Storage Solutions

[Kenshiin]

I'm trying to plan my next storage purchase but I want to figure out a direction before I buy anything. I currently have just a 250gb hard drive on my hard drive that I just use for programs and such. Then I have a full, 1 TB usb external hard drive that holds all my movies, anime, pictures, music, and important stuff. This external is always attached since I use it to stream to the PS3 and for my wife to access the pictures through the network when needed.

I need more space but I'm not sure what's best. With around $200 or so to spend should I:

A) Buy a new 2 TB external and transfer everything to it and go back to doing what I was doing before?

Probably my least favorite idea since I'm out of usb ports and would rather not waste my first external but if this is the best option I don't mind going back to it.

B) Add a 2-3 TB internal hard drive and move most of my stuff to it?

Probably the cheapest and easiest option but I lose out on the mobility of having my stuff on an external. Even though my external has sat in the same spot since I bought it 2 years ago. I never know when I'm going to want to drag my stuff somewhere else to use.

C) Buy a new 2-3 TB internal hard drive and put it in an external enclosure and then try to remove my previous external hard drive from the case and stick that in my PC in the 2nd slot.

A little more expensive since I have to buy an enclosure too but at least I can keep the mobility if I ever needed it. I'm a little nervous about damaging my old external when trying to pry it out and I'm not happy about losing out on the transfer speed loss when moving from SATA to USB.

D) Set up a server where it's easier to add more storage as I need it.

Probably too pricey for my $200 but it's an appealing option with the ability to expand so easily. What kinda of costs am I looking at to put one together? If one drive in the system fails do I lose all the information or is that only if I set them up to act as one?

[Kerberoz]

Usually an enclosure + large internal drive will cost the same or less as an external.

[Caiyuo]

Not exactly positive about which to pick, but if you were to get something like a Samsung 2TB F4 5400rpm for like $50 to use as an internal, you could always just set your current external HD to mirror/sync particular folders on that 2TB so you'd have at least some of what you'd want available for portability?

[Isiolia]

^ You should figure on at least duplicating some of the data on your 1TB drive onto whatever you get next. Which is to say, actually have a backup. External drives can fail just as readily as internal drives, so you should endeavor to have multiple copies of anything that can't be readily replaced.

IMO, D is your best long-term option. You honestly don't need much for a home server - something new enough to have SATA, and room enough for a few drives is fine to start with. Your stated budget likely would not be enough to build from scratch + buy drives though, but that wouldn't necessarily rule it out. Could use FreeNAS, Windows Home Server (v2 beta if you're using larger drives), straight up FreeBSD or Linux, or (if a student) you can get Windows Server for free, though it's complete overkill for what you're talking about. http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=29 has a lot of discussion/examples/etc.

Regarding drive failure...that depends entirely on how you set it up. You can certainly configure something with mirrored data.

In the short term, I would just buy an internal drive, and pop it in your system to start using it. You can always put it in an enclosure (or server) later.

One thing to keep in mind is that newer drives - particularly ones of the sizes you're looking at - often are now 4KB sector drives (as opposed to 512 byte sectors that were standard for years). Most are only actually designed around working happily with current versions of Windows. XP may require trickery. Some drives won't mesh well with *nix OSes either (WD Green drives, for example, that report 512 byte sectors to the OS even though they're using 4KB...which Windows 7 is fine with, but tends to net poor results if you're trying to make a ZFS array of them).

[Caiyuo]

Just out of curiosity, are any of those home server options DLNA compliant for streaming to non-PC devices?

[Isiolia]

Offhand (well, quickly looking), WHS v1 needs add-ons, v2 should support out of the box, FreeNAS has a DLNA profile for its uPNP sharing and may or may not work (though there are plenty of success stories), and any of the full OSes have multiple options available for them.

[Caiyuo]

Thanks much, sorry I could've looked myself as well.

[Kenshiin]

Could you recommend a good quality 2TB internal hard drive for around $100?

[Caiyuo]

Newegg has the Samsung F4 2TB for $99 on the dot and their hard drives get great reviews, but the WD Green 2TB is on sale (there's a -$10 code on the page itself) and has a -$20 rebate, looks like you could nab that for $70. Both have 3-year warranties and should be good storage drives, likely 5400rpm.

[Kenshiin]

I know my PC takes SATA drives but is there anything else I need to make sure is compatible before I buy that Samsung drive?

[Caiyuo]

let's see, is this hard drive going in your PC or in an external drive? Is it replacing a current hard drive or are you adding it on to what you already have? Do you know how many 3.5" internal bays your case has? Are you planning to do any RAID configuration? That's all of the relevant questioning I can think of.

Here are the two relevant pages on the hard drives, one with details on WD sale. ftr, the samsung drives go on sale for 10/15% off somewhat frequently if you aren't in a rush; that particular drive was on sale for $80 just last week.

- http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthr...9570&t=2569009
- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152245

[Kenshiin]

Internal hard drive, adding it to 2nd bay, 2 bays, no RAID.

[Caiyuo]

Sounds like you're good, man, no complications I can think of. Oh and check to see if those OEM drives come with a SATA cable if you don't have one handy.