HDD - change to a NAS setup?

stinky_daddy

Hi all

I wonder if someone with far more knowledge can help me?

I currently have a 5/6ths full 6TB (HDD) with mostly films (and music as well as other stuff on there, the majority of stuff is backed up on a different HDD).

I plan on filling it with more media, hence the question as to whether I should just get a larger HDD (and face this same issue in the future), or change over to a NAS setup (as I understand it, a NAS is just a series of drives that are available to read / write to, housed within a pre-designed housing that will accept HDD's - although I could be wrong on any/all of theses points)?

I would appreciate any suggestions (and if the overwhelming consensus is to go via the NAS route, are there any guides / websites etc that tell me how (basically a dummies guide for the 1st timer)?

Also, a ball park figure to set it all up (if I go the route of the NAS setup rather than buying/building one) would be helpful.

TIA

s_d

dan958

NAS is just Network Attached Storage. You can get specialised devices for this functionality (NAS Drives), although they are pretty expensive for the specs they have (but are extreme easy to set-up) - you can even make the drives on your computer work across the network 

The main thing you need to think about, do you need to access the data on that drive from anywhere (in the network or outside of it), and if you do, is power usage a concern? If power usage is a concern, you can easily just get a Rasp Pi, attach drives to that and use it as a low powered nas. Or if you don't mind just having your PC turned on whenever you want to use the NAS functionality, you  can just use your PC.

jsmith9

To access the NAS drive you will need to go over the network and that is likely to be slower than directly attached USB3 drives. I would stay with just increasing your drive capacity. Buy an 8TB and sell the 6TB one on eBay etc.

JustAnotherSaver

You mention films.
Reading between the lines are you trying to create a Plex library where you have all your movies and music backed up on hard drives? 

Only mentioning this as your post sounded similar to what I'm in the middle of doing. Well, not middle, nowhere near yet, but I'm on with it. 

When I get somewhere near the end I won't be able to just replace with a bigger drive as all my media will take up too much space. I'll need multiple drives. 

dan958

JustAnotherSaver said:

When I get somewhere near the end I won't be able to just replace with a bigger drive as all my media will take up too much space. I'll need multiple drives. 

From what I've learned, there will never be enough space

Neil_Jones

To the OP, get the biggest drive you can afford.

You can get "proper" NAS solutions, branded solution like D-Link, Buffalo, Cisco etc, or you can bodge something together like an external USB drive on a Pi 4 and a copy of OpenMediaVault.  Which is what I did (you can use a Pi 3 but the 4 has a) more memory, b) USB 3, c) Gigabit network capability, and d) doesn't share the bandwidth between USB 2 and LAN like the Pi 3 did).  However this can be relatively complicated to set up and requires you to know how to get it out of any potential situation that can occur, whereas with a big branded solution the only fix required may be "turn it off and on again".  However the off-the-shelf solutions drop out of support after a while, whereas the Pi you can update its software yourself and keep it going and up to date as often as you like or can.

Once you get into NAS territory (and this may be of interest to @JustAnotherSaver in the future as well), RSync is useful to know about when you need to replace the drive because its full - rsync retains metadata. That means things like file ownership, original creation date, modification dates, file permissions, and all that jazz are retained :

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-migrate-from-an-old-nas-to-a-new-one-overnight-w-1705768233

forgotmyname

Will you be connecting  to the NAS from multiple devices or users?

If not then stick a larger drive in the computer, usually space for at least 4 drives.  Stick a 16TB drive in there.

Yes a NAS offers more but costs more and by the time you fill 16TB x  2 or 4 bays the NAS may need replacing

anyway.

Avoid the cheap NAS units, made that mistake with the DLink. I was never fully happy with it. Recenty swapped

out for a Synology and the difference is worlds apart.  Plex now works properly, connecting from another device

or user no longer removes access to the previous user etc..