The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Steveyg777 on 2024-07-12 09:30:49.
I currently own at least 20 older hard drives ranging from 2.5" 500 GB drives to 3.5" 8 TB drives. I have a syno nas with about 60 TB on it. I backed up a 20 TB volume to one external USB drive. However, I've still got a second 50 TB volume needing backup.
I wanted to utilise these spare drives as a backup solution. I bought two 4bay USB docks from Orico (ORICO USB 3.0 4-Bay Hard Drive... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BJL7SP1?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share) so I could at least connect 4 or 8 drives at a time.
I also bought some plastic racks to secure them so they are kept together more neatly and then plug them into the docks with SATA and power extension cables. So I can theoretically connect 8 drives over 2 USB ports to provide backup at a time.
I have an old PC that could be used to run some software from and perhaps act as a server of some kind to provide software raid or Microsoft storage spaces.
When I searched the web I saw an app called Nexentastor that could be used to backup to several disks but the free community edition only allows 18 TB of data to be backed up via spanned media. I'm wondering if I could set up several VMs for it so I could back up all the data.
My confusion now is how to connect to them, what form of storage to set them up as (hardware or software raid, zfs, btrfs, ext4, storage spaces, JBOD, etc) and what to use to backup (software like hyper backup, rclone, ccc, etc).
Options I can think of are:
- Software raid using the old pc
- software storage spaces via windows
- some kind of NAS software like OMV or Truenas from my old PC
- utilise software such as Nexentastor (or an alternative) to backup sections of data to drives connected via USB to my newer PC or Mac in batches (as I can't confect enough drives at a time to do one large backup - unless I get a data expansion card for the pc and then problem solve supplying enough clean/stable power to the drives, etc)
- Install Synology (would it have to be xpenology) to the old PC and set it up as a second NAS to back up my primary nas to via hyperbackup - can this be achieved reliably?
- Some other, better method or creative solution???
Bare in mind that if it is the solution requires coding on, for example, Linux then I would need a full, exhaustive guide to get through (and pudding still be able to ask purple for help) as I and that sort of thing don't always agree (no matter how many years I have tried to master Linux and docker, etc) ๐