desktop-External-Software/dp/B0752HSBP4

​

Jesus Christ, is there a reason that these start at $3000? You're not going to be running a whole lot of VMs on an i3. Why not an E5 Xeon setup with a DAS or two?

Edit: if you don't want a beefy CPU build something and go with a couple of these

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00LSQOY6G/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1466224279&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=sa120&dpPl=1&dpID=41AYVHtwgRL&ref=plSrch

Along with this

https://www.amazon.com/SAS9200-8E-8PORT-Ext-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002QJZLCA

That leaves you a ton of money for drives and the system

No.

4tb for $120.

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN/dp/B00E3RH61W

This was from amazon uk, no third-party.

This looks like a really amazing deal. The only thing I dislike is that it's 8 TiB in one drive. It's good and bad of course, but if you have a drive failure you lose more data.

If you shuck this, what's the interface inside like? Standard SATA connections? Could I use it to mount any drive through USB, or would it only work with certain devices? I know some controllers are picky about this sort of thing.

To reword the last paragraph (in case I wasn't clear), could I use the external adapter for this drive as a replacement for something like this?

Edit: Why am I being downvoted for asking a very valid question?

Just ordered 3 Refurbd 3TB HGST Ultrastars off amazon.
Reviews are mostly great with a few horror stories mixed in.
They say no bad sectors and amazon holds the seller to a 90 day warranty so worst case I've got to make a trip to the post office. I'll report back if I remember.


(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LYVD7ME/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

shucked WD portable HD's seem to be the way to go.

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD/ $140.

VS

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Bare-Drives-Drive/dp/B07D3MWMNZ/ $190 for raw drive.

apparently the trade off is a reduced warranty.

personally, i always go with drives labeled for function. but my experience is using CCTV drives for VMS systems. customer would shit bricks if i plopped down and started prying HD's out of externals.

Ironwolf 8tb so you think its worth going for this one instead? Price is now jumped to 216 euro. I would use it for media storage so SMR have no trouble with that.

How do I know if a drive is SMR or not? Is it part of the model number or something? Example I run a bunch of these in my server using windows storage space and have no problems. They are IronWolfs though..

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M1BUBSO/