The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/NickCharlesYT on 2024-07-10 18:44:26.
I'm running into some network saturation issues trying to do video/MAM work with my existing NAS, especially when my regular backups run throughout the day and I wind up with lots of simultaneous traffic with my primary NAS. I have a set of two 12TB drives left over from a recent upgrade and am considering installing them directly to my PC as local project storage in a raid 0 configuration, so I can maintain a working copy of the data already replicated across my NAS network locally and avoid bandwidth/device bottlenecks. Unfortunately the motherboard does not have any free dedicated sata slots (they share with the m.2 drives and populating them would slow those and/or PCIe devices down), nor does it support any 3.5" mounting options, so I'm looking for an external solution via USB-C or ethernet via a dedicated LAN. Looking on Amazon and ebay for relatively inexpensive enclosures and they all seem to be garbage, either unknown chinese brands or poorly rated name brands, or they're prohibitively expensive.
I found three potential options:
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Get a used 2 bay NAS off of ebay for like ~$80 with a LAN port and raid 0 support, and wire it in to the PC as a second LAN network for a dedicated connection. Would require a network expansion card to my PC, but as far as I understand you can do a dual network setup with two LAN ports, right? My primary network is also over LAN, connected to the motherboard.
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Buy some random "raid enclosure" and hope it's reliable. Note I'm not storing my only copy of this data, It's replicated across two separate NAS units already, but if it breaks that ruins my work for a few days until I can get a replacement in.
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Go super janky and grab a SATA backplane, then hook it up to the PC's power supply with standard ATX sata power connectors, and use a PCIe expansion card to connect it. I'd have to route the power cables through the case and to the backplane, then attach it outside the case because there's no room inside it, but the advantage is no messing with networking and I can get direct access at full speed.
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...Something else?
I'm kinda leaning towards the used NAS with dual LAN option, assuming I understand how it works correctly, but I'm curious what other folks have done and if there's any option I might have missed?