I currently have several USB hard drives that I use to store my media for Plex. All of these are 3.5" desktop type external drives with their own external power
My question is this, is it possible/doable/practical to use the smaller 2.5" HDDs that are dropping in price right now? Often on sales, there is very little difference between the cost of a desktop external 3.5" HDD and a so called “portable” 2.5" HDD. Are there any issues with using a portable type drive? What type of USB hub is needed to be able to power the drives? Obviously, one that is powered is necessary since you couldn’t have multiple HDDs pulling all their needed electricity from a single non-powered hub. Is there any issue with the frequent access from Plex?
If for some reason they are not suited to be the “primary” Plex access drives, is there any reason they couldn’t serve as a backup unit to the primary access drives? Why, you’re possibly wondering, do I ask? Well, they’re smaller. Like, a lot smaller. The 3.5" external desktop type drives take up a lot of space and as I move forward, I’m wondering what I could do to reduce that.
That is true if you are just using the USB drive as a stand alone drive BUT is you use pooling software like StableBit’s DrivePool then you get the same or better data redundancy than a NAS.
Also the 2.5" drives do have slightly poorer reliability performance than the same size 3.5" drive.
As far as power differences goes I doubt the savings even comes close to the difference in cost, even at the current lowered price, and the cost of the lowered lowered reliability.
My recommendation for people needing a large amount of storage and wanting to avoid the start up cost and complexity of a NAS is to invest in a good shelving system that can hold all the drives, the server, the UPS and any other hardware needed. My rack holds all that and my modem and router.
One other thing most of the 2.5" drives I have seen cannot have their sleep and other power saving features turned off and such features are quite detrimental to server operation and Plex’s reliability.
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.
Very interesting info. I hadn’t thought about the drive perhaps powering down. That’s definitely a potential issue. Also, I guess something I said made or sounds like I was thinking that it would cost less so run the 2.5" HDDs and I honestly don’t care about that at all. I’m most interested for the smaller space and was wondering if one could run multiple portable (not externally powered) 2.5" drives.
I’m a bit confused, you said the 2.5’drives are slightly better in reliability than their 3.5" counterparts? Another interesting point. I had seen a free really good deals (from Costco, I think) that had the 2.5" drives almost the same price per GB as the 3.5". Again, part of my interest. I couldn’t afