YouTube Storage solutions please

[grangervoldemort]

Starting a YouTube channel. Have 11TB of videos already sitting on drives. Haven't edited a single video yet. Been filming for 5 years. Need to edit and upload 5 years (11TB) of videos. I will probably want to keep the originals and the edits.
I still film so I need even more space+backup storage+more storage immediately. 

Drives are a bit of a mess. As follows:
FULL Samsung Spinpoint 1TB x2 = 2TB (2010 and 2011 models bought new at the time) - FULL
FULL Samsung Spinpoint 2TB x2 = 4TB ((2011 models bought new at the time) - mostly kept off (I have a Lian Li HDD individual power switch thingymobob (check my signature for full PC specs))- FULL
FULL 4TB WD My Passport - FULL

 

Others:
Crucial MX500 500GB SSD - of which half is filled with videos - also my OS drive and only 40GB space left on it

FULL 128GB of videos on a SD card in my phone + 20GB of videos on intermal - no more drive space to transfer right now.
FULL 2x 64GB = 128GB SD cards filled with videos

 

I have no backup solutions in place.

My parents abuse me so I have no friends due to their abuse so no offsite backup place. Banks here in the UK where I live do not have safe deposit boxes you can rent out.

 

No redundancy in place although backup>redundancy.

 

Need backups.

Need more drive space.

Not sure what to do. NAS drives are stupid expensive and I don't even really understand what they are for other then apparently for multiple people accessing them at the same time so work an be shared easily. I am solo.

Need backup + lots of storage. Ideally storage that shows up as one single drive. Doesn't have to though. 

Not sure if multiple external drives, NAS unit or something similar or internal drives are the solution here. 

Not sure I want to go internal. I ideally want all my data in a box so I can pick it up at a moments notice and go with it and have another special box to transport it in. But not sure.

What is the ideal storage and backup solution in my scenario?

Thanks.

[mariushm]

You could use a service like Backblaze.com - you pay a monthly fee (6$  a month or 60$ a year) and backup your files.

 

There's also services like Amazon Glacier, but note that you'll pay a monthly fee per GB... for example to store in Stockholm it costs you 4$ per 1000 GB each month: https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/

So 10 TB of data would cost you 40$ a month to keep it. It will also cost you money to retrieve the files back, for same location mentioned above it would cost 2.5$ for 1000 GB retrieved.

 

Look at mechanical hard drives and where's the best price per MB ... you'll see it's somewhere around 6-8 TB these days.

 

For example, looking at a big IT store here in my country

 

4TB ~ 3815 MiB : WD Blue : 94 GBP : 0.0246 pounds per MiB

6 TB : 5722 MiB : Seagate Barracura : 160 GBP : 0.0279 pounds per MiB

8 TB : 7630 MiB : Seagate Barracura : 213 GBP : 0.0279 pounds per MiB

10 TB : 9536 MiB : various : 295 GBP : 0.0309 pounds per MiB

 

Buy one or two of such drives and keep the older drives as backups.

 

Are you in good relations with your grandparents? If so, you could ask them to keep a box of your things at their apartment/house - place the hard drives there.

 

There's various drives... the NAS drives aren't that much more expensive, just a bit more.

 

You can use regular "desktop" drives like WD Green, WD Blue ... it's just that they're not designed to run 24/7 which probably doesn't happen anyway.

The drives in the NAS category are supposed to have improved firmware and be slightly better built, so that they can be kept running 24/7 and also handle vibrations a bit better (allowing you to have a bunch of drives close together in a NAS box or somewhere running 24/7 reading and writing files to them)

The cheaper desktop "class" drives... you can install multiple drives in a regular computer tower, but generally it's a good idea to leave some spacing between individual drives.

There's also the AV (audio video or surveillance drives) - these are hard drives that also have a firmware tweaked/tuned so that such hard drives work better for surveillance or audio video. Basically the firmware trades performance (how fast files are read and written) for better handling of reading and writing multiple files at the same time.. the drive is supposed to be smarter about how it seeks data on the drive and so on.  The idea is that you may have 4-8 cameras which each send a stream to the computer and the computer may have to write these streams to hard drive at a consistent rate, without hiccups, without losing data packets (maybe the pc has very little ram and can't hold videos in memory for long time)

 

What else you can do...

Start editing the videos, prepare one video for Youtube, render it and so on.

When you're done, you could take the original videos which are probably recorded at high bitrate by your video camera (for example 20-25 mbps, maybe more) and convert them to HEVC.

For 1080p content, with a good settings for the encoder, you can get very high quality in around 10mbps ... so you'd basically reduce the size of your videos to half or a third. It will take a lot of time, probably 3-5fps ... so expect the conversion to take 4-6 hours for each hour of video.

You want to do this only for archival of your videos, after you're done and have the video ready for Youtube, because these converted files are not so easy to use in video editors.

If you have a relatively modern video card, a lot of programs can use the video card to convert the videos faster.

 

 

[grangervoldemort]

3 hours ago, mariushm said:

You could use a service like Backblaze.com - you pay a monthly fee (6$  a month or 60$ a year) and backup your files.

 

There's also services like Amazon Glacier, but note that you'll pay a monthly fee per GB... for example to store in Stockholm it costs you 4$ per 1000 GB each month: https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/

So 10 TB of data would cost you 40$ a month to keep it. It will also cost you money to retrieve the files back, for same location mentioned above it would cost 2.5$ for 1000 GB retrieved.

 

Look at mechanical hard drives and where's the best price per MB ... you'll see it's somewhere around 6-8 TB these days.

 

For example, looking at a big IT store here in my country

 

4TB ~ 3815 MiB : WD Blue : 94 GBP : 0.0246 pounds per MiB

6 TB : 5722 MiB : Seagate Barracura : 160 GBP : 0.0279 pounds per MiB

8 TB : 7630 MiB : Seagate Barracura : 213 GBP : 0.0279 pounds per MiB

10 TB : 9536 MiB : various : 295 GBP : 0.0309 pounds per MiB

 

Buy one or two of such drives and keep the older drives as backups.

 

Are you in good relations with your grandparents? If so, you could ask them to keep a box of your things at their apartment/house - place the hard drives there.

 

There's various drives... the NAS drives aren't that much more expensive, just a bit more.

 

You can use regular "desktop" drives like WD Green, WD Blue ... it's just that they're not designed to run 24/7 which probably doesn't happen anyway.

The drives in the NAS category are supposed to have improved firmware and be slightly better built, so that they can be kept running 24/7 and also handle vibrations a bit better (allowing you to have a bunch of drives close together in a NAS box or somewhere running 24/7 reading and writing files to them)

The cheaper desktop "class" drives... you can install multiple drives in a regular computer tower, but generally it's a good idea to leave some spacing between individual drives.

There's also the AV (audio video or surveillance drives) - these are hard drives that also have a firmware tweaked/tuned so that such hard drives work better for surveillance or audio video. Basically the firmware trades performance (how fast files are read and written) for better handling of reading and writing multiple files at the same time.. the drive is supposed to be smarter about how it seeks data on the drive and so on.  The idea is that you may have 4-8 cameras which each send a stream to the computer and the computer may have to write these streams to hard drive at a consistent rate, without hiccups, without losing data packets (maybe the pc has very little ram and can't hold videos in memory for long time)

 

What else you can do...

Start editing the videos, prepare one video for Youtube, render it and so on.

When you're done, you could take the original videos which are probably recorded at high bitrate by your video camera (for example 20-25 mbps, maybe more) and convert them to HEVC.

For 1080p content, with a good settings for the encoder, you can get very high quality in around 10mbps ... so you'd basically reduce the size of your videos to half or a third. It will take a lot of time, probably 3-5fps ... so expect the conversion to take 4-6 hours for each hour of video.

You want to do this only for archival of your videos, after you're done and have the video ready for Youtube, because these converted files are not so easy to use in video editors.

If you have a relatively modern video card, a lot of programs can use the video card to convert the videos faster.

 

 

Thanks.

 

Online storage is out of the question. Too expensive and I have only 17mbps upload; 11TB of data would take years probably if uploaded 24/7. Imagine the electricity bill too.

 

Where did you get grandparents from? I have no grandparents.

I never leave my PC on other than when I am using it.

You only glossed over NAS. NAS to me is a mystery. I want to understand what it is and what it's useful for and whether it's useful for me or not.

 

I know all that about internal hard drives btw. 

Not sure the old drives are ideal for backup. I bought them in 2011 or so. The 2x 2TB and one of the 1TB drives have hardly been used (don't forget I can power up and down my drives individually with the lian li power switch i have). So MAYBE they are ok for backup - BUT they are INTERNAL drives. No enclosure.

4-6 hours per video - do you mean the edited video or the original raw footage? That is an insane amount of time and isn't feasible. I need to build/buy a new PC as mine is 7 years old though as you mentioned a modern GPU.

[seagate_surfer]

Basically, the biggest difference is in the endurance (Bigger ability to write data more frequently and a bigger ability to work on heavy workloads 24/7). An HDD model that is made to withstand the heavy writing of videos is the SkyHawk, below I will leave the specs in case you find them necessary:

1. https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/hdd/skyhawk/

[grangervoldemort]

1 minute ago, seagate_surfer said:

Basically, the biggest difference is in the endurance (Bigger ability to write data more frequently and a bigger ability to work on heavy workloads 24/7). An HDD model that is made to withstand the heavy writing of videos is the SkyHawk, below I will leave the specs in case you find them necessary:

1. https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/hdd/skyhawk/

''I know all that about internal hard drives btw. ''

 

Why is everyone missing the point? 
----> You only glossed over NAS. NAS to me is a mystery. I want to understand what it is and what it's useful for and whether it's useful for me or not. <------

 

Why do drives like this (https://www.lacie.com/gb/en/products/big/5big-thunderbolt-2/) (choose option 20TB) cost £1,500? 

I could get 4 of these for £1020: https://www.ebuyer.com/791740-seagate-barracuda-pro-8tb-desktop-hard-drive-3-5-sata-iii-6gb-s-7200rpm-st8000dm0004 and I would have 12TB more space.

 

Or I could get this for £560 (choose 20TB): https://www.wdc.com/en-gb/products/external-storage/my-book-duo.html#WDBFBE0200JBK-EESN 

I think the above uses 5400rpm drives (correct me if I'm wrong).

OR I could get 2 of these: https://www.ebuyer.com/791852-wd-red-nas-10-tb-internal-hdd-3-5-wd100efax-wd100efax?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=51482414339&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0If3nO6n3QIVz7ztCh2IUgq9EAQYASABEgJjDfD_BwE for £600 which is the same price as the duo external drive. WHY?! Why is it in this case cheaper to get the external drive?

Or for slightly cheaper I could get 2 of these: https://www.ebuyer.com/752932-seagate-ironwolf-10tb-3-5-nas-hard-drive-st10000vn0004

 

[mariushm]

11 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

Why do drives like this (https://www.lacie.com/gb/en/products/big/5big-thunderbolt-2/) (choose option 20TB) cost £1,500? 

Basically those boxes have a tiny PC inside (Atom processor or similar, 4-8 GB of memory, a Linux operating system and sometimes a fancy raid controller which can use the hard drives in various configurations.

Sometimes you also get a 10gbps ethernet or thunderbolt 2 in the case of the product above.

The 'pc' inside the box  and the operating system and the software is there to give you options about how you access the data (for example see all hard drives as a single big storage space and access it like a basic Windows shared folder, or maybe set up iSCSI and map the big hard drive to your PC or several PCs , or maybe you want to upload files to it using FTP or some HTTP features - you can enable "applications' to run on the NAS.

It makes it easy for lots of people to access the data on those drives, depending on the rights of each user - you can create users and say which user sees what on the NAS and so on.

 

It's basically a PC like I said.

 

In the case of LaCie you're paying a lot for the Thunderbolt feature... that's basically 100-200$ added. Then another 100-200$ for the pc inside (mb, psu, network)

Then you have the hard drives... the 40 TB model most likely has 10 TB drives so that's like 250$ each ... it's 5 drives but one is used as hot spare, so those 40TB are on 4 drives.

 

 

Yes, absolutely you can buy the drives. But then you have to install the in a PC and from there ... what are you gonna do? If you're in an office or some place where several people need files, you end up having to keep your pc running 24/7  so that people can get to those files.

You can build your own tiny pc cheaper, and use FreeNAS operating system or Unraid and build something similar to those devices ... but not everyone is knowledgeable enough to do it.

 

Also, products like that LaCie with Thunderbolt 2 are targeted to movie and photography guys, people who spend 10-20k on RED cameras and crap like that... LaCie have high markup on those things with Thunderbolt

It's not really needed ... they could have easily added a 10gbps ethernet card for 60-100$ and get the same bandwidth ... but Apple people (because laptops have Thunderbolt) are used to paying tons of money on stuff, and the camera guys don't really care that much, the studios have the budgets..

[grangervoldemort]

7 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Basically those boxes have a tiny PC inside (Atom processor or similar, 4-8 GB of memory, a Linux operating system and sometimes a fancy raid controller which can use the hard drives in various configurations.

Sometimes you also get a 10gbps ethernet or thunderbolt 2 in the case of the product above.

The 'pc' inside the box  and the operating system and the software is there to give you options about how you access the data (for example see all hard drives as a single big storage space and access it like a basic Windows shared folder, or maybe set up iSCSI and map the big hard drive to your PC or several PCs , or maybe you want to upload files to it using FTP or some HTTP features - you can enable "applications' to run on the NAS.

It makes it easy for lots of people to access the data on those drives, depending on the rights of each user - you can create users and say which user sees what on the NAS and so on.

 

It's basically a PC like I said.

 

In the case of LaCie you're paying a lot for the Thunderbolt feature... that's basically 100-200$ added. Then another 100-200$ for the pc inside (mb, psu, network)

Then you have the hard drives... the 40 TB model most likely has 10 TB drives so that's like 250$ each ... it's 5 drives but one is used as hot spare, so those 40TB are on 4 drives.

 

 

Yes, absolutely you can buy the drives. But then you have to install the in a PC and from there ... what are you gonna do? If you're in an office or some place where several people need files, you end up having to keep your pc running 24/7  so that people can get to those files.

You can build your own tiny pc cheaper, and use FreeNAS operating system or Unraid and build something similar to those devices ... but not everyone is knowledgeable enough to do it.

 

Also, products like that LaCie with Thunderbolt 2 are targeted to movie and photography guys, people who spend 10-20k on RED cameras and crap like that... LaCie have high markup on those things with Thunderbolt

It's not really needed ... they could have easily added a 10gbps ethernet card for 60-100$ and get the same bandwidth ... but Apple people (because laptops have Thunderbolt) are used to paying tons of money on stuff, and the camera guys don't really care that much, the studios have the budgets..

Ok thanks but you probably din't read my post in full. I do not want anyone else at home accessing my data. I don't need network access to the data>

Please re-read my post and get back to me, thanks.

[mariushm]

You wanted to know why those are so expensive... I answered.

I understand you don't need features for multiple users - i simply described some of the features such nas machines have . You may not need it, but a lot of people want those features. 

 

So yes, you can simply buy hard drives and install them in a case and format them and use them. But you won't have the same functionality such machines bring to the table. You may very well not not those features... others do need them.

 

I told you... you're paying for the hard drives PLUS for the mini computer inside the box the drives are connected to PLUS the license costs and hardware costs for Thunderbolt 2 PLUS the brand name PLUS warranty  PLUS the actual software running on that computer PLUS saving you from hours of research and experimenting on how to build a similar machine using FreeNAS or Unraid and so on ...

 

[steelo]

1 hour ago, grangervoldemort said:

''I know all that about internal hard drives btw. ''

 

Why is everyone missing the point? 
----> You only glossed over NAS. NAS to me is a mystery. I want to understand what it is and what it's useful for and whether it's useful for me or not. <------

 

Why do drives like this (https://www.lacie.com/gb/en/products/big/5big-thunderbolt-2/) (choose option 20TB) cost £1,500? 

I could get 4 of these for £1020: https://www.ebuyer.com/791740-seagate-barracuda-pro-8tb-desktop-hard-drive-3-5-sata-iii-6gb-s-7200rpm-st8000dm0004 and I would have 12TB more space.

 

Or I could get this for £560 (choose 20TB): https://www.wdc.com/en-gb/products/external-storage/my-book-duo.html#WDBFBE0200JBK-EESN 

I think the above uses 5400rpm drives (correct me if I'm wrong).

OR I could get 2 of these: https://www.ebuyer.com/791852-wd-red-nas-10-tb-internal-hdd-3-5-wd100efax-wd100efax?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=51482414339&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0If3nO6n3QIVz7ztCh2IUgq9EAQYASABEgJjDfD_BwE for £600 which is the same price as the duo external drive. WHY?! Why is it in this case cheaper to get the external drive?

