The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/mastakebob on 2024-07-31 19:44:03.
Hoping for either affirmation or universal condemnation of my plan to resolve my storage capacity for the next ~decade.
The plan: Expand my NAS to meet my next ~decade of storage needs by buying a $250 syba or mediasonic 8 bay jbod enclosure and plugging it into my existing OMV NAS box via USB3. Will buy new drives to slap in as my data grows. At my current rate, 8 more bays will provide enough storage for a decade. This is instead of buying a Rosewill 24bay 4u chassis and learning all about server-grade technology (wtf is a backplane or a HBA?).
Background: I have a NAS that simply stores my Plex media. All Plex/Arr processing/management is done on the Plex minipc, the NAS simply provides the large media drive via an NFS share. The NAS is OpenMediaVault running mergeFS and SnapRAID, resides in a Fractal Design R5 case basically-max'd out with six mergerfs data drives and three snapraid parity drives providing 60TB of usable space (mixture of 8tb and 12tb SATA drives). I prioritize quietness and power efficiency, I have no real need for data redundancy or resiliency. If my Plex is down for 2 weeks while I wait for a new drive and a slow weekend to swap it in, no worries. I do run monthly full data backups onto spare jbod enclosures I store in my basement closet.
The Problem and Alternatives: At my current rate of data growth, I'll run out of storage in a bit over a year. I got basically no more R5 drive bays left. I need more cheap and quiet storage that will give me runway for the next 5-10 years. Swapping my existing 8TB for newer 12/16TB drives just feels like I'm kicking the can down the road. Buying a 24bay server chassis is the ideal, but I'm worried it'll be loud, I'll need to learn new hardware technologies, and maybe I'd need to invest in a lot of 'server-grade' new components like HBAs and backplanes?
My Plan: Just buy a $250 8bay USB jbod enclosure offa amazon, plug it into my current NAS via USB 3, and anytime I get close to running out of space, slap a new HDD into it. Not too concerned about visual looks as its in the basement, but am concerned about noise levels as that's where my telework desk is. Hoping the 'consumer-grade' jbod enclosures are somewhat quiet. As I'm just streaming media (and loading new media onto it), no need for superfast speeds or resilient/redundant architectures.
Thoughts? Affirmations? Condemnations? What super critical issue am I missing? Thanks for sharing your expertise!