Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Advice on my storage dilemma (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Until recently, I had been managing my data using large HDD's in my desktop and external usb drives. I should say that I'm mostly using this storage to backup personal data (photos/code/other data). I've gotten to a point where external drives probably aren't the best option, and I'm looking to convert an old mini-itx home-theater computer into a NAS on a tight budget. Because the PC has no 3.5" bays, I'm left with a few options:

(1) Fill the 2.5" bay with 4 tb SSDs over time (~$180-$720)

(2) Buy an appropriate ATX case and get some enterprise/NAS large spinning drives ($100 case, ~$100-$500 in drives)

(3) Use a USB 3.5" sata dock/enclosure

(4) Just buy a NAS

I realize this is small beans to this community, but I would be okay with an additional 4-12 tb of storage at this point, but realize I will want more in the future. I like option (1) based on the small footprint and simplicity, though I'm obviously overpaying for the storage. Options (2) and (4) are probably the most future proof and would have the most storage. Option (3) is likely the easiest/cheapest and could be used to expand option (1) in the future. Thanks for your thoughts.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for to extend my laptop video editing rig. What kind of software are you running on the NUC to turn it into a NAS? Also, how extendable is that NUC in terms of storage?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I don't have a NUC. I have the BeeLink Mini S12 I linked. It has room for the 2TB NVMe and the 4TB SSD I have in it. It doesn't have any space for any more internal drives. You could plug a USB enclosure into it but I wouldn't because I want to keep most of my storage attached to my desktop and not on my network so I don't intend of ever adding any more storage to it. If you want more network storage you should consider a physically larger machine.

It runs Alpine Linux and several Docker services. I use a samba network share for NAS features, but I also have Seafile running.