Cheapest way to run like 16 hard drives at home?

[duckdown]

Hey all, I have been building a massive archive of HD content/TV archive ever since we got some media player devices, and I've already chrewed through like 4TB and it has become obvious I need alot more hard drives..

Problem is, most cases only fit like 8-10 drives at best...

Is there some kind of special "enclosure" that will hold like 16 hard drives? I plan to keep adding a new hard drive every so often until its full.. would be awesome to have that networked to my various XBMC devices throughout the house. I know about the RAID controller cards and all of that, but I'm more concerned about where the drives will physically SIT.

If anyone can show me the most cost effective solution (I know its not going to be cheap.. but can be in the hundreds rather than thousands (drives excluded)) then let me know

thanks in advance for any helP

[redzone]

um id just use 2 separate towers. you can build a FreeNAS / unRAID setup with just about any old computer so the cost would be minimal.

i think even server rack cases only hold 7 ish drives.

[redzone]

Or buy a bunch of drive cages

somethign like this

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...0897&CatId=340

and place them all next to the pc on a home built rack.

[Seiphas]

The cheapest solution is to not run 16 drives at home. At that price, factoring in power for an NAS and RAID cards, it would be cheaper to just upgrade to higher density drives every so often.

[SamInfinity]

Have you ever thought about using a docking station (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...54&cid=HDE.863) instead and have the drives on a shelf like a collection of books? That's the set-up I have and I find that it's ALMOST like popping in a DVD, except it's a HD. I find this set-up cheaper on power as you only have the one-drive running at a time rather than providing power to all of them.

[Seiphas]

Using a docking station provides no redundancy whatsoever. Not a good idea.

[BadDrafter]

How big are the drives?

I like the dock idea, I may adopt it rather than burning DVDs.

Using a docking station provides no redundancy whatsoever. Not a good idea.

Not if you don't keep a 2nd copy of every hard drive (which is what I do). I actually keep multiple copies in 2 cities. 2 in Calgary, 2 in Edmonton. I mirror the 2 in Edmonton daily with synctoy, but the 2 in Calgary due to time (and distance) constraints I back up every 6 months.

[TheFuteballer]

http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_syst...2510/index.xml

"Simple, Reliable, Affordable"

Price tag: $6,600

[deep]

I built a nice unRAID server in one of these:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16811219021


If you want the complete specs, I can write it up, but basically it's an AM2 system with a couple gigs of RAM....quite cheap except for the controllers and drives.

[Seiphas]

Not if you don't keep a 2nd copy of every hard drive (which is what I do). I actually keep multiple copies in 2 cities. 2 in Calgary, 2 in Edmonton. I mirror the 2 in Edmonton daily with synctoy, but the 2 in Calgary due to time (and distance) constraints I back up every 6 months.

Anyone preparing to run 16 hard drives isn't going to be able to keep backups. Assuming 16x500GB drives, that's 8TB, or a MINIMUM of 5 months on a DSL connection (assuming no cap). Factor in the cost of drives at ($56 x 16) for the second set, and you're looking at an extra $1012 dollars, after taxes. Nobody has the money to have a second set up running like that, especially for movies.

[SLX4]

i agree on the docking station. for myself, i find that i like to archive a lot of tv shows and movies. however, i barely watch it unless something strikes the mood for it. this is definitely a better choice over dvds where one disc can't even contain a 720p movie, let alone a 1080p movie without splitting it.

edit @ deep's post: that's not a bad choice at all if you want to have all 16 of your hard drives readily accessible. Its more expensive than the docking solution but u might find it worthwhile

[edgedamage]

Canada Computers has the BLACX for 29.99 this week. I got two because I swap drives alot. The "54" box a is a old Medea 6 IDE to SCSI 150GB raid. My work was going to toss it out and I saved it. I removed the dead controller board and installed a 2X1 eSATA / USB 2.0 HPM from addonics:
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...ad2sahpmeu.asp
I have two 500GB segates in raid 0

[Seiphas]

Are those hooked up through eSATA, or USB?

Also, nobody in their right mind would use RAID0 for data storage. If you're doing that, you sir, are a fool.

[edgedamage]

Are those hooked up through eSATA, or USB?

Also, nobody in their right mind would use RAID0 for data storage. If you're doing that, you sir, are a fool.

Only a fool would not capture and encode to RAID 0. They are all connected to eSATA.
Thanks to these guys I love RAID 0:
http://www.avid.com/medea.asp
http://www.quantel.com/
http://www.inlethd.com/
http://www.digital-rapids.com/
http://www.drastictech.com/
These are the toys at my work.

[edgedamage]

I built a nice unRAID server in one of these:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16811219021


If you want the complete specs, I can write it up, but basically it's an AM2 system with a couple gigs of RAM....quite cheap except for the controllers and drives.

Oh god 4 5X1 RAID HPM's to have more than one flavor of RAID storage drool.
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos.../AD5HPMSXA.asp