Or for slightly cheaper I could get 2 of these: https://www.ebuyer.com/752932-seagate-ironwolf-10tb-3-5-nas-hard-drive-st10000vn0004

 

Why not just get an external hard drive, or a couple of them. Label one of them '2010 to 2014' and the other '2014 to present' - or something similar.

 

If you need additional storage in the future, you can purchase another and continue labeling them chronologically. 

 

[BecauseICanTBH]

I'd recommend using Google Drive / Google One (their "business" service). Of course, encrypt your stuff before you upload so they don't just have full access to it. 7z's encryption may suffice, but VeraCrypt file containers are probably more bulletproof.

 

The thing about Google is that in their file storage policies, it says that if you don't pay the monthly fee or whatever, anything that's uploaded will remain there and remain accessible indefinitely. They won't delete your data if you don't pay, and you'll still have full access to it without paying - you just won't be able to add or modify anything.

 

And you get their insane redundancy, with your stuff being stored in copies all around the world.

[grangervoldemort]

59 minutes ago, BecauseICanTBH said:

I'd recommend using Google Drive / Google One (their "business" service). Of course, encrypt your stuff before you upload so they don't just have full access to it. 7z's encryption may suffice, but VeraCrypt file containers are probably more bulletproof.

''Online storage is out of the question. Too expensive and I have only 17mbps upload; 11TB of data would take years probably if uploaded 24/7. Imagine the electricity bill too.''

I wrote the above in I think my second post on this thread.

[grangervoldemort]

1 hour ago, steelo said:

Why not just get an external hard drive, or a couple of them. Label one of them '2010 to 2014' and the other '2014 to present' - or something similar.

 

If you need additional storage in the future, you can purchase another and continue labeling them chronologically. 

 

This is what I thought initially.

 

Here's the issue.

Let's say my external drives are individual external drives in enclosures for backup. So 2x 10TB drives. That's fine. BUT they are individual drives rather than being in a single unit. So not ideal.

 

Next. What do I do for my day to day drives? I need at least 2 copies for backup. My day to day drives atm sit in my PC but hardly ever get turned on as I haven't started editing them yet which are 2x 2TB drives.

I have 1x 1TB drive that is in almost constant use when I use my PC as that is where I have installed my games and have my files.
I have another 1x 1TB drive sitting in my wardrobe.

So then what do I do for daily drives? Get rid of all my current drives and get 2x 10TB drives?

What happens when they all become full? It's not scalable long term. Add another drive. And another. And another. Etc.

What if I need to go fully mobile in the future.... the drives would be internal drives so no enclosure.

 

What if I want to go from a full tower ATX to a mid tower? That is what I am thinking of doing so that means less hard drive slots. 

There will also be a motherboard limit on number of SATA ports, and yes you can get expansion cards, but it's a messy solution. 

I do not use the 2x 2TB drives daily (hardly at all) as they simply have my videos stored on them. This will always be the case. I wont be using every video all the time obviously. BUT I do need at least 2 copies of them for backup.

 

Now if I get individual external drives for the main copy.... where do I put them? I do not want a pile of external drives just sitting on my desk. No point in putting the external drives in the wardrobe where my backup drives will go. Sadly I cannot put the drives offsite, as I have no offsite place to store them.

 

Google drive is out of the question - I already wrote this earlier: ''Online storage is out of the question. Too expensive and I have only 17mbps upload; 11TB of data would take years probably if uploaded 24/7. Imagine the electricity bill too.''

[steelo]

11 minutes ago, grangervoldemort said:

This is what I thought initially.

 

Here's the issue.

Let's say my external drives are individual external drives in enclosures for backup. So 2x 10TB drives. That's fine. BUT they are individual drives rather than being in a single unit. So not ideal.

 

Next. What do I do for my day to day drives? I need at least 2 copies. My day to day drives  atm sit in my PC but hardly ever get turned on as I haven't started editing them yet which are 2x 2TB drives.

I have 1x 1TB drive that is in almost constant use when I use my PC as that is where I have installed my games and have my files.
I have another 1x 1TB drive sitting in my wadrobe.

So then what do I do for daily drives? Get rid of all my current drives and get 2x 10TB drives?

What happens when they call become full? It's not scalable long term. Add another drive. And another. And another. Etc.

What if I need to go fully mobile in the future.... the drives would be internal drives so no enclosure.

