Out of drive bays, how do i get more storage?

[Phazed]

I have a total of 7TB of storage on my computer, 1TB is an NVMe SSD, and the other 6TB are made up of 2 hard drives. As a content creator, i've already used up almost half of the storage in the past 2-3 months. I don't like deleting files, and so i was wondering if there was a way to have more HDD storage that wasn'y just a SATA to USB converter or anything like that as i would like to have multiple drives in the future. My case is a compact case and only comes with 2 drive bays so i'm kind of full there.

[CatXice]

buy a new hdd and store the others away safely? 

pci-e storage cards u know were a m.2 drive goes in the card and the card into a pcie lane

[Billy_Mays]

Get a NAS most youtubers have them

[Stevoisboss]

NAS?

[Phazed]

Just now, CatXice said:

buy a new hdd and store the others away saftly?

i dont want to buy bigger hard drives as i would like to have them all in use at once, and also the hard drives i am currently using cost about $200 and they're pretty new and i'd rather not put them away.

[Phazed]

Just now, Billy_Mays said:

Get a NAS most youtubers have them

Do you know of any cheap ones? and how solid would the connection be? do they connect via CAT cables or USB3.0 or 3.1 or anything else?

[Billy_Mays]

15 minutes ago, Phazed said:

Do you know of any cheap ones? and how solid would the connection be? do they connect via CAT cables or USB3.0 or 3.1 or anything else?

They are Network Attached Storage so I assume it's on the wifi are your house I'm not too sure but check up on it

[ImNotThere]

Get external drives via thunderbolt and then get a thunderbolt to usb adapter

[Leonard]

You could do something like this or this.

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, Stevoisboss said:

NAS?

Network

Attached 

Storage

[Windows7ge]

You could buy something like a Synology NAS and load it with 10TB drives (or whatever your heart desires) and set it up for redundancy (RAID1).

 

If you're adventurous you could take a wack at building your own miniature file server with your favorite flavor of Linux. I like FreeNAS. Then you could build an array of drives any size of any quantity. Even set it up so you could connect to it when you're away from home (I'm just assuming that's where you are)

[Stevoisboss]

35 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Network

Attached 

Storage

I was recommending it.  I know what it stands for. Thanks for the thought though.

[Windows7ge]

4 hours ago, Stevoisboss said:

I was recommending it.  I know what it stands for. Thanks for the thought though.

Ah, my bad. The question mark made me think you were asking what it was not offering it to the OP.

[Jarsky]

Wants more storage

 

- Has a compact case that is full

- Doesnt want externally connected drives

- Doesnt want to upgrade to larger drives

 

 

Your only real option is to get a NAS, or a cloud storage service.

Personally, I would just upgrade the drives to 6TB and sell the ones you have while theyre still fairly new, have warranty and will get a decent return.

 

[FartingBob]

If prebuilt NAS's are too pricey (they are pretty expensive if you want more than 2 bays) build a dirt cheap box with a case that has lots of room for 3.5" drives (there's cheap ones that can hold 5 or 6 drives without adapters). Doesnt have to look good, just has to work. Then connect it via ethernet (or wifi) to your main PC. There's plenty of good, easy to use Linux OS's that can share files with windows over a network as well. Once its setup you can tuck it away out of sight and mostly forget about it.

[Phazed]

11 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Wants more storage

 

- Has a compact case that is full

- Doesnt want externally connected drives

- Doesnt want to upgrade to larger drives

 

 

Your only real option is to get a NAS, or a cloud storage service.

Personally, I would just upgrade the drives to 6TB and sell the ones you have while theyre still fairly new, have warranty and will get a decent return.

 

 

okay, i think i've decided on getting a NAS, however, im the only one i really want in my house to be able to connect with it. is it possible to get some kind of PCI-e card that would let me connect via CAT5e or something along those lines?

[samiscool51]

12 hours ago, Leonard said:

You could do something like this or this.

newer cases don't have 3.5" drive bays and prob will never have them anymore

[Tsuki]

just get some velco tape and stick more drives to the inside of your case

[koolerone]

53 minutes ago, samiscool51 said:

newer cases don't have 3.5" drive bays and prob will never have them anymore

i think you mean 5.25" bays  

[samiscool51]

7 minutes ago, koolerone said:

i think you mean 5.25" bays  

me: oops....

me: forget about it! (brooklyn accent) 

@koolerone: it's forgotten about! (brooklyn accent) 

[Leonard]

1 hour ago, samiscool51 said:

newer cases don't have 3.5" drive bays and prob will never have them anymore

Thanks for the correction but if you read his post you would see he has a compact case with 2 drive bays and even if he didn't have a drive bay he could still connect it through a GPU slot.

[Jarsky]

3 hours ago, Phazed said:

 

okay, i think i've decided on getting a NAS, however, im the only one i really want in my house to be able to connect with it. is it possible to get some kind of PCI-e card that would let me connect via CAT5e or something along those lines?

 

Many NAS' support USB3.0 and other connectivity as well. You could also just create permissions on the pron NAS shares so no one else can connect to it. 

[samiscool51]

1 hour ago, Leonard said:

Thanks for the correction but if you read his post you would see he has a compact case with 2 drive bays and even if he didn't have a drive bay he could still connect it through a GPU slot.

[SCHISCHKA]

If you have spare SATA ports cheapest thing to do is new case. Even new motherboard with new case might be cheaper than a nas

[Leonard]

5 hours ago, samiscool51 said: