Best 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/

Let's compare Apples to Apples (Red Pro to Iron Wolf Pro)

Hard Disk | US price | In my country (India)
---|---|----
WD Red 8TB NAS Hard Drive (WD80EFZX) | $259.00 | ₹32,499.00 ($499.95)
WD Red Pro 8TB NAS Hard Drive (WD8001FFWX) | $309.79 | ₹30,587.94 ($470.75)
Seagate 8TB IronWolf Pro (ST8000NE0004) | $315.54 | ₹34.990 ($538.27)

Looks like it's actually cheaper for you to buy the WD Red Pros than the non-Pros in India? Seagate was offering $50 off per drive, which makes them cheaper than WD Red Pros but pretty much no one here needs Pro drives. That's where they missed the buck, in my opinion.

They looked and made decisions on the data rather than the community. Granted, we all took their poll and generated that data for them, but they should have weighed the topics more heavily where we all talk and enjoy plain and simple Reds. Had this sale been for the regular IronWolf, I'm sure there would have been significant amounts of praise; I definitely would have bought some.

Granted, some people would have complained that it's still not close to the price of a "shucked WD Red" but really, $50 off an IronWolf 8TB drive would put it ~$62 under the regular WD Red 8TB drive. For a ~$12 difference I'll still buy Reds but for a difference of ~$62 or more? I'll purchase Seagate.

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!

Sure. There's plenty of disk bays that connect to the PC via USB 3 or esata. I have a Drobo, which has served me well, but my next purchase will likely be something cheaper than that. I've been running it nearly 24/7 since I bought it 4 years ago (there was a month or two when my PC was off, so the drobo was in sleep mode).

There's a wide range of things like that available. Just search 5 Bay enclosure or 5 hdd Bay on Amazon (I'm on my phone or else I'd link you).

Edit: Mediasonic ProBox HF2-SU3S2 4 Bay 3.5" SATA HDD Enclosure - USB 3.0 & eSATA Support SATA 3 6.0Gbps HDD transfer speed https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003X26VV4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_E62LybZ817YQM

That's a 4 bay drive for 99 dollars. But just FYI, I don't know much about what hardware is good or reliable for USB drives (or Nas for that matter). It's something I plan to figure out or ask about when I get the money to buy a new enclosure or Nas.

And it should be noted that while I've had a good experience with Drobo (it's super easy to use, you can swap out drives for larger ones when you need to, and it can protect against one or two simultaneous drive failures), they use a proprietary RAID. That means if your drobo enclosure dies, you'll need to get it fixed, or replace it with another Drobo before you can recover the data on your hdds. I've read thaf migrating from one drobo to another is easy, and you don't need to know which order your drives are in or anything like that.

The controller it comes with is a standard Silicon Image SIL3132 2 port PCI-E eSATA controller. Nearly all "cheap but works" eSATA controllers are a SIL31XX chipset. I have several. They work fine in Linux, Windows and I think FreeBSD (would really surprise me if it didn't) because SIL chipsets are pretty much the low-end standard for devices like this. Doesn't matter what controller you research, it will likely have a SIL31XX chip on it. Startech/Addonics are SIL chips from what I recall. Even the Startech 4 port eSATA card is a SIL3134 chip.

I also have two of these Mediasonic External 8bay enclosures, but these have a SINGLE eSATA port on the back, so again, the controller must support port multiplier to see all eight drives. I like these better than the Rosewill as they also have fan control settings (low/med/high/auto) for the enclosure. Also, they only take one eSATA controller port per eight drives. They also support USB3, but I don't recommend raid arrays over usb at all. Stick with the eSATA function. I can't remember if these come with an eSATA controller or not, but if they do, its also a SIL3132 board.

I've been using these cheap SIL2132 controllers for a long time, they work fine. I've had them on 4 drive, 5 drive, and even single cable 8 drive boxes and drives do occasionally die, but they always die sooner or later. I don't think they died any more than the drives on my SAS box. Just buy a good quality eSATA cable, not a $3 one. The biggest flaw with eSATA imo is that the cables and ports have too much "play" in them and the cables can be bumped out of the ports or vibrated out pretty easily. I just insert and tape down with a little tape and good to go.

Side note: if you are thinking SAS->eSATA breakout cables for a superior controller, the SAS controller likely doesn't support port multiplier, so if you rig up some SAS->eSATA cabling, you will probably only see one drive. I tried that too.

I'm surprised that you haven't gotten much response in the last day. I suppose the FAQ is there, but you've looked through it and it doesn't provide you with the answers you're looking for so you're asking the community. So... what to do next? I'm gonna assume you're asking about what to do next hardware wise. Something that is low cost and won't lock you into something you can't change later.
40-50TB is nothing to scoff at, I'm surprised you've managed to get by with hooking them up direct this long, but hey if it works, it works (it's not dumb if it works).
A baby step could be increasing your density.
Grabbing a MediaSonic Pro Box https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1540336320&sr=8-3 and shucking your externals into a 4up bay would free up some ports.
Then a cheap next step would be to upgrade from USB3 to some ESATA ports. I use this ESATA card https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Port-Express-eSATA-Controller/dp/B003GSGMPU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1540336457&sr=8-2 to hook up to the MediaSonic box and it works great. I still run this setup on one of the computers in my garage for "offline" backups. I just WOL the machine and backup some critical data then power it down.
If you want to start offloading the workload to another computer all this stuff would transfer well into another computer.

Other than that the FAQ does have a ton of good recommendations for what software to run under each different platform WINDOWS/MAC/Linux. In this day in age I don't think there is a "wrong" choice. Work in what you're most comfortable in. I'm partial to Windows and then Linux (mainly Ubuntu). If you have any other questions feel free to reach out.

That card you linked has 2 sff-8087 connectors if thats what you have you can use that if you wanted. Each sff-8087 sas port has 4x sata ports basically. Both of your SSDs (and 2 more) should be able to hook up to just one of those ports. The breakout cable that goes from 1 to 4 looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC

You can get a sff-8087 to sff-8088 adapter that converts the internal 4x connection to a external one to connect something like that ds4243, but for about the same money I'd still recommend the LSI adapter if you can verify you can use one more of the pcie slots. Its better to have a non raid card if your going to use something like zfs file system.

What i mean about the eSATA is that its a single sata port, vs the sas ports that are 4x sata ports. The DS4243 and others like it have a multiplexer that lets all 24 connect with that 4x connection. Those istar esata boxes have some kind of multiplexer or a controller as well, but how good/reliable are they vs something enterprise grade i dont know.

There are lots of other used SAS disk shelfs around as well (dell etc) its just about finding a good deal on one that has all its caddys etc. If your lucky maybe you can find one local on craigslist since they are so heavy and shipping is usually half the price.

Awesome. I am by no means an expert but had to do a tonne of reading to come up with my setup and from what I can tell there are a few ways of doing the following:

PSU: Assuming your main PSU is strong enough you could in theory use extenders to power your DAS from the same PSU but I think there are a few downfalls to doing this. As a result I would suggest getting a redundant PSU (400w+). You can buy special adapters which fit into the 24 pin plug or alternatively you can use a paperclip. Either way what you're doing is making the PSU turn on as soon as it has power from the wall opposed to needing a power button. Sample jumper listing

SAS Controller board: This is the component you need plugged into a PCI slot in your primary NAS box. I bought a LSI SAS9200-16e16 - H3-25140-02B. I didn't need to do any flashing with this and it was plug and play with my NAS box which is running Ubuntu Server. Sample listing

SAS Expander board: This is the board which is connected back to the controller board. Think of the controller board as an outlet and the expander board as a multi-plug type situation. The ebay listing title I got was called HP (487738-001) 3G SAS EXPANDER G6, G7 - FH PCIe-x8 INT/EXT (468406-B21). You will also need a pci power blank to mount this board to and power it in place of a motherboard Sample listing

In theory from what I read it is possible there are alternatives to using one of these but this is the route I wanted to go down. The benefits as I understand them is that you can disconnect your DAS from your NAS in a very clean way. Sample Expander board listing

SFF-8088 SAS to SFF-8088 SAS cable: This is the cable which externally connects your NAS to your DAS. In theory, this is optional as you could go down the route of buying a SFF-8088 to 4xSATA cable. The downside of this however is it doesn't allow the NAS and DAS to be clean separate units IMO. These are very expensive at a lot of outlets but can be had for $14.99 here (I am UK based and even with import taxes this is cheap).

SFF-8087 SAS to 4x SATA cable: This is what connects the data from your DAS drives back to the SAS Expander board. A single cable connects to four drives so I have two of these connected to my controller at the moment. Sample listing

As /u/just_insane has mentioned, plex is a good option for streaming. I'm an opponent of freenas, in favor of using something homebrew (zfsonlinux with debian or ubuntu, in my case, gentoo with zfs) to do what you need. I don't like how finicky freenas can be even with server-grade hardware. It's just not my thing.

That said, for someone who's new, it may be a good idea to try out freenas or nas4free. I just finished building a 16TB usable (20.5TB raw) system last week. I'll link my items below.

2x iocrest controllers

1x16GB kingston ECC ram

1xNZXT source 210

5xHGST 4TB deskstar NAS

1xsupermicro mbd-x9scm-f-o - Great board. Loving it so far. dual onboard nic is nice.

2x850 Pro 256GB that I had laying around

1x 550W PSU laying around.

total ran me about $1300 and I'm able to max out a 2x1GB LACP setup writing and reading directly on rust.

EDIT: my recommendation, in most cases, is to at least do raidz1 (RAID5). RAID is no substitute for backups though, so invest in something offsite and make sure it's staying backed up. I use CrashPlan for offsite and local backups and it works like a charm.

Well you don't have to go with a server-style case, it's just what I default to thinking of. The one you linked to only holds 8 drives, though they are hot-swap which I admit is a very convenient feature.

The Cooler Master Cosmos II holds 11 drives and looks like a normal PC case. It also has three 5.25" bays which means you can shove a cheap 5-in-3 drive cage in there to be able to use all 16 ports on the LSI 9201-16e. Don't forget to buy a fan for it though.

You could also go for a case that has all 5.25" bays in the front like the Antec Nine Hundred, then use those 5-in-3s for 15 total drives. If you really want hot-swap though it would be expensive. With a quick search the cheapest 5-in-3 hot-swap bays I could find are the NORCO SS-500s.

As far as a PSU you goes, you don't need much since it will only be powering HDDs and fans, no CPU or anything like that. It can be a low power one, 500 watts is probably more than you'll need. Just make sure make sure it has a single rail for the 12v and 5v power and is from a reputable brand. I like the EVGA Supernova, that would easily run 16 drives.

EDIT: WD 10TB Elements drives on sale for $160 until midnight Pacific time. This is an even better deal than the 8 TB ones for $130 the other day. You should definitely snatch up as many as you were planning to get.

Easystores have a WD Red (sometimes white label which is a red drive with some quirks) NAS drive which is popular for 24/7 usage. These have either an archive drive or a barracuda drive. Archive drives are bad for frequent writes, but are good for backing up/storing once and reading many times as they use shingled magnetic recording. The Barracuda is a desktop drive, which is kind of the middle ground. If you are going to use this one as an external drive, it has a two port usb 3.0 hub in the front that the Easystore does not. Another alternative is to buy the WD Mybook which is guaranteed to have a WD Red and has a 3-year warranty. Currently @ 184.99.

Thank you so much for the response and info!

I saw this review on Amazon. What do you think?

That person also links to the following products. How essential/necessary do you think they would be to the node-804? I've read some other review that don't highlight suggestions as the review above does. What are your thoughts?

• SilverStone Technology 3.5-Inch to 2 X 2.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive HDD / SSD Bay Converter, Silver (SDP08)''
  
  
• Monoprice 108794 24-Inch 4-Pin Molex Male to 4 15-Pin SATA II Female Power Cable Net Jacket
  
  
• StarTech.com 4x SATA Power Splitter Adapter Cable (PYO4SATA)
  
  
• SilverStone Technology All Black Sleeved 1-to-2 Sleeved PWM Fan Splitter Cable (CPF01)
  
  Unfortunately I'm in a strange situation where I don't have as much time as I'd like to review/research for the absolute best route to go -- and I'm in need of making a decision very soon.
  
  I'm totally cool with building, although I must say that I'm not as experienced as I would like -- however, I will have time on my hands to learn what is needed to build the setup I decide to purchase.
  
  Any and all info/feedback is most welcome! Thanks!

It would really be more beneficial to just shell out 300 buck for an r710. I'm pretty sure you'll save more money in the long term since like you already know, that thing uses a ton of power. Around 300w idle which depending on your electricity that adds up! r710 can idle at a 3rd of that.

If you insist on keeping it, the h200 is a great card and can be crossflashed if needed. You'll just need some breakout cables like these https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-Mini-SAS-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC

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

Amazon has been selling 10TB WD Elements drives for $179.99 lately. Not sure how much that will go down on black Friday.

That same link has a variety of sizes to choose from. The 8TB drives have been 124.99 for over a month. The only difference I can tell is that the WD Elements (Amazon's 'exclusive') have 2 years warranty instead of 3 years of the EasyStore (Best Buy's 'exclusive').

I have one of the 8TB models, it has an WD80EMAZ-00WJTA0 in it. It was super easy to open, didn't even need to use an old credit card like I do for the Easystores. I just laid it flat, back facing me and pulled on the ends and pushed forward with my thumbs on the flat part.