 

What if I want to go from a full tower ATX to a mid tower? That is what I am thinking of doing so that means less hard drive slots. 

There will also be a motherboard limit on number of SATA ports, and yes you can get expansion cards, but it's a messy solution. 

I do not use the 2x 2TB drives daily (hardly at all) as they simply have my videos stored on them. This will always be the case. I wont be using every video all the time obviously. BUT I do need at least 2 copies of them for backup.

 

Now if I get individual external drives for the main copy.... where do I put them? I do not want a pile of external drives just sitting on my desk. No point in putting the external drives in the wadrobe where my backup drives will go. Sadly I cannot put the drives offsite, as I have no offsite place to store them.

 

Google drive is out f the question - I already wrote this earlier: ''Online storage is out of the question. Too expensive and I have only 17mbps upload; 11TB of data would take years probably if uploaded 24/7. Imagine the electricity bill too.''

 

Unfortunately, if remotely connecting to a server isn't an option, your choices may be limited. 

 

You're not going to need to carry ALL of your data with you every time you travel, will you? That's why I suggested 'archiving' external hard drives by date and taking with you what you need. Also, if you go for a smaller form factor tower, you may be limiting your upgrade path later as far as installing additional HDD's.

[grangervoldemort]

Just now, steelo said:

 

Unfortunately, if remotely connecting to a server isn't an option, your choices may be limited. You're not going to need to carry ALL of your data with you every time you travel, will you? That's why I suggested 'archiving' external hard drives by date and taking with you what you need. Also, if you go for a smaller form factor tower, you may be limiting your upgrade path later as far as installing additional HDD's.

No. But I come from an abusive family. I never know my housing situation. I may in the future need to go with laptop only, no desktop if I cannot find/afford to stay in one place. Hence why I say what if I need to go fully mobile.

A NAS can have 8 drives in it and is much smaller than a PC. Hence why it seems appealing. But it clearly isn't designed and priced because it houses many drives in a small form factor. 

 

Hence why I asked about NAS which no one has answered yet in detail (please go back up and read to see what I asked. Read all my posts).

 

Internal drives even in a full ATX drive would add up after a few years of making videos. There wouldn't be space left and I wouldn't want the racket that they would make. I would HAVE to install the Lian Li power switch I have right now in a external bay and many PC cases now do not have those bays as ODD's are almost phased out. 

The power switch only has 6 switches. One is in use for my ODD (Bluray). 

 

Clearly housing drives inside a PC in the future isn't an option.

[BecauseICanTBH]

3 hours ago, grangervoldemort said:

''Online storage is out of the question. Too expensive and I have only 17mbps upload; 11TB of data would take years probably if uploaded 24/7. Imagine the electricity bill too.''

I wrote the above in I think my second post on this thread.

Years? Try 62 days. And the electricity bill? For running a computer? Lmao suit yourself.

[grangervoldemort]

2 hours ago, BecauseICanTBH said:

Years? Try 62 days. And the electricity bill? For running a computer? Lmao suit yourself.

Turns out you are right. Until recently I had 0.7mbps upload so I am used to thinking in years.
2 months 10 days 23 hours 48 minutes 33 seconds

to transfer 11 Terabytes

at 1.91 MB/sec

 

BUT don't forget it has to go through their end at Google. It will never be 16mps in real life. More like 12.

uploading 24/7 assuming that the upload stays at 16mbps (17 is max that I get) all the time. 
Leaving a PC running for 2.5 months with constant drive access I can imagine must cost a lot in electricity. Please prove to me it wouldn't cost a lot to leave 11TB drives running on a PC 24/7 for 2.5 months.

 

EDIT: Google Drive 20TB is £160 A MONTH. I cannot afford that. That's for only 20TB.

[Ben17]

4 hours ago, grangervoldemort said:

eaving a PC running for 2.5 

A nas is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

[mariushm]

Something else I can suggest is to research web hosting companies in UK from where you can rent dedicated servers or colocate servers.

You may be able to find a company that can lease you a dedicated server with 20-40 TB of disk space for reasonable monthly price.

 

Most companies will not give you physical access to the server in their datacenter, but some companies have a small office at the datacenter where you could come with a laptop or small PC and plug a 1gbps ethernet cable and transfer the data to your server that's a few meters away from you in a rack.  At ~ 100 MB/s you'll basically transfer everything in a couple of hours.

