Reddit mentions of Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function [10TB Support] (EC-HD2B)

We push upgrades to SSD drives and we have a system that clones drives programs and all. We charge them the 69$ data back up and migration x2 and hard drive installation 49$. It’s a bundle we promote with the new 1TB SSD. 300$ includes 1TB SSD and full transfer of all files and programs.

We use this.

Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function [10TB Support] (EC-HD2B) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_HnCWCb4XM9Q4W

You could also use a USB 3.0 dock, SATA 3 caps out at 600MB/s and USB 3.0/3.1 A is 625MB/s, though the two interfaces have slightly different overhead. I expect transfer rates would be pretty comparable but maybe a little slower on USB 3

This one has two dock ports: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/

Buy a docking station like the one in the link below. Plug the dock into your PC, then plug your drives, (one or two at a time), into the dock and turn it on. The drives will then show up as another hard drive on your PC, like a USB thumb drive does. Once plugged in you can then drag and drop any files from the hard drives to your current PC.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1549416646&sr=1-3&keywords=hard+drive+docking+station

You are correct, if you already have a server running the "brains" then having a NAS with a powerful computer would not help your Plex server. However, the reason they have a CPU and "Brains" is more to manage the RAID configuration. Often times most people with a NAS or SAN don't like them, as they can't transcode as well as some other servers can. If you have the money this would be the way to go, and use your existing server. These setups can quickly cost a few hundred dollars upwards of thousands.


An alternative, and sometimes slightly cheaper... would be a DAS (Direct Attached Storage). The downside to this, is that with a NAS all computers can use the storage. However DAS is directly connected (similar to a flash drive) to the server. However, the server will host the content everywhere else using Plex.


Most users will use RAID for more redundancy, so you can loose a Drive and just swap it. It is not meant for a backup though, so please don't use RAID as a backup.


If you want less then say 10TB of storage. I would simply get a docking station and a big drive (or external HD) then put everything on it. Get a 2nd drive and backup to that in case you have a HD failure. Super simple, effective, and cheap. I would get a docking station that holds 2 drives... then any 2 drives that match. You can then just clone it to the backup easy. This works great for up to 10tb... as anything past that you would need to do extra work to get them to work. Then simply pick any 2.5 or 3.5" HD you want.


If your wanting more then 10tb... OR if you will be streaming to many people (like over 10 at the same time). Then you will likely want a RAID setup, with a DAS, NAS, or even SAN. A simple DAS would be a very nice setup, with plenty of room to grow. You don't need to add all the drives at once either.. you could simply buy drives as you need to add them and grow as you gather more content.

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To give you an idea on space this is roughly how much I have currently:
11T storage, using 6.8T, 3.6T still available.
1500 - 1080p Movies
39 - 1080p TV Shows (all seasons)
60 - 4K (super high res 40gb file movies etc..)
3 - 4K tv shows (all seasons)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0759567JT/ref=psdcmw_160354011_t1_B06XYL599P is the one I just ordered to replace it. I'll also try using a desktop with the adapter I currently have. Thanks for all the help!

There are tools like the Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD with Hard Drive Duplicator/Cloner Function that will clone a HDD for you automatically just by pressing a button. I actually use this exact unit when I need to clone a drive. Never had an issue.

On the other hand, if you didn't want to invest in the tool, you could always just do a restore from carbonite onto the new HDD in the PC and still use the 3.5" as an external. Also Carbonite restore is a lot quicker than backup, of course depending upon your internet speed.

I have a question about the best editing setup for 4K footage:

I am on an iMac so I cannot do the very cool setup that PC users are doing, with a PCI based SSD as their HD for the footage they are working with.

I am thinking of purchasing an editing dock, so I can slap my SSD's in that I use for image capture and just edit the footage right off there (for smaller/shorter videos). For my bigger projects (martial art seminars) I can use the SSD's as fast storage for the files I'm currently working with, then archive them when I am finished with that timeline and move on to the next batch.

Does this sound about right for an editing workflow? For a dock I was thinking either of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DJ3YEH0/?coliid=I3LVQBX3Y28PPN&colid=18MV1ZDGQIPKJ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

or

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/?coliid=I1S7ITYP2SKAOB&colid=18MV1ZDGQIPKJ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I'm going to be working with 4K Pro Res 422 60 fps footage.


Any advice on how your work flow goes is most appreciated!

Sounds to me like you'll be needing something like this https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=asc_df_B0759567JT/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309743296044&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16616403806579988795&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008033&hvtargid=pla-564037935583&psc=1

Got it! He didn't do it the best way, he should have moved your HDD image over to the SSD.

So if you want a program to work, locate it and open it. If it runs fine, great, you can move the folder wherever you want. If it throws errors, then it needs to be reinstalled because it won't work as a portable installation.

So you re-download Bluestacks, point it at your HDD (something like D:\Bluestacks ) and then if you had any settings files or anything specific like projects, you can go get them from the old location and move them back to where you installed.

In the future, when you swap hardware you can either use a hard drive cloner (like this) or use Macrium Reflect to copy the entire drive image onto another drive.

So you have a bit of work to do because of how it was handled/installed for you, but it's mostly just manually copying files you want to keep, and then later you can completely delete the old folders once you know everything is handled. Or leave them if you have a lot of space, up to you.

For others reading this, see this 5 minute video first: https://youtu.be/ZwhT-KI16jo

It depends upon how much, and what data is involved: There's the docking bay option, or a single box: E.g.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT

https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HDWR11AXZSTA-Performance-Gaming-Internal/dp/B07N8WTK4T?th=1

https://atechfabrication.com/products/mass_storage_2500.htm

Docks are good if there's not a lot of original content (OC) created. By OC I mean, that which cannot be recreated. E.g. I have 2 hundred music CD's collected over many years. Over time I've ripped them all onto hard drives: Added to that are all the music CD's & video DVD's that I've ripped from my local public library (shhhh). However, that data could be recaptured; it's not lost. I'd only lose the time it took to rip them. The same is true with anything captured on/from the Internet. My huge Amazon e-book library is stored on their cloud servers, but can be downloaded to my hard drive/s. Again, nothing lost if the HDD or SSD died suddenly. But OC is another matter.

Therefore, when ever anyone calculates storage, the content is the motivator of how much to spend. I always keep my OS (and its future updates, programs, apps, etc) on an m.2 SSD; no other content on it, so that at anytime and for any reason, I can simply unplug all storage devices, and install another Linux distro (or reinstall the same one) if any problems whatsoever, show up in the future; mechanical, viruses, ransomware; you name it. I back up the most important data monthly onto USB sticks and keep them in a fireproof waterproof Safe (if not one of those, a bank box will suffice).

USB 2-bay 3.5" drive dock with a pair of 8TB drives in RAID1. Let the live system back up right to the local array.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/

Honestly, I wouldn't even spend money on the NAS, just find one of those drive toasters (https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1535769910&sr=1-5&keywords=hard+drive+docking+station) and stick your drives in it.

If it's just for backups, copy your data unto the drives regularly and just store them when it's not being used.

Like these https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT

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And, got it. I've just read on this very sub that the Rock64 makes for a decent NAS over the Pi. Thanks!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759567JT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_vKQuDbYX6JG2F

What about that? It's a dock for SATA drives that connects via usb