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Help me decide on upgraded hardware


mccune68

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mccune68

My Emby server today is my desktop Windows PC which I built.  Here are the specs of this PC:
 
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML120L RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus STRIX B350-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage: Western Digital Blue 250 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate BarraCuda 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB GAMING Video Card
Case: Corsair 270R ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

 

It runs everything fine for the TVs/tablets where I watch my media.  I have most of my content as 1080p where available, nothing 4K.  My main issue is storage space.  I have the OS running on the M.2 drive, and the 2 HDDs set up as a Spanned Drive into a single Virtual Drive.  There are folders there for each Library type.  But I am now hitting around 90% of the capacity of that drive, and with no backups being done either, I'd like to see what I can do to both increase my available media storage as well as keep it backed up.

 

I'm thinking the route I want to go down is a 4-bay NAS running 8TB drives.  That would double the space I have for media as well as allow me to fully back up everything too.  I have never used a NAS before, though, so it makes me a bit nervous to dive into that.

 

Does this sound like the right approach?  Is there a specific go-to brand of HDD that would work best for this?  I've always used Western Digital and Seagates in the past and not had any issues with them.  I'm also curious about how I would migrate from what I have now to that new setup, given the Spanned Drive setup I have now.  Would I just be able to get 2 of the 8TB drives set up in the NAS, plug the existing 4TB drives in and set those up, then move the media over to the new drives?  Does the NAS do the same thing I am doing directly in Windows Disk Management of merging two physical drives into one virtual drive?

 

Sorry for the barrage of questions, I have been reading through a few topics here and have seen some good info.  But nothing felt like exactly what I am trying to do so I thought I'd see what folks here think.

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mastrmind11

western digital red (nas) drives.  google "shucking hard drives" and you can pick up 8TB WD Reds for like $130 each, with just a little tinkering.

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mccune68

You're only changing your storage? And not the server machine?

 

I hadn't planned on upgrading anything on the server unless there was a need to.  Is there anything you see in what I have today that may need improved?

 

western digital red (nas) drives.  google "shucking hard drives" and you can pick up 8TB WD Reds for like $130 each, with just a little tinkering.

 

Yep, I saw that mentioned in the Hard Drives topic here.  Sounds easy enough and would definitely save me some bucks.

 

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lightsout

Everyone is different but if you already have an always on machine I personally prefer to keep my storage in an actual PC.

 

They will always have more horsepower and are more versatile. This may or may not be an issue for you if you plan to keep Emby on your PC. Every time I have looked at a NAS with the price I'd rather just build a PC. Not sure how much room you have in your case. You could save money on the new NAS and just get a bigger case.

 

What I do is run snapraid + drivepool.

 

Snapraid is snapshot raid. If you have 4x8tb drives you will have 24tb of usable space and the ability to recover from one drive failure.

 

Drive pool just pools all your drives so Windows sees them as one drive. Sounds like you are doing something like this already.

 

Good luck

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mccune68

That's something I hadn't considered, thanks for recommending that.  My current case only supports 2 internal 3.5 drive bays, so I would need to look for a different case, but I think that's an option.  I'll do some research on that and on the snapraid + drivepool solution as well.

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