A lot of companies will also be willing to receive hard disks from you and install them in a dedicated server you rent so you could mail the hard drives to them (you have to ask if they're willing to do that). Some would be even willing to mail them back to you when you cancel the server, provided you pay for the courier shipping.

Very few would accept your drives, copy the files over to the drives in your rented server then mail the drives back to you ... it's simply too much of a hassle, the engineers' time is too valuable for them to babysit this process.

 

As an example Leaseweb - which is a huge company with datacenters in lots of places - has servers in London ...

Here's an example configuration : https://www.leaseweb.com/dedicated-server/configure/29096

You can change the default of 2x2TB to 4x8TB for 57 uk pounds a month extra... so you get a server with 4x8TB for 99 uk pounds a month ...incl. a 100mbps internet connection and 30 TB of bandwidth.

It would cost you another 18 uk pounds a month for a Windows license (to connect to the computer using remote desktop connection, run windows applications on that computer, do video conversions on the server while it idles etc etc)

Without it, you get a Linux installation and with a bit of reading of tutorials you can install a ftp server and transfer the files to the server that way.

 

As for your questions about how much it costs to have your computer running... an average computer will consume less than 100w if you're not playing games or doing something cpu intensive (rendering videos, compressing videos etc)

According to Google, price of electricity in uk is around 0.13 uk pounds for 1kWh (vat not included)

So if you leave the computer running 24 hours and it consumes 100w (which is highly unlikely, should be closer to 50 watts) , then you'll pay 24h x 0.13 = 3.12 uk pounds a day. For a month, you're looking at 90 uk pounds in electricity.

 

The laptop I'm currently typing on averages 15w .. if I connect a drive to a usb port and start uploading the videos, overall this laptop would consume around 10-15w (because the lcd screen would turn off after 10-15 minutes of non use)... so uploading files doesn't have to be electricity expensive.

 

also maybe see if you bank has some credit card deals where you can pay for something in 3 months with no interest so you could buy a 8 TB or 10 TB drive and pay for it over the course of 2-3 months with no interest and without dealing with lease/rent companies.

[PALGOW]

Cloud storage?

[steelo]

1 hour ago, PALGOW said:

Cloud storage?

I believe he already stated that wasn't an option because downloads/uploads would take too long.

[PALGOW]

10 hours ago, steelo said:

I believe he already stated that wasn't an option because downloads/uploads would take too long.

Cause files are so big.

[grangervoldemort]

On 7/30/2019 at 11:02 AM, mariushm said:

SNIP

 

Thank you for your detailed response on a solution. 

 

That's still too expensive. That's about £1,500 per year. 

My issue is I have money right now. But I don't want to be tied to any contract. It's the same reason why I won't get premiere pro. You can't buy it outright. 

 

When you buy hard drives,  they are yours. You own them outright. No monthly or yearly fees. 

I wonder what would happen if you cancelled the contract with these leasing companies you mention. They would mail you back your drives?

 

For 1,500 I could buy a good nas. For about 800 more I could buy external drives as backup with a fire and water proof safe or case to put them in. 

Or I could get a cheaper nas and for like 300 more get the backup drives and a case or safe that's fireproof etc. 

 

There is one place I can put the backup but it's not ideal. Not sure if they would let me. 

 

Next to next door my parents own another property. They rent it out to my stepmother's brother who is married. 

But they are also bad people. 

I COULD put the backup there. While not a different town, it's a different building albeit the next to next building. 

But that can only be until 2012 as my abusers (parents) will retire to India then. 

I will then have to move and take the backups with me. 

 

Contracts are expensive. 

One off purchases are much cheaper. 

 

Everytime I make a new video and transfer to the NAS or hard drives, I would have to go to the other house, bring the drives here and transfer the new files to the backup drive.

 

While it's not far away at all (a 15 second walk) and I go there everyday to eat, I want to minimise my contact with them. But I could just do that every night I go there to eat. 

 

But then what of the future? Where would I put my backup drives then? 

 

I wonder what youtubers like Casey and MKBHD do. Casey never delete any original footage ever. He shows his RAID Lacie drives in his office, but never talks about any backups. 

 

MKBHD made a video with Linus where Linus builds him a 140TB storage server thing, and MKBHD briefly talks about how he has stored his data. 

But again. No mention on backup. 