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
  

How many drives did you connect to it? From the post i've got feeling that there are two connected (each drive). This card uses ASM1061 chipset which uses only one pci-e lane for data so maybe that's where the bottleneck is?

The second card which you've linked looks a bit better for me. It uses an Marvell 88SE9215 chipset which has some pretty solid reviews, for most people: "it just works". But i would never try to connect four drives in it - it uses only PCI Express ×1 x2 connector.

I was searching for inexpensive card for my home NAS to connect one additional drive right now and second in the future. For my server I've chosen an Delock PCI Express Card which uses an Marvell 88SE9230 chipset which is giving me normal, stable SATA 3 performance. Disk is visible in BIOS and is bootable. This card uses PCI-E x4 connector so it got more bandwith to use. Be advised that i'm right now only using this for one drive so it is not throttled by anything else and i'm only planning to keep max two disk on it.

As u/daericg, said: "You get for what you've paid for". If you want high, stable speeds then you should invest in eg. Perc H310. You can probably find many of them in good prices because (as far as i remember) Dell uses them in some of their workstations and some shops are reselling them. If you want inexpensive card for sata disks i would look at the Delock card linked above.

EDIT: links

Mediasonic has some low-cost RAID/JBOD boxes. Amazon link

edit: Or you could get a SATA port expander and a drive cage if you've got room in your PC case.

edit2: How to combine multiple hard drives into one volume on Windows 10

But at some point you've got to look at the cost of a new 8TB WD Eaystore on sale for $160, versus spending any more money on making those 1TB drives useable. The best bang for the buck is a new 8TB external, second best is scrounging up some free PC hardware and hacking together a low-cost-no-cost PC.

I just added this to my tower, it seemed like the best trade off of 2x5.25 bays for 3x3.5 HDDs, has a fan and removable/washable filter. Fitment was perfect, also comes with a bracket for 4x2.5 drives if you wanted. If you need hotswap ability though I'd look at something like what you have, or I thought of buying this one.

A lot of stuff on eBay is used but I don't have a problem with that as long as the seller has good ratings and will take returns.

I have bought 2 used LSI SAS cards and a few used 10G ethernet cards from eBay sellers and they work fine.

If you see 16i it means 16 internal ports. 4i4e means 4 internal, 4 external and so on.

I'm assuming you want to use consumer SATA drives but these cards are "enterprise" SAS cards. SAS cards will support either SAS or SATA hard drives as long as you get the right cables.

Look at the different connectors here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI#Connectors

SFF-8087 and 8088 are the most common for internal and external drives but each cable supports 4 drives so you have breakout cables like this

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC/r

If you run out of drive bays in the future you could get a card with an external SFF-8088 port and run a cable to a separate box from of drives.

Sure, this one. I needed 4 sets to get enough connectors for all my drives. Take the back cover off of the connector, its just clipped on. Pull the wire up from both sides to keep the metal connector in place. Repeat for all the connectors. Then put your drives in your caddy or whatever you're using, put the empty connectors on the drives, then run your new wire across all of them for perfect spacing. I used new 18ga wire, but you could reuse the old too. Skip the wire for the 3.3v line, then get a flathead screwdriver out and push the wire into the connectors. Do the same for the female connector with however much spacing you want, then just put the back covers back on and you're all set.


All in all I think it took me an hour or so to do my 3 caddies. Once you figure out how to do it it goes pretty quick. Super easy as well, just make sure to double check you have the female connector the right direction so you're not reversing the pins power and killing your drives.

I'm a lazy POS, I haven't bought anything yet.

I'm close to pulling the trigger on...
https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR2-SU3S2-PRORAID-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003YFHEAC

BUT... I am still researching building a rig from scratch, which I don't want to do... but everyone says to go that route. Honestly, I am only looking for a 3-4 year solution. After that, I will be established enough that I need a full separate computer.

I'm not converting and 99.99% of the time there will only be one stream playing. That is why I am leaning to DAS instead of NAS. I have a ShieldTV which has pretty good horsepower.

You can definitely stick with the Fractal series. I did because I couldn't have a loud, unsightly machine setup anywhere in my home. I have my main system w/ 10 Drives + 2 SSDs + 3 NVME drives in an R6. That has a DAS connected with 19 drives inside an R5; 8 stock bays + 3 in 2x5.25 bay adapter + extra 3 drive cage + extra 5 drive cage.

As you are in Europe, you might not even have to pay crazy shipping charges to buy spare drive cages from https://www.fractal-design-shop.de/Define-R5_1. In the US I had to source the extra drive cages from r/hardwareswap but that proved to be easier than I expected. Here is a pic I took before I added the 2nd 5-bay drive cage: https://imgur.com/a/TWL8IB1

Edit: Request for more info...

I have not done a build log as I am not yet "finished" with the build, but it looks like there is sufficient demand for parts info so here it goes:

I have an R6 for my main NAS server loaded with the motherboard, 10 3.5 drives and one SSD. The R5 has two extra drive cages (3 + 5) as well a 2x5.25-to-3x3.5 bay adapter.

The expansion cards I use are:

• 1x LSI 9210-8i with SAS to SATA cables for 8 of the 10 internal drives in the R6. The other 2 + SSD use SATA ports on the motherboard.
  
  
• 1x LSI-9207-8e connected via 8088 cables to two HP SAS expanders powered in the R6 by riser cards which connect to the drives with the same SAS to SATA cables as above.
  
  Additional parts I used:
  
  
• An SFX PSU is important so you can fix the extra drive cages. Don't skimp on this one. You don't need a ton of Watts (I'm using a 600W Gold) but you need quality, you are hooking up thousands of dollars of drives to it!
  
  
• Power splitters: One & Two
  
  
• Power switch to turn on the DAS PSU and reset it any time you need to take the NAS offline (DAS always must be powered on first)
  
• Fan controller for powering fans in the DAS
  
  More inspiration can be found here: https://www.serverbuilds.net/16-bay-das

Aughhh this is getting more and more complicated.

My PC only has one more drive bay free, I've been using it as my smb host.

Cost wise going multi drive is....

Wait. What if I shucked WD my books instead of a Seagate 8tb external?

They have blues or something in them right?

Like these?

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/B01LQQHLGC/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1522959512&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=wd+mybook&dpPl=1&dpID=31RlBoWL6uL&ref=plSrch

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.

Well, the other popular place is for people with edu accounts, you can get 8TB Red for $198 as many as you want from the WD EDU store.

Otherwise, you can get as many 2-bay WD MyBook:
https://www.amazon.com/16TB-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBLWE0160JCH-NESN/dp/B01B6BN1CU

It's not really "shucking" it so much as it's designed to be opened and the disks are designed to be swapped out and carry their own individual warranties. So it's $250 per HDD that way.

I picked one of these up to shuck them, sadly I am unable to buy more right now as I have 8 x 3TB Reds to replace, and doing all of them all at once would cost a bit too much with an impending house move.

I note that the 8TB one here is also shuckable, but reports are that they would most likely be white drives. Are there any other external drives that have a good chance/are definitely WD Reds beyond the My Book Duo?

Just over £10 per TB is great!

​

The best price on Disk Prices is currently over £18, up from £15 from the last few weeks as prices go back to "normal" before the sales. If the codes would have worked for other drives the this non-SMR WD drive might have been better value.

I must be a bit slow today. Your VMs are going to stay on the current machine, but you want to get rid of those drives? I'm just clarifying that you aren't going to be running VMs across a Gb network.

At any rate, it sounds like a stand alone FreeNAS box with low power CPU might suit the bill nicely. Check out http://blog.brianmoses.net/2015/01/diy-nas-2015-edition.html

EDIT: to get enough drives you may wish to check out http://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/29i0j4/for_the_wiki_which_raid_card_andor_sas_expanded

Also, I think with some creativity I bet you can get 6 drives plus an SSD into a Lenovo TS140. It looks like it ships with the ability to have 3 3.5inHDDs. You can leave an SSD Velcroed to the bottom of the case and then add a 5.25 to 3.5 3 drive thingy: http://www.amazon.com/EverCool-Dual-Drive-Triple-Cooling/dp/B0032UUGF4 There isn't much better value out there...

WD 8TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D5V2ZXD/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_UpsTBbXTE0CD3

Something like this to start? Or any of these external type hdds? Use that for the time being while I save for a synology+drives then use that while I save for a server?

20 TB is going to take some time to transfer like this. I'm guessing there's no way to run an Ethernet cable between the two servers and set up a direct connection?

If time is an issue and you can't directly attach them, than your quickest mode of transfer would be an external raid enclosure,
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YFHEAC/

Then you could throw some 6 TB drives in raid 0 and go to town.

If time isn't an issue, and people really care about money, then anything like an easy store from Best buy will go the trick.

One of my debian setups is still in an old desktop case too :)
I run this raid card: http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-HV52W-RAID-CONTROLLER-PERC-H310-6GB-S-PCI-E-2-0-X8-0HV52W-/201657131656
I flashed mine to be in IT mode so that it doesn't act like a RAID card anymore, just acts like a bunch of lonely SATA ports: https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/updated-sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/ Help with this can be sought in the #DataHoarder IRC room, there are a few of us there who have done this on a few different models of cards now.
Got 2 of these cables so I can slap 8 disks in that sucker: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012BPLYJC/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0
Then I installed ZFS as my filesystem and run my disks in a glorious 50TB array: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian
I even slapped an SSD off a mobo SATA channel as a caching disk. Happy building! :)

Here's a like to the 8TB because it's on sale right now: WD 8TB. If you look around you might find a 10TB. If you have some time, someone usually posts deals on these types of drives to the subreddit.

Also Best Buy has a brand that usually goes on sale. Hope that helps!

Just wanted to add that many Seagate enclosures have SMR drives inside. These have poor write performance and so many people prefer the WD Easystores which have WD Red equivalents that do not use SMR. If your use case is write-once read-many SMR drives will be just fine and can often be found for pretty cheap in Seagate external enclosures. Amazon has the 8TB model right now for $146.99.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingled_magnetic_recording

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE/

Is this a genuine question? Because your link looks like an affiliate link (there's a partner code in the URL) plus https://www.amazon.com/Avolusion-HDDGear-6000GB-External-Pre-Formatted/dp/B074Q994C4 Amazon has it cheaper.

I doubt there's any decent drive in there. The same price, or less, can get you 8TB WD or Segates. Like: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE for $129 & https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD for $149 if we go by your link price.

Unless they're running HGST drives or something, which is super unlikely, it's not worth shucking.

Where do you see that?

8 TB Easy Store $199.00

8 Tb WD Red (which is in the easy store) $288.00

Also, the Seagate 8TB externals (which generally carry the Archive drives) are the same way. Over $200 for the bare drive and $170 External.

In your position I might consider a WD Duo 12-16TB, if it's in budget (B&H has it $50 cheaper than Amazon for the 16TB). It's a USB 3.0 dual-disk enclosure containing two WD Reds. Then I would configure it in RAID-1 giving 6-8TB of usable space with redundancy. The disks can be easily removed from the enclosure and used as internal disks later if you decide to go that direction. One caveat, though: The enclosure encrypts the data on the disks and it cannot be disabled, so if the enclosure dies you have to jump through some hoops to regain access to your data.

I'm running a Silverstone DS380 mini-ITX which has 8 3.5" bays if that helps at all. I stream using Serviio (similar to Plex) with very few issues, but my TV has good codec support so I do very little transcoding. The little C2750 Avoton struggles if it needs to transcode.

> WD EDU store

You said it yourself :)

> 2-bay WD MyBook: https://www.amazon.com/16TB-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBLWE0160JCH-NESN/dp/B01B6BN1CU

250$ a piece by taking mybook, which isn't too bad, but still more expensive than seagates (~215-235$ a piece for similarly targeted drives)

I actually bought from jet.com one of those (wanted 2) to get some cheap WD Reds so i can have my own data as well during black friday.

I was worried they have firmware changes like Seagate does to ruin performance when used internally. Shucked 5TB Seagates are extremely inconsistent when used internally.

I would use this drive.

WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 GB/S 64 MB Cache 3.5-Inch - WD40EFRX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EHBERSE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_61rUAbG9ZNQ5H

Save up and get a good enclosure like this one. It has 4 bags, supports both USB 3.0 and eSATA. It will grow with you and supports hardware RAID.

Mediasonic HFR2-SU3S2 PRORAID 4 Bay 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 & eSATA https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YFHEAC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_f3rUAb7DBKKEQ

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?

By Canadian standards, the elements 8TB is a great deal. Don't forget to factor US state sales tax and 13% HST into the 10TB easystores - unless you've been in the US >48 hours you ain't bringing them back tax-free. Given the difficulty of sourcing the EasyStores without an AmeriFriend (Best buy blocks freight forwarding addresses), the next best option is to buy the 10TB elements from Amazon.com's Black Friday sale and ship them directly to Canada: https://www.amazon.com/10TB-Elements-Desktop-Drive-WDBWLG0100HBK-NESN/dp/B07G3QMPB5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542916212&sr=8-1&keywords=elements+10TB

Though this will increase your cost/TB calculation by a fair bit and certainly won't beat the 8TB Elements from BestBuy.ca. The only reason I mention it is that the WD 10TB white-label drives are helium-filled (less heat) and have unusually low power consumption. This is a big draw for me when filling a 24 bay chassis. YMMV.

