Full Hard Drives - DAS the Best Solution?

[Timon18]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice from the community on how to best manage my storage situation, as I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed!

Right now, I have about 5 external hard drives that are pretty much full, and the internal hard drive on my computer is also packed. Most of this is personal stuff like photos, documents, backups, etc., accumulated over the years. I'm pretty sure I have duplicate files spread across these different drives too.

I definitely need more space, and I was thinking about buying a new, larger drive (maybe 6TB or 8TB) to consolidate things and give me some breathing room for the next couple of years.

Here's where I need help deciding the best approach:

1. Should I just continue buying individual external hard drives as I need them?
2. Is it better to buy internal hard drives and put them into separate USB enclosures?
3. I've read a little about NAS (Network Attached Storage) and DAS (Direct Attached Storage). I don't really need network features, so I think NAS is overkill for me. However, a DAS enclosure seems really interesting – the idea of putting multiple drives into one box that connects directly to my computer sounds much easier to manage.

I saw some multi-bay DAS enclosures like the Orico WS500RU3 and Orico 9758C3 (or similar models).

So, my main questions are:

• For someone with multiple scattered drives like me, what's the most practical and future-proof way to manage and expand storage? Is sticking with externals okay, or is moving to internal drives in enclosures or a multi-bay DAS unit a better path?
• Are DAS enclosures a good solution for consolidating several drives? Are there any major downsides I should be aware of?
• Does anyone have experience with Orico DAS units like the ones I mentioned, or could you recommend other reliable brands/models for home use?
• Bonus question: Any tips or software recommendations for consolidating data from all my old drives onto a new system and tackling the duplicate file problem?

Thanks a lot for those who read all this.

[Zando_]

Internals are fine, the point of a DAS is that you can connect it to other machines (or machines without spare internal bays), and the point of a NAS is to access it over the network from multiple computers. If you don't need to do either of those things then internal is fine. Whatever you choose, you do want something that does software RAID or ZFS arrays. Buy 2 of whatever drive you get, and mirror them. That'll give you redundancy in the case of a drive failure.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Why not go with a even larger drive like a 24TB? That should keep the amount of drives your using way down.

 

20 minutes ago, Timon18 said:

1. I've read a little about NAS (Network Attached Storage) and DAS (Direct Attached Storage). I don't really need network features, so I think NAS is overkill for me. However, a DAS enclosure seems really interesting – the idea of putting multiple drives into one box that connects directly to my computer sounds much easier to manage.

 

What type of DAS are you looking for? A USB HDD is a DAS. How much storage do you need?

 

How many TB of data are you storing?

[Timon18]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why not go with a even larger drive like a 24TB? That should keep the amount of drives your using way down.

 

What type of DAS are you looking for? A USB HDD is a DAS. How much storage do you need?

 

How many TB of data are you storing?

Larger the HDD, more money it costs and that is probably more than I can pay right now. 

 

I'm trying to think about the future to, so even if I buy a internal and a case usb, it will be a pain to change the disk when need and couldn't connect multiple or need to buy for every disk a new case.

 

Right now, I'm about 16TB more or less.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Timon18 said:

Larger the HDD, more money it costs and that is probably more than I can pay right now. 

 

I'm trying to think about the future to, so even if I buy a internal and a case usb, it will be a pain to change the disk when need and couldn't connect multiple or need to buy for every disk a new case.

 

Right now, I'm about 16TB more or less.

 

I'd get a single large HDD then. Its probably cheaper than multiple smaller drives, and uses less power too. 

[Timon18]

22 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Internals are fine, the point of a DAS is that you can connect it to other machines (or machines without spare internal bays), and the point of a NAS is to access it over the network from multiple computers. If you don't need to do either of those things then internal is fine. Whatever you choose, you do want something that does software RAID or ZFS arrays. Buy 2 of whatever drive you get, and mirror them. That'll give you redundancy in the case of a drive failure.

RAID came to mind too. Probably going with a DAS. Any brand, model, spec recommendations?

[Timon18]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd get a single large HDD then. Its probably cheaper than multiple smaller drives, and uses less power too. 

Power's a thing, but it'll be off most of the time, so it's not a big deal.