 

I can't imagine Casey not having a backup of every single video he has seeing as his career revolves around them, and he treasures them so much. 

 

I'm also scared of travelling right now because I can't travel with all my data on me. I'm scared that if I leave my data at home in my room and even if I had a backup at the other house, that they would delete it because they know I audio record them for proof of how they treat me. They being my abusers... Aka' my parents'.

 

Also I want to get rid of the 2x 2TB 5400rpm drives and possibly the 2x 1TB drives (think they might be 7200rpm), because now we can get 10 TB on ONE drive. 4 drive bay slots vs 1 that has almost double the storage capacity. 
I probably will only do this if I can sell the used drives because I spent a fair bit on those drives.

Also I don't know what to do. Go with internal drives and stick with a full ATX case, go with individual drives in enclosures, or a NAS. Arghhhhhhhh.

 

Also what if I end up moving around the world? Shipping the PC, it's monitor, etc all the time would be time consuming, expensive and stressful. 

[grangervoldemort]

 

2 hours ago, PALGOW said:

Cause files are so big.

 

I would say it's more that the cost is too much. Google Drive charges £160 a month for 20tb.

 

[grangervoldemort]

BUMP - This is how Devinsupertramp used to do it:

He used only external drives.

Did some quick research and math.

At the moment I only need 20TB of usable space. This is however thinking fairly short term thinking, although I think I might be able to delete lots of footage that isn't essential after I edit them freeing up possibly TB's of space.

 

So if I got a Synology with 4 bays such as this: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4-bay-synology-diskstation-ds418-desktop-nas-enclosure-quad-core

then that's £400.
4x 10TB NAS Seagate Pro drives @ £334 each = £1,336

Total: £1,736

That is for 20TB usable space after some kind of RAID that takes half the drives away.

>A concern with this is that the drives and fans in the NAS will make a lot of noise as they need to be left on 24/7 apparently to preserve hard drive life. This will be going into my bedroom. I could run an Ethernet cable under my floor to outside my room and place the NAS in a wall closet, but then I risk someone in the family getting angry and destroying it or the data on it. They will know what it is as I will have to tell them before I put it there and tell them not to turn the plug switch off for it,

 

Then 2x 10TB Western Digital Mybook's for backup https://www.wd.com/en-gb/products/external-storage/my-book-new.html#WDBBGB0100HBK-EESN

@ £207 each = £414.

 

Total is now: £2,150

 

I need a safe or case for the backup drives that is fireproof/waterproof which will cost probably around £350.

Total is now: £2,500

That is an insane amount considering I don't even have a DSLR camera yet and haven't even started my channel yet.
I have been filming on my Galaxy S7 mainly and sometimes on my Canon G7X.

 

I still need to build a new PC and get a decent chair. Decent chair is £1,000 for a herman miller or equivalent. Health above all.
New PC with new monitor will be around £3,000

Total SPEND is now: £6,500. My god. That doesn't even include needing a new phone (£800). New carpet (£500). DSLR with lens's+ batteries + other unforeseen (£3,500 roughly). Bag for DSLR + lenses + other stuff(£400).

I am thinking of possibly just installing the drives into my new PC case and keep the Lian Li powerswitch I have right now and just buy standard drives as I will be powering up and down the drives when needed. I don't need all drives, or any to be on 24/7.
But then it's probably safer and easier to have a NAS so if anything happens to my PC I can just nuke it and reinstall at a moments notice without worry about my files.

What do you all think? What to do?

 

[wafflehaus]

Don't feel daunted or confused by a NAS, it's probably your best storage option and in 2019 they can be dead-simple to set up.  Some people go for home-built solutions but don't feel like that's your only option.

 

Companies like QNAP and Synology make very easy specialist devices, and it can be as simple as slapping some hard drives in, plugging it into your router and hitting the power button. 

 

They run their own mini-operating system (usually driven through a web browser on your main PC) and you can do all sorts of things like use 40TB of hard drive space to get 20TB with an automatically mirrored backup copy of all your files, or use all 40TB with no backup. You can have it all appear as one giant "drive" in windows or lots of separate shares. Also, this will definitely appeal to you: It's possible to set up passworded folders/shares/user accounts if you don't want other people on the network accessing your files.

 

One of the best things is power usage. Consumer-grade NASs are usually low-powered devices so getting access to those files will generally cost you far less electricity than running the drives inside a PC tower.