The QNAP box offers good value, but if you decide to go a bit more hardcore, you really can't beat the ebay deals on used Supermicro 846BA-R920B boxes. The 846BA-R920B is ideal for 3 reasons, aside from the obvious hotswap bays. Platinum level power supplies (super efficient), passthrough backplane without expanders (avoid all the stupid compatibility/stability issues with expanders), and finally, SAS2 multilane connectors so you have 6 cables going to the backplane instead of 24 like with the TQ cases. Example (there's a whole lot more than this): https://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPERMICRO-4U-846BA-R920B-2x-E5-2660-32GB-24x-TRAYS-3x-LSI-9210-8I-JBOD/172518422437?epid=13010847355&hash=item282ae637a5:m:mQskbuTLwikNI-Bax42GiIw:rk:20:pf:

I worked out the taxes-in $CAD/TB as follows: 8TB bestbuy $25.4, 10TB bestbuy.com $28, 10TB amazon.com $30.8

Obviously if you find a way to avoid NY sales tax and/or HST, the 10TB from bestbuy.com gets cheaper.

Saw this, but I was looking for the lowest $/GB ratio I could find for my modest setup. This comes out to $33.75/GB which certainly isn't the cheapest out there.

I ended up going with this, and it's on prime as well-

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01HAPGEIE/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Which comes out to $21.25/GB. I know it's not good for an enterprise application, but I have an unlimited cloud backup that will provide insurance.

But I'm going to rip it out of the enclosure and see how it works for my home setup.

edit: if anyone knows of any better prices I'd be happy for some other input.

wow, thanks duly noted. I been using these: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Power-Splitter-Adapter-PYO4SATA/dp/B0086OGN9E/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1482938279&sr=1-3&keywords=sata+power+splitter

how nervous would you be with sata power splitters? startech's not too bad a brand right? ....RIGHT? haha

Since it's external, I would likely get something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01HAPGEIE/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480702752&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=8tb&dpPl=1&dpID=41mDnJ8-plL&ref=plSrch

It's a good deal, 8TB, and USB3.

If you decide you want a backup (highly recommended), depending on your connection, you can get Amazon Cloud Drive. As long as you encrypt your backup data on there, you'll be fine :)

A lot of people here are buying external drives in bulk and shucking them since it's substantially cheaper than buying plain drives. This is a really weird dynamic. Why on earth is it cheaper to buy a drive with additional hardware and packaging around it than to just buy the drive itself?

e.g. this external drive is $180, but a bare archive drive is $228. WTF? It is almost $50 more expensive to buy just the drive without the enclosure around it. (And that's assuming the 8TB external is an SMR archive drive inside, rather than a regular PMR drive -- which is even more expensive!) You might say "oh, it's on sale!" -- yeah, they're always on sale at those kinds of prices from one brand or another.

With WD products instead of Seagate, this has gotten absolutely ridiculous. BestBuy is regularly advertised on here offering external drives containing shuckable 8TB WD Reds in the price range of $150~$200 while the drive by itself often goes for nearly $300! It's twice as expensive to buy the plain drive?! WHY?!

If you are looking for a new chassis The Rosewill RSV-L4500 one is a great choice if you have large dreams and small pockets. It will also pair nicely with a pair of 9211-8i

In the HP Server vs Storinator graphic... how was the HP configured? Those writes aren't just "bad" - I think the only term that could apply is "broken". A USB hard drive would be better than that. Heck, a USB drive with an SMR disk inside would have better writes.

That performance graph looks a lot like untiered Storage Spaces performance in parity arrangements (which is well known to have abysmal write performance). Was that what the HPs were actually doing? If so, comparing that to Storage Spaces in a mirror arrangement isn't really a fair comparison. Not that I'm not sure they likely went from a bad place to a good place with a new server setup in the case study itself - just saying that that doesn't seem to be Apples to Apples in the graph, is all :)

wow great deal, the harddrive alone is 286$
https://www.amazon.com/Red-8TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B01BYLY4DM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492640035&sr=8-1&keywords=WD80EFZX


I am presently right now installing mine in my synology NAS. Two 8Tb :)

It's not 20% less though.

Seagate Expansion $139
https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE

WD Elements $150
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD

WD My Book $160
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC

Why would you go with $160 for 6 TB Seagate Barracudas when you can get a higher quality WD NAS drive with 8TB of capacity for the same price?

Shuck these and they have drives similar to the WD Reds which retail for much higher:
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC

Thanks OP, I was recently looking for something like this.

Also if someone has an european alternative to these, price and quality wise, please let me know.

Amazon has 8tb wd external drives for $200. I'm not sure if they are shuckable though..
There are some listed as used-like new by Amazon warehouse for $180
WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQHLGC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_taa_F7ltzbWTMQVQ0

I think it's compressed, because last time the same director sent me files, they were .R3D files.

Holy shit, this just made me run a quick test, and I can actually edit these large .R3D files in Premiere Pro in real time from my 16TB WD RAID 0 external drive!!

Meaning I would be able to easily do my VFX work on R3D files too.

My impression was that these are not compressed, and are just in a container (R3D). But looks like they are compressed like ProPres.

^^^paging ^^^u/beaclicion

I have the NZXT source 210 good case, but add fans to the drive cages. I also got a 3x5.25 bay to 4 x 3.5 adapter to bring my drive count up to 13 (8 Disk in the cages + free hanging Boot SSD + 4 in the bay adapter). Get the rosewill bay adapter not the silverstone one doesn't fit well, not sure if i can post links

EDIT: links added

Cables like these that give you 4 SATA power connectors out of one molex connector, I've seen one with 6x SATA before, but I can't find it anymore, I hope I will. And then just a PSU with enough molex connectors, I guess. I think there might be some aftermarket cables for modular PSUs too, I don't know, it would make sense... But you could probably use more than one PSU to power all the drives, maybe that's a good idea anyway.

Am going to try out the "Used - Like New" option for $449. The $26 in tax sucks for me but it's still cheaper and I had a pile of Amazon credit from having one of their credit cards. They seem to have done a bait and switch on shipping though, in my basket it said Deliver Sunday, but after purchase it's talking mid-week :( I'm hoping that this is simply a damaged stock being sold off by a wholesaler! Jet, even with coupon codes and no tax, couldn't touch this price. If anyone else has gone this path I'd love to hear about it!

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01B6BN1CU/ref=olp_f_primeEligible?ie=UTF8&f_primeEligible=true

I'm taking about this thing, which comes with 2 easily removable WD 8TB Red hard drives. You really haven;t lurked this thread if you haven't heard of those sweet deals.

Camelcamelcamel is usually pretty about tracking prices on Amazon and third party sites. Shows pretty steady prices over the last 6 months:

https://camelcamelcamel.com/Red-8TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/product/B01BYLY4DM?context=search

Drop in any Amazon ID to check history.

I'm currently using 3 of these in my home file server. Works great with no issues. Allows for storage density like /u/Dstanding mentioned as well as all drives are easy swapped in/out as needed.

Amazon canada has been selling at that price for months now: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01LQQHLGC/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB

I love how Newegg calls it a "sale" by setting their regular price $150 more than amazon, then claiming "sale" by setting it like everyone.

I'm a huge fan of WD Reds, but you can buy two of these Seagate externals and save $100. They have an ST8000AS0002 in them.

For those that want to use them as externals for backups - If you figure in the sales tax that you are going to have to pay at Best Buy, spend another ~$10 and you get the newer, non Best Buy model with an extra year of warranty, and the build in encryption and auto backup.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822235160

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1273853-REG/wd_wdbbgb0080hbk_nesn_8tb_my_boo.html

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC

I'm not an expert on backplanes by any means, but I don't think there are any standards for them across manufacturers. Each is made to fit a specific chassis.

If you want to avoid proprietary, you could get something like this. It will fit several different board form factors. I believe you can remove the front drive cages, which essentially leaves you with a load of 5.25" bays that you can load up with a couple of these, which are essentially self contained, four slot SATA backplanes that fit in 3 5.25" bays.

Again, I'm no expert, but I've seen some posts of similar setups as this and am considering doing this myself if I ever have the space for a rack.

I was going to use some of my easystore 8tb drives, so it looks like it won't make a difference based on what you said. :) Since I use these for Plex, I think I should be fine with the USB 3.0/esata version like I already have. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X26VV4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A fast and easy option is get a sata power spliter. Just snip the last wire which disables the 3.3v pin and they work perfectly fine. It is what I did.

So far the 8TB Mybook from Amazon.co.uk is still the best price I've spotted. Around 200 euro. Don't forget to you need a UK to EU plug. I believe there's a white inside for those who care.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LWVT81X/

Combine that with two USB3 (shuckable) 10Tb for £150 each ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07G3QMPB5/ref=dra_a_rv_mr_ho_xx_P1300_1000?tag=dradisplay0bb-21&ascsubtag=e33d7bf9dc8fd5ec9d11c92010884e8d_S ) and you have 20Tb of storage in a 4 Bay NAS for £600. Of course with two bays spare for future expansion. That's pretty amazing!

The issue is that SAS1 was created during the era of PCIE 1.0. Even at 12Gbps per cable (of 4 channels), you would still saturate an x4 card with a single port. It was necessary to use an x8 and even then, it was possible to saturate that link with a dual connector card.

PCIE 2.0 was released just before SAS2 and this basically put it in the same scenario where you can get 24gbps per connector but with 500Mbps per lane. So, a dual connector card can do a theoretical 48Gbps whereas an x8 PCIe can only do 40Gbps. Again, not a terrible bandwidth issue because workloads are rarely that sequential.

So in reality, there's just never been a business need for an x1 HBA. On the other hand, cards like this one exist in the consumer space for just adding SATA ports to an x1. If OP has a 2.0 slot (possible but not sure how likely since standard PCI was given as an option...) then that card can add a few ports - it just won't be expandable and the jury is out on whether or not it's a true HBA in regards to passing drive data.

I saw your other post, so i cant really speak to european amazon and other etailers, but in the US at least, stock levels, shipping times, total selection, selection of other things for one stop shopping, customer service reputation if there is a problem... With amazon about 50% of my orders come the next day, 95% within two, for free basically if i wanna lump Prime in with Netflix and Hulu.

http://smile.amazon.com/Red-8TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B01BYLY4DM/

"Want it Sunday, April 23? Order within 7 hrs 18 mins"

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822235063

Ignoring that amazon actually IS cheaper right now, neweggs free shipping is 4-7 business days, and i havent personally dealt with their CS in a long long time, ive heard its gone to shit.

https://smile.amazon.com/MSI-X370-GAMING-PRO-CARBON/dp/B06WGS4FJL $175 to my door tomorrow.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-144-017 $184 to my door by next friday, and i cant get dog food and mouthwash with it.

EDIT:And this is is another factor for me but doesnt apply to everyone, i also get 5% back on my credit card on all amazon purchases.

If you HAVE to go 8TB drives, you would be better off getting 8 of these and shucking the WD 8TB Reds that are inside. The drives you linked are SMR and as such aren't made for 24/7 use and are slow as molasses especially when it comes to writes. They are archive drives for a reason. They are made to be filled and then...archived. If you go with what I linked, you'd be looking at an increase of of $554 (or 14%) which isn't much when you are looking to drop nearly $4k anyways.

SFF8087 (mini SAS) is basically four SAS/SATA ports in one connector. You can even get breakout cables to split them out into 4 individual connectors. You would need (and that backplane has) 6 ports/cables to access 24 drives. The 3 and 4 port references you saw were likely for the 12 and 16 drive variants of that backplane.

The stock fans are 80mm, and you can replace them with any 80mm fans with zero modifications. Some folks remove the fan wall and use three 120mm fans (they fit pretty well), but honestly, 80mm fans move enough air for the drives themselves.

Thanks, any particular ones you'd recommend?

You mean something like this, right? https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4

and then this for the card? https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-PEXESAT32-Express-eSATA-Controller/dp/B003GSGMPU/

Regarding your concerns, most enclosures are designed to be on 24/7, so that shouldn't be an issue. Most enclosures have built in fans, and as long as ambient temperature isn't too crazy that should be plenty.

As far as different drive speeds, it can be an issue, but as far as I'm aware it only really matters when you get into high drive counts. Most companies that provide enterprise grade storage won't honor a warranty if you had mixed drive speeds. All that said, I've done it in both desktop and rackmount enclosures without issue.

The only enclosures I have had a good experience with are from MediaSonic, so they're the only ones I'd be comfortable recommending. They only have 4 and 8 bay ones, though, so it might not fit the bill. Here's the link in any case.

https://www.amazon.ca/Rosewill-5-25-Inch-3-5-Inch-Hot-swap-SATAIII/dp/B00DGZ42SM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539729125&sr=8-1&keywords=rosewill+cage&dpID=41nhGgaXnzL&preST=_SX300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

Trios of them are also included in certain Rosewill rack cases, but seems you can get them on their own. I hope it fits. Also I'll probs swap in a Noctua fan on it.

They contain WD Red drives, which are do better in a RAID/NAS than traditional drives. An 8TB red drive is usually about this price.

