hard drive recommendation help

492 Views | 4 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by lb3
07ag
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AG
looking to set up a personal home media plex server after digitizing an excessive amount of dvd's, need a new larger hard drive. also will be used for long term backup/storage of pictures or whatever.

what would ya'll recommend for this? wd gold seems overkill, wd blue might be good enough but how long will it last? somewhere inbetween? something else?
https://ts.la/eric59704
Koko Chingo
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AG
For what you are doing, you do not really need a fast drive or an expensive one.

I use WD blue ssd's to record video straight from a camera (about 400 Mb/s write speeds) and they hold up pretty well to the constant recording and file transfers.

I would separate your media and your backup / storage. You have an Ag Tag, have you claimed your Aggienetwork email? In the cloud , such as a Google Drive would be a great place to host a backup. Even better would be to also have a local copy on an external drive. If the information is sensitive you could encrypt it and back up the encrypted files or container. --- Also, a sync is not a backup.

Is your home media server just another hard drive on your computer? Or is it a something external such as network storage or a raspberry pi?

If you are just adding another hard drive to your desktop, then look for a cyber Monday sale and get something cheap. I have been using Silicon Power SSD's for Raspberry Pi projects and have not had a failure. You will not see a difference in streaming an old burned DVD movie to your TV from a cheap mechanical dive to a superfast SSD.

The best way would be to use something external such as a NAS or Raspberry Pi.




07ag
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AG
Koko Chingo said:

For what you are doing, you do not really need a fast drive or an expensive one.

I use WD blue ssd's to record video straight from a camera (about 400 Mb/s write speeds) and they hold up pretty well to the constant recording and file transfers.

I would separate your media and your backup / storage. You have an Ag Tag, have you claimed your Aggienetwork email? In the cloud , such as a Google Drive would be a great place to host a backup. Even better would be to also have a local copy on an external drive. If the information is sensitive you could encrypt it and back up the encrypted files or container. --- Also, a sync is not a backup.

Is your home media server just another hard drive on your computer? Or is it a something external such as network storage or a raspberry pi?

If you are just adding another hard drive to your desktop, then look for a cyber Monday sale and get something cheap. I have been using Silicon Power SSD's for Raspberry Pi projects and have not had a failure. You will not see a difference in streaming an old burned DVD movie to your TV from a cheap mechanical dive to a superfast SSD.

The best way would be to use something external such as a NAS or Raspberry Pi.





thanks for the feedback!

TIL about aggienetwork/googledrive storage. is there a catch? unlimited cloud storage for free for forever? seems too good to be true

off top of my head, 99% or more is not super sensitive. low priority stuff like vacation photos (worst case i'd still have the ones on facebook), or high priority stuff like professional wedding photos (multiple backups already).

just starting this project this weekend. currently using 1TB wd blue, but realized that i'd quickly fill it up (was about half full when i started using makemkv to convert dvd's). 1TB blue is in a windows 10 desktop computer (secondary hd in computer, got a 128gb ssd as boot drive).

i have no knowledge on nas or rasberry pi, what are their advantages/disadvantages?
https://ts.la/eric59704
lb3
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AG
I've recently purchased some Seagate IronWolf drives for a similar purpose.
Koko Chingo
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AG
As far as I know there is no catch with the Aggie Network Gmail. It would be a great place for those pictures etc.

The Raspberry Pi is a small computer that is a little bigger than a deck of cards. It is probably the cheapest option, but will be a little more cumbersome to set up. Some of my co workers use Kodi on their Raspberry Pi's and access all of their media that way. They hook them up (via 4k HDMI) right to their home recovers.

https://mediaexperience.com/raspberry-pi-xbmc-with-raspbmc/

You can now load your OS on an SSD with as raspberry pi. It uses a USB 3 port versus an sd card. That could be an upgrade to what's posted above. Argon 40 makes an SSD case with full size HDMI ports.

Again this is a bit more cumbersome and you may want a tech savvy person to help you out.

The cons of a NAS are really price and speed. They can get expensive fully loaded with hard drives. They are fast enough to watch movies and do most basic things. But they are not fast enough to really work on large complex files or edit video directly from them. They have NAS drives with 10 Gbe ports. They are just pricey. A thunderbolt hard drive array is much faster and cheaper per TB versus a 10 Gbe NAS but it is on a leash versus having network connectivity.

Personally I would use something dedicated to stream media. If a raspberry pi is too complicated and a NAS is too expensive, a mini PC (even used) my just be what you are looking for. Especially combined with a 'desktop external hard drive' for your storage.

Another poster in this forum talked about mini PC's and I bought an intel NUC to interface with a projector and some AV equipment. It is awesome. The nit below has Win 10, and USB 3.1, fast enough to connect an external dive full of movies.

https://www.newegg.com/intel-nuc-dn2820fykh/p/1VK-004K-008J5?Description=refurbished%20intel%20nuc&cm_re=refurbished_intel%20nuc-_-9SIAA0SAKE1675-_-Product&quicklink=true
lb3
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AG
I'm running a Plex server on a Raspberry Pi. The setup instructions are well documented on the web. It only took me about 2 hours including the web research.
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