 

How'd you handle backups? And without RAID, how do you avoid losing files?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Timon18 said:

Power's a thing, but it'll be off most of the time, so it's not a big deal.

 

How'd you handle backups? And without RAID, how do you avoid losing files?

I'd get more big drives for backup. Rotate them off site so you always have a offsite offline copy.

[Timon18]

48 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd get more big drives for backup. Rotate them off site so you always have a offsite offline copy.

So, one big hard drive, and then a couple more for backups? Like, mirroring the first one?

[Electronics Wizardy]

22 minutes ago, Timon18 said:

So, one big hard drive, and then a couple more for backups? Like, mirroring the first one?

No with backup programs. Look at programs like veeam for this. Then you will have multiple copies if you need a older versions, and its smart with only copying the files you want to the backups.

 

RAID is mostly for uptime, if something like ransomware were to occure it would wipe all the drives in the RAID, so you want to make sure you have backups if you want to keep your data safe.

 

What drives do you have now?

[Timon18]

22 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

No with backup programs. Look at programs like veeam for this. Then you will have multiple copies if you need a older versions, and its smart with only copying the files you want to the backups.

 

RAID is mostly for uptime, if something like ransomware were to occure it would wipe all the drives in the RAID, so you want to make sure you have backups if you want to keep your data safe.

 

What drives do you have now?

Okay, so I've got:

 

one old 1TB external hard drive, a 2TB Seagate external, two 3TB Seagate externals, a 5TB Seagate external, a 3TB internal hard drive, a dead 2TB SSD (going back for warranty tomorrow), and a 1TB SSD perfect for travel.

 

Each disk started with a topic and a goal, but things got messy after a while due to lack of space.

 

Instead of connecting them one by one, I've been looking for a way to consolidate the larger ones, and future ones, into something like a DAS.

 

Hardware or software backups/RAID, which is better?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Timon18 said:

Okay, so I've got:

 

one old 1TB external hard drive, a 2TB Seagate external, two 3TB Seagate externals, a 5TB Seagate external, a 3TB internal hard drive, a dead 2TB SSD (going back for warranty tomorrow), and a 1TB SSD perfect for travel.

 

Each disk started with a topic and a goal, but things got messy after a while due to lack of space.

 

Instead of connecting them one by one, I've been looking for a way to consolidate the larger ones, and future ones, into something like a DAS.

 

Hardware or software backups/RAID, which is better?

I'd probably get a single larger HDD like 20-24TB and replace all of those existing drives, and get more space. Much simpler setup. You can keep the existing drives for extra copies if you want though. Then get more big HDDs for backups. That would solve the issue of having a lot of small HDDs, without the cost of a DAS enclosure.

 

 

Backups and RAID solve different problems. And if you setup RAID you still need backups, so I'd do with a signle disk or two and RAID.

[Timon18]

15 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd probably get a single larger HDD like 20-24TB and replace all of those existing drives, and get more space. Much simpler setup. You can keep the existing drives for extra copies if you want though. Then get more big HDDs for backups. That would solve the issue of having a lot of small HDDs, without the cost of a DAS enclosure.

 

 

Backups and RAID solve different problems. And if you setup RAID you still need backups, so I'd do with a signle disk or two and RAID.

Got it.
So made a list of HDD both Internal and External and prices where I live.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQeSk6yzwhJQzhdQTxnyHyvXZcs2ksy1aD14Nm0ZJvfsiWaHYzICdpBTfHWrR5tslJUJaIkp2TSWdfz/pubhtml

Advice on one of them?
I was looking for a Seagate Expansion Desktop HDD 3.5" 24TB. Any good? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, Timon18 said:

Got it.
So made a list of HDD both Internal and External and prices where I live.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQeSk6yzwhJQzhdQTxnyHyvXZcs2ksy1aD14Nm0ZJvfsiWaHYzICdpBTfHWrR5tslJUJaIkp2TSWdfz/pubhtml

Advice on one of them?
I was looking for a Seagate Expansion Desktop HDD 3.5" 24TB. Any good? 

Yea that 24TB seagate seems fine, there really isn't good public data on most drives, so make backups and your data is fine.

[Timon18]

Will do.
Thanks a lot for all the info.