It was 143.99 Euro on Monday here: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01LWVT81X

Bought only one to test the shipping, but I'm still hoping for $130 or less on amazon.com :)

sure, turns out I have 11, but room for 4 more.

warning, its not pretty, and the pictures are slightly better than potato quality. I don't have a lot of room for lighting equipment and camera gear by it :)

basically, I picked up this case around the year 2000, I had several drives in my main pc so I wanted all those bays, and at the time, all those fans to keep my rig cool.

years later, the thing was noisy and I wanted something else, replaced it with a different gaming case that I like much more, and is much more quiet nearly silent which is nice since this is in our living. I passed the to the server where it is much more at home. these are the drive enclosures I am using, they are nothing special and as you can see the drives are packed relatively tight. those puny little fans aren't much, but they keep the temp alarm in stablebits scanner from going off.

I bought 1 already but want another. I'm new to this, so after shucking where can I place them? My only computer is a laptop so my options are either building my own server or finding a dock that can support multiple 8TB drives, preferably 4 ports. Can someone gimme an amazon link for something to look at?

I was thinking this https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1503137746&sr=8-3&keywords=4+bay+8tb

But won't that not support plex transcoding?

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.

Hmm will it still perform if the only other pcie slot on my Mobo that can support x8 size will only run in x2 mode. Wonder if something like this would be better? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AZ9T3OU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ykhWCbKXVWF5G

I have a Coolermaster HAF X and I threw one of these in there. I currently have 9 3.5" hard drives and an SSD just free-ballin' it in there.

I like it since I can fit my huge Noctua NH-D14, my larger GPU, and all my other PCI cards in case along with the drives and everything stays coolish.

Edit: Oh yeah my two hot swap bays on my case are open too. I might jam two more drives in there sometime.

Yup! Almost bought the DS6 but I got the rosewill off amazon for $86 open box lol. I got the three 3.5 drive adapter that fits into two 5.25 bays on amazon. Adds 6 more drive capacity to the beast


EverCool Dual 5.25 in. Drive Bay to Triple 3.5 in. HDD Cooling Box https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0032UUGF4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_O4VpDb4T4PYVC

[Mediasonic Probox](http://www.Mediasonic.com/ ProBox HF2-SU3S2 4 Bay 3.5” SATA HDD Enclosure – USB 3.0 & eSATA Support SATA 3 6.0Gbps HDD transfer speed https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003X26VV4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_6dZhzb6NZ726R) is what you're thinking of I believe. Had one for a couple of years and it's been great! There is also a version with built in RAID if needed.

That's what I was initially thinking of. But I read some comments of people that had problems with that kind of solution messing up their drives. Maybe it was in the past and things have gotten better? Maybe due to the quality of components? I didn't wanna risk it. Plus, it's almost the same cost as a SATA 3 card.

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Power-Splitter-Adapter-PYO4SATA/dp/B0086OGN9E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1537284746&sr=8-3&keywords=sata+splitter+power+cable

That's the most recent thing I found on Amazon that seemed like it could work for cheap. To just disconnect the whole extension instead of the drives themselves. Read they were safe too.

I second this also. I have 4 LSI 9211-8i's and I love them. The only issue I have is that my case needs 5 to be able to use all the bays, but the LSI BIOS will only let me use 4 cards. I paid ~$100 per card, well worth every penny. [LSI 9211-8i] (http://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-Internal-SATA-SAS-PCI-e-RAID-Controller-Card-SAS9211-8i-8-PORT-HBA-/111834008063?hash=item1a09d389ff:g:YhoAAOSwrklVEHVu), [Mini-SAS to Sata Cable] (http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters%C2%AE-Mini-SAS-Forward-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1451574103&sr=8-2&keywords=mini+sas+to+sata)

$150 8TB WD Elements (I bought it like a week ago.)

I added this 3-in-2 adapter to my R5. It works well for me, although I only put 2 HDDs in it, and my SSD. I did decide to upgrade the fan with a Noctua, to keep it nice and quiet. There are probably better adapters out there, but it works well enough for me.

I found that after some usage the door and filter began to rattle and make a little noise. Since the server sits in my living room with me, I took it out and attached the filter over the fan. Presto, no more noise.

Everyone here seems to be pushing hard on various cloud solutions; but either they haven't actually read all of your requirements, or are ignoring them:

> Occasional read-through of entire dataset (may be several read throughs within a week)

Even on a GigE connection it would still take 11.5 days to download a raw version of that, and if you managed to get a 90% compression rate, that's still ~28 hours of just downloading data.

Right now; these appear to be the cheapest 8TB drives (ignoring the Archive drives which are so slow on bulk writes it would take months to back everything up). So without any parity, you need 14 of those for 100GB raw (8TB drives have 7.3T usable).

If you can play around with your compression and get it < 15TB - which for plain text isn't unthinkable) you can look around for the 16TB WD MyBook for around $500

Noise level is acceptable, I mean it's got quite a few fans in it, but you can mod it with noctuas if so desired, which makes it quiet as heck.

I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RL8I7M, but you can get one (not this same model but the same chipset so they just flash the 9211 firmware to it) pretty darn cheap on ebay pre-flashed to IT mode (here's an example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-H310-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-w-LSI-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162834659601)

You can do the Mediasonic Probox line for that. I have the one without RAID, but use software (DrivePool) for redundancy. It works great via USB. My only complaint is the back fan can be loud.

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4

They also make one with RAID built in:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YFHEAC/ref=emc_b_5_t

Total came out to ~$400.

Case $93:

BestDuplicator - Premium 9 Bay Case

Bays $65 each:

3x Kingwin Aluminum Five Bay Hot Swap


Drives:

8tb EasyStores, already had them all and prices varied over the different sales BB had.

Then I'm using an HP SAS Expander I bought off eBay for $18, and powering the card with a pcie extender that people normally use for GPU mining. (Card just needs power, not data, so it works out really well)

Various SAS cables I already had, etc.

Whole thing is just one SAS 8088 cable, super easy.

Here's the PCIE extender:

PCI-E Extender Riser Card Express USB 3.0 1x to 16x Adapter with SATA Power Cable & LEDs for BTC Miner

So just to clarify, it's these, right? https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC/

I'm itching to kick start my new media storage vault, but I'm still uncertain which one to buy. Shucking is super easy, zero problems doing it.

Is there any chance at all that I won't get a Red out of it? I keep seeing some reports of some people getting Blue equivalents...

i have used regular tape aswell as gaffa tape...

a better and proper solution (if you have multiple drives like this) would be to get a sata splitter and then remove the cable that "covers" the pins for 1-3... i just got myself these https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Power-Splitter-Adapter-PYO4SATA/dp/B0086OGN9E

Now where each "sata plug" is... you can open the cap remove the wire so it only have 4 wires and then you dont need to do the 3.3v mod anymore and then pop the cover back on.

How recently was "just bought"? I only ask because the product you linked is for a $155 Easystore drive (Best Buy model but being sold on Amazon by 3rd party seller), while Amazon sells 8TB Elements drive for $139.99...

