Storage Question

[Bsawyer]

Hello everyone

 

I'm currently building a new PC and my new tower only has 2 free slots for hdd's and it's out. I'm a avid gamer my 2 hard drives I got in my current computer are just about completely full (to were I Wana keep them about 200g from toped) I have 2 6tb wd blacks. 

 

Now my question is I need more space for game storage and I don't have any room in my new tower for anymore drives. What are my best options I do I use an external hardrive, or would a DAS be more suffient or would they both pretty much have the same performance??? I don't know if gaming on either of these is good or not 

 

I also don't know much about external storage to pull the trigger. I am looking to have something were if it was an external HDD be like 12-16tb and if it's a DAS preferably be a 5 slot unit for further expansion of drives. 

 

What do you guys think or is thier a better option than the two I refered to. Let me know and ty to any help!! 

[dizmo]

What are you using the storage for?
Surely not games.

 

I'd consider just picking up a pair of 10TB drives for the case. Might be cheaper.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Do you have any 5.25" front bays in your case? If so, you can get an adaptor that will allow you to put a couple of 3.5" drives in there. 

 

If using external, I'd advise going for Thunderbolt if your motherboard supports it, or eSATA for the connection. 

 

Something to note with multi-bay DAS devices is that they often only allow you to combine the drives, rather than being able to access each individually. This may come in the form of some RAID options or JBOD/Spanned volumes. Most of the time, you can't just add new drives to the system as it requires the whole combined array to be rebuilt, wiping the data on the drives in the process. 

 

If you're planning on adding more after this expansion, your best long run option would be a different case with more storage bays. Failing that, you could look into building a file server / NAS, though if you're going to be loading large games from there, you may have to look into 10G networking for the link as well. 

 

I find it rather hard to believe that you have 12TB worth of games though. Is it all games taking up that space or other things and you just need more space because you want to put some games on it? If there's a large quantity of video files or such, a NAS may be a good choice for those and have the games and such on the local drives. 

[Windows7ge]

Well, you could build yourself a DAS for fairly cheap. You'd probably want a hardware RAID controller here. How much would you be willing to invest in the project?

[Bsawyer]

And yes I do have 12 tb's of games all installed it's around 695 games in total. And it keeps growing lol. Steam loves me also yes the storage is all going to be for games my current case I'm using easily could store about 9 more drives but I'm sick of how big it is. Reason why I'm upgrading my components and downsizing the case. 

 

The case is the Rose will cullian v500 rgb

The case only has 2 3.5 inch bays 

 

And I don't ever have a budget I am fine with fishing out a few bucks to make this work. I'm very limited on space these are the reasons why I am looking for alternative methods 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

38 minutes ago, Bsawyer said:

And yes I do have 12 tb's of games all installed it's around 695 games in total. And it keeps growing lol. Steam loves me also yes the storage is all going to be for games my current case I'm using easily could store about 9 more drives but I'm sick of how big it is. Reason why I'm upgrading my components and downsizing the case. 

 

The case is the Rose will cullian v500 rgb

The case only has 2 3.5 inch bays 

 

And I don't ever have a budget I am fine with fishing out a few bucks to make this work. I'm very limited on space these are the reasons why I am looking for alternative methods 

 

Case is what I'd advise changing here. Even for a mid tower, 2 3.5" bays is pretty lean. 

 

I'd suggest having a look at the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M TG, Fractal Design Define R6 and Corsair 678C. All have 6 or more 3.5" bays. 

 

Unfortunately, going for a case with TG front like yours limits the functionality. 

 

Ones more similar in looks, but with 4 bays are the Lian Li Alpha and NZXT H710

[Bsawyer]

12 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Case is what I'd advise changing here. Even for a mid tower, 2 3.5" bays is pretty lean. 

 

I'd suggest having a look at the Phanteks Enthoo Pro M TG, Fractal Design Define R6 and Corsair 678C. All have 6 or more 3.5" bays. 

 

Unfortunately, going for a case with TG front like yours limits the functionality. 

 

Ones more similar in looks, but with 4 bays are the Lian Li Alpha and NZXT H710

I already have bought everything so changing the case is a no go.  i built my setup around the case design. I have a Cooler-master Cosmos 2 so if i wanted more drive bays i would have stuck with it. but its to damn big so in the trash it goes

[Bsawyer]

6 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Well, you could build yourself a DAS for fairly cheap. You'd probably want a hardware RAID controller here. How much would you be willing to invest in the project?

If Running a DAS would work for me it really doesnt matter about the investment as long as its expandable cause i plan on using this computer for a while

[Olaf6541]

Does your motherboard have any m.2 slots? SSD storage wont be cheap but maybe you could expand some more with QLC SSD's if you have spare m.2 slots...

 

Also you can put 2.5" drives in this pcie bracket dummy:

[Windows7ge]

2 hours ago, Bsawyer said:

If Running a DAS would work for me it really doesnt matter about the investment as long as its expandable cause i plan on using this computer for a while

If you want the ability to add drives progressively you may want an HBA then as oppose to a RAID controller. This would force you to use Software RAID though if you want to join them into one logical volume. Windows has Storage Spaces. This would allow you to do this. If you want to run your games directly off it I can't say exactly how well they'll run. Assuming there's no massive environment interference though they should behave the same as an internal drive. I can't say how the overhead of Software RAID will impact your games though.

[Bsawyer]

22 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

If you want the ability to add drives progressively you may want an HBA then as oppose to a RAID controller. This would force you to use Software RAID though if you want to join them into one logical volume. Windows has Storage Spaces. This would allow you to do this. If you want to run your games directly off it I can't say exactly how well they'll run. Assuming there's no massive environment interference though they should behave the same as an internal drive. I can't say how the overhead of Software RAID will impact your games though.

Now from what ive read it'll only impact load times which really doesnt bother me, if that is true. I'll also most likley move all my games off my main drives that i dont play regularly onto it and keep my main drives for games that peak my interests.

 

Now is thier a guide or anything of that nature that could point me in the right direction.

[Windows7ge]

4 minutes ago, Bsawyer said:

Now from what ive read it'll only impact load times which really doesnt bother me, if that is true. I'll also most likley move all my games off my main drives that i dont play regularly onto it and keep my main drives for games that peak my interests.

 

Now is thier a guide or anything of that nature that could point me in the right direction.

I'm currently in the process of building my own. The guide that inspired it was from here. You can find the SAS expander a lot cheaper than what is linked in the guide and you can make changes to the hardware to build it even cheaper than in the guide. Let me know if you want me to go into further detail.