Thinking about selling my PC and only using my laptop. I want to keep my hard drives though, what are my options?

[minimalist]

As the title says.  I'm thinking about selling my PC but want to keep my hard drives.  I have a 1 TB SSD, 120GB SSD, a 4TB WD Green drive, and a 3TB Black drive.  I want to use the hard drives for storage and the SSD's for multiple OS's to play around on.  Maybe Virtualboxes, not sure.  What are some options I have that would allow me to do different things with them? 

[Clanscorpia]

A NAS I believe would work for remotely using OS's but you'd have to configure it some way I don't know.

 

[CtrlAltELITE]

Sell your PC, Buy a dirt cheap used PC with a low power draw (as new a i3/pentium as possible) for <US$150. Put that hard drive in that PC and use it as a small media server. Ive done the same thing.

[Lord_Karango17]

you could just get a lot of hdd enclosures, and hook them up to your laptop via usb

[minimalist]

6 minutes ago, CtrlAltELITE said:

Sell your PC, Buy a dirt cheap used PC with a low power draw (as new a i3/pentium as possible) for <US$150. Put that hard drive in that PC and use it as a small media server. Ive done the same thing.

What was the setup like?

[minimalist]

6 minutes ago, Lord_Karango17 said:

you could just get a lot of hdd enclosures, and hook them up to your laptop via usb

Is there anything out there that could hold all of them and be plugged in?

[Lord_Karango17]

Just now, minimalist said:

Is there anything out there that could hold all of them and be plugged in?

Im in a similar situation, because im only going to have my laptop when I go back to Norway for the summer, but my way of hooking them all up is just a standard usb 3 hub. It will look like a mess of cables, but it will work fine...

[minimalist]

1 minute ago, Lord_Karango17 said:

Im in a similar situation, because im only going to have my laptop when I go back to Norway for the summer, but my way of hooking them all up is just a standard usb 3 hub. It will look like a mess of cables, but it will work fine...

I'd really like to find something that can house it all

[minimalist]

12 minutes ago, CtrlAltELITE said:

Sell your PC, Buy a dirt cheap used PC with a low power draw (as new a i3/pentium as possible) for <US$150. Put that hard drive in that PC and use it as a small media server. Ive done the same thing.

Have a link to a PC you're recommending to buy?

[S1lent_5am]

You could build something in a node 304 it has enough space to fit all your drives

[CtrlAltELITE]

56 minutes ago, minimalist said:

What was the setup like?

 

NAS is a Lenovo Thinkcentre E73 tower I picked up with 8gb RAM and a 4th gen i3 for £130. HDDs where used-like new (had been kept in a storage closet for ~5 years) at £30 each. I run 4 2TB drives & a 1st gen intel SSD 240gb cache/boot I found in a hand me down laptop. Using a old intel raid controller, again used off of ebay for £15 as old server gear. OS is Ubuntu running a plex media server, a TS3, a small minecraft server & some other personal web stuff.

 

Laptop is a Gigabyte P35X I use for traveling for work & gaming since I dont have a desk.

[minimalist]

10 minutes ago, CtrlAltELITE said:

 

NAS is a Lenovo Thinkcentre E73 tower I picked up with 8gb RAM and a 4th gen i3 for £130. HDDs where used-like new (had been kept in a storage closet for ~5 years) at £30 each. I run 4 2TB drives & a 1st gen intel SSD 240gb cache/boot I found in a hand me down laptop. Using a old intel raid controller, again used off of ebay for £15 as old server gear. OS is Ubuntu running a plex media server, a TS3, a small minecraft server & some other personal web stuff.

 

Laptop is a Gigabyte P35X I use for traveling for work & gaming since I dont have a desk.

What do you think about something like this?

 

http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-ReadyNAS-Attached-Diskless-RN10400-100NAS/dp/B00BNI4CVG?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_2&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

[CtrlAltELITE]

Just now, minimalist said:

What do you think about something like this?

 

http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-ReadyNAS-Attached-Diskless-RN10400-100NAS/dp/B00BNI4CVG?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_2&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Overpriced under powered peace of junk would be my honest opinion. You can build a general purpose server with far more potential processing power (or matching their energy efficiency using an intel atom) & a standard arcitecture for less.

[minimalist]

2 minutes ago, CtrlAltELITE said:

Overpriced under powered peace of junk would be my honest opinion. You can build a general purpose server with far more potential processing power (or matching their energy efficiency using an intel atom) & a standard arcitecture for less.

Hmm.  Sounds like I'm going to have to look into this more.

[Captain_WD]

5 hours ago, minimalist said:

~snip~

Hey there minimalist,

 

In order to have all of these different drives running like a AIO build for different OSs, storage and file sharing, your best bet might be building your own rig. Getting a pre-built NAS wouldn't really allow you to house all of these or to run different OS. 

 

One note from me: Since you are reusing all of these drives I would strongly suggest that you thoroughly check each drive's health with a tool from the manufacturer to make sure the drives are in top shape and won't pose any danger for the data stored on them. For the WD drives the tool would be WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic.

 

Captain_WD.

[minimalist]

On 3/30/2016 at 1:28 AM, Captain_WD said:

Hey there minimalist,

 

In order to have all of these different drives running like a AIO build for different OSs, storage and file sharing, your best bet might be building your own rig. Getting a pre-built NAS wouldn't really allow you to house all of these or to run different OS. 

 

One note from me: Since you are reusing all of these drives I would strongly suggest that you thoroughly check each drive's health with a tool from the manufacturer to make sure the drives are in top shape and won't pose any danger for the data stored on them. For the WD drives the tool would be WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic.

 

Captain_WD.

I'll definitely do that, thanks so much!  I'm keeping everything on the drives so it shouldn't be an issue to run a test if the drive is full of data correct?

[Captain_WD]

5 hours ago, minimalist said:

~snip~

Yes, the test doesn't require the drive to be empty. Have in mind, though, that if the drive has a problem, any load on it might enhance it and further damage the drive so a backup is recommended.

 

Captain_WD.