Monster machine. Easiest option is probably to get a DAS unit such as: https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-H82-SU3S2-ProBox-External-Enclosure/dp/B005GYDMYG/. But you are limited to USB3.0 speeds. If that isn't an issue, Stablebit Drivepool + SnapRAID over the drives or Windows Storage Spaces. If you need something faster than USB3.0, the HBA approach is probably your best bet. I'm a complete novice there, but I know the used enterprise ones support 4 drives with the standard cables. They can be expanded to 10+ ports with a secondary expansion card. Paired with a couple of those SANS Digital racks, you end up around $200 - so a little cheaper than the Mediasonic, faster performance,

that is a molded splitter. the molded ones will have cordes that go INTO the input and outputs. the crimped ones will have the cords pass through the output, like it is in the one his guy linked here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012BPLW08/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_1r6PBbHJS8FF0

i did buy that thing and it's working great

Is there a significance between the WD 8tb and this Seagate 8tb for the same price?

If you have Amazon Prime, the WD Elements 8TB is currently $222.88 delivered, including GST, from amazon.com.au

https://www.amazon.com.au/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=wd+elements&qid=1557610735&s=gateway&sr=8-3

If you don’t have Prime, I think you need to pay shipping on top of this price.

Let me pop in and help.

/u/xlltt was linking you to Amazon.de, but the same product is sold in the US under another name. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-H82-SU3S2-ProBox-External-Enclosure/dp/B005GYDMYG/

That said, there are cheaper USB 3.0 options out there. Unless you also need the ESATA port for some reason, this is a much more cost effective option. http://www.ebay.com/itm/TowerRAID-TR8U-8-Bay-SATA-to-USB-3-0-JBOD-Enclosure-Silver-/142272687212?hash=item21201cec6c:g:8AcAAOSwcUBYQG8c

When you want to share an Amazon link - shorten it to the "/dp/<10 character long Amazon Standard Identification Number>" like this

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G3QMPB5

​

I would suggest an LSI 9211-8i flashed to what is known as IT mode. This mode does not use any RAID and passes the disks directly to the operating system. The 9211-8i has 2 internal SFF-8087 SAS ports. SAS can support SAS as well as SATA. You can buy a breakout cable like this one which has 4 SATA connectors on it.

Here's a link to the 9211-8i itself, already flashed to IT mode. You can flash IT mode yourself, it is just a little "involved".

Bam! $35 (with rebate) with 10x external 5.25 bays

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235039


Keep it easy and add in hot swap 4 into 3 adapters as needed. This would support up to 12 drives all hot swappable without opening the case:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DGZ42SM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Great price, but I managed to get them at 200$ at least 2 times.

1. From seagate itselft around 2-3 years ago.
   
2. From Bestbuy boxing day.
   
   There is also a cheaper model right now in the prime sale
   
   https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01HAPGEIE/ref=gbdp_vlo_15770785_B01HAPGEIE?_encoding=UTF8&smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB
   
   I bought 2 of those last month and got barracuda inside instead or archive SMR drive... so who knows, maybe I'll get lucky again :D

$92 + $5 shipping fee for 4TB ...not a good deal IMO

You can get 8TB drive for only $150 , free shipping here :

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE/

Most hoarders here buy external drive then "shuck" it later

I have done both: directly connecting bare drives through a 4-disk vertical loading USB dock, and ready-made external portable hard drives, and both work great (with a significant performance and cost advantage to the bare drives+dock approach).

A few years ago, I've also started using this: https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4
It's quite fast and portable, and seems to protect the disks well (I've even sent it with disks inside on checked air travel luggage with no ill effects).

8TB WD MyBook, Amazon UK, £149.99
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LWVT81X/

It seems SAS cards get a lot of praise in this site, perhaps something like this might work?

I splurged and got a Synology box and loaded it with 4x4TB and 4x8TB red drives (2 volumes). (those reds aren't cheap).

Then with extra drives, got a couple of Mediasonic HFR2-SU3S2 PRORAID 4 to house the rest of my drives connected via eSATA and formatted ext4. These little 4 drive NAS are not very expensive and work well. I hung an extra 5TB drive for backup, other misc files off the Synology as well.

I have found using external NAS makes performance with Plex better since the work of the RAID is done separately from the processor doing the encoding.

Seems this one can do what you want, well sort of,

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR2-SU3S2-PRORAID-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003YFHEAC

It mentions that the transfer speed is locked to SATA 2 when using hardware RAID. SATA 3 is only available to individual hard drive mode (JBOD). Do keep in mind different vendor defines JBOD differently (QNAP for example defines it as spanned volume).

Since SSD DAS is your end goal, maybe you should save up and either go straight for ITX/mATX build or Thunderbolt 3 enclosure? Otherwise USB 3 will be the bottleneck here.

I would think you'd be much better off just using 3.5" drives. Yes, the 2.5s are physically smaller, but it's far less expensive to use a few large full sized drives, and they'd be more reliable. You'd only need 6 8TB drives to match your current storage, and that's few enough to fit in a regular sized computer case.

8TB reds are on sale right now for $0.033/GB: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BYLY4DM/

Hi OP, seeing as you've mentioned the Queen's quid, I assume you're in the UK (your username is a bit of a hint too!). Why not shuck the WD My Book 8TB that is available on Amazon for ~£220, you may get a helium filled drive akin to a Red but it'll have a white label and less warranty. Obviously if you can get Red Pros then they're fantastic but perhaps your needs are more about quantity than quality. https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Desktop-Drive-Backup-Software/dp/B01LWVT81X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485503230&sr=8-1&keywords=my+book+8tb

I had one and would recommend the RAID version

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR2-SU3S2-PRORAID-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003YFHEAC

Have one of these currently as an on-site backup for my NAS, still going strong after almost 2 years.

You can also get the same drive at the $139 price @ Amazon. $3.01 more, but you can use free prime shipping.


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

So I take it I should be looking at a DAS RAID, especially if I want to move it between hosts. Seems like there's another version of that Mediasonic enclosure with RAID support

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR2-SU3S2-PRORAID-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003YFHEAC/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1503937514&sr=1-2&keywords=direct+attached+storage

Wonder what separates the $150 Mediasonic vs. the $300 drobo.

Now I'm confused...the one on Amazon isn't the same one that BB is selling?

WD 10TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBWLG0100HBK-NESN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G3QMPB5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_RUJ5BbTE3C4DK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Syba-SATA-Controller-Profile-Brackets/dp/B00AZ9T3OU/ref=sr_1_5?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1506282220&sr=1-5&keywords=sata%2Bcontroller&refinements=p_36%3A-4000&th=1

i found this one in the same page as the one you recommend. it was cheaper though. should work though since it looks to be pretty much the same.