RAID? or just bulk HDDs

[kane-o2917]

Hi there, 

im after some advice regarding my current / future setup:

 i have a single 4TB hard drive in my desktop as a 'vault' for my plex server but i also have multiple portable drives with stuff on them that are taking up valuable usb ports.to fix this i am currently researching the possibility of building a HTPC to run my plex server and to store my movies, tv shows etc. 

 

what i need some advice on is what would you suggest for a drive setup? should a put a raid array in it. i love the redundancy aspect. and what size/array/quantity of drives would you suggest i currently have around 7.5ish TB of (mostly crap) movies and tv shows, and im looking for that to grow almost exponentially once i digitize my collection (mine and my girlfriend's) DVDs.

 

Thanks for being such a great community. its really awesome

[jarmenti]

I'd say raid  or ahem "storage spaces " even lol.  I literally had a hdd die last week, and lost NO data on my 9tb raid 5 array. 

[Dlog]

Avoid Storage Spaces, I'm currently running it with Server 2016 (free for collage students btw) it's performance is garbage and data resiliency even with REFS is trash. It's ability to add new disks and essentially shift data around is quirky at best. 

 

I'm moving back to FreeNAS or Unraid for my Plex, transmission, Sonarr setup. I currently run 4 4tb and 4 3tb drives in an old IBM thinkcenter (xeon, ecc ram 8 bay hotswap) that I picked up for around $250 on ebay. On a whim I dumped FreeNAS and gave server 2016 a shot for fun, not happy with the settup so far. 

 

How much are you looking to invest in storage? 

How much do you care about data resiliency?

What is your intent on backing this data up?

How much work are you willing to put into setting this up?

 

 

An option to consider that is a bit more in line with what the movie industry wants you to do with your home DVD collection. Take a look at VUDU disk to digital, ~$1-2 per dvd (and I belive 50% off if you do x amount of disks) to have it available through VUDU (you can pay a little extra to upgrade DVD to HD). Pop in your DVD and let it detect, no ripping involved. You could knock out your entire library in an evening, most DVDs should work. 

 

Small bonus: There are quite a few deals on WD USB drives right now, $200 for an 8TB USB Mybook (that secretly contains a WD Red Sata drive  these are a bargain and have ~200MB read/write rates.