Best option for Plex Library storage upgrade

[Morgul]

So, here's a fun one. First, let me describe the situation: I run a plex server that I share with my siblings and their families. I've got a nice 1gig symmetric fiber so while it's not the most use plex server out there, I outgrew a raspberry pi 4 pretty quickly. Needed something with some hardware transcoding, read a few reviews, and eventually pulled a trigger when I found something good on ebay.

 

What I settled on was a Lenovo ThinkCenter M720q. It's a thin client, but plenty beefy with QuickSync for nice transcoding and a quad core i5 CPU; love this little box for plex It works so well! Only complaint: it only supports one 2.5inch drive, and 1 nvme. Well, instead of trying to get a lot of internal storage, I slapped a 10tb spinny disk I had lying around into a USB3 enclosure, and I've been running off that for the last year, no issues. Better yet, it can live up on the shelf where my router is, and I don't need to make room for a PC. (This thing is smaller than my cable modem, it's awesome.)

 

Here's the hitch: I'm getting close to running out of space on my 10tb drive. I could get a second 10tb drive and another usb enclosure and I'm sure there's some linux wizardry to jbod two usb drives (never tried), but that just feels like I'm doubling down on the jank. So, do I finally go for some sort of a NAS appliance? Or, it looks like there's some USB-C raid enclosures, anyone know how well those work? They're about as expensive as the cheaper nas boxes, so it makes me hesitate.

Basically, I'm just trying to find a good balance between $$, reliability, and jank reduction. (I'm not against jank, mind you.) Also, highly technical user; I've been building PCs for decades, use linux daily, not afraid of a soldering iron, own a 3D printer. So, I'm down for any solution as long as it ends up being low maintenance once done.

[tkitch]

just buy a refurb tower business pc and you can usually squeeze in up to 4 drives and be done

[Morgul]

11 minutes ago, tkitch said:

just buy a refurb tower business pc and you can usually squeeze in up to 4 drives and be done

Yeah, going tower pc becomes a bit more awkward, space wise. I don't have a good place to shove another PC tower and be able to wire in, which would be preferred.

I'm leaning towards a usb-c raid enclosure, now that I know those exist, and they're not that expensive. Just not sure how well they work.

[Needfuldoer]

7 minutes ago, Morgul said:

Yeah, going tower pc becomes a bit more awkward, space wise. I don't have a good place to shove another PC tower and be able to wire in, which would be preferred.

How about an ITX cube chassis, like a Cooler Master Elite 130 or JONSBO N1?

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

51 minutes ago, Morgul said:

I'm getting close to running out of space on my 10tb drive. I could get a second 10tb drive and another usb enclosure and I'm sure there's some linux wizardry to jbod two usb drives (never tried), but that just feels like I'm doubling down on the jank.

You could just get a simple 4 bay DAS, essentially a 4 bay USB drive enclosure. Spread your library out across all the drives to improve response times or put them in software raid for faster read times across the board.

 

I have one of these hooked up to my 2018 Mac mini that's running my Plex server:

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Mercury-Elite-Storage-Enclosure/dp/B09SC124GS/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1ST9N3URB0RW7&keywords=owc+mercury+elite+pro+quad&qid=1687220493&sprefix=owc+mercury+elite+pro+quad%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0 though cheaper DAS units exist.

 

There is a model $100 more expensive with hardware RAID support. I personally don't use RAID though since I never have more than 3 people streaming plex at a time. All my media is on a single 12TB HDD.

[Morgul]

47 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

You could just get a simple 4 bay DAS, essentially a 4 bay USB drive enclosure. Spread your library out across all the drives to improve response times or put them in software raid for faster read times across the board.

 

I have one of these hooked up to my 2018 Mac mini that's running my Plex server:

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Mercury-Elite-Storage-Enclosure/dp/B09SC124GS/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1ST9N3URB0RW7&keywords=owc+mercury+elite+pro+quad&qid=1687220493&sprefix=owc+mercury+elite+pro+quad%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0 though cheaper DAS units exist.

 

There is a model $100 more expensive with hardware RAID support. I personally don't use RAID though since I never have more than 3 people streaming plex at a time. All my media is on a single 12TB HDD.

Yeah, that's basically exactly what I was wanting, glad to know someone else has good experience with a DAS solution!

Found one 50% off, decided to snag it and I'll report back on how well it works. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

[Morgul]

Just to follow up with what I ended up doing, for people who might be looking for similar solutions.

 

I ended up getting an ORICO NS500RC3 on sale for $80 off NewEgg. It's a 5 bay enclosure with HW Raid (so it claims; might just be SW, not sure since I'm not using it.). It exposes all the drive raw over usb-c to linux, which is all I want. I'm then running a LVM volume group to span across two 10TB drives.

I will, probably, switch over to using 3 drives and ZFS RaidZ1 at some point in the future, or I might just find a cheap cloud-based archive backup for the shows and things I can't just re-rip off DVDs. Either way, thanks for pointing me in the right direction, this solution will work great for a while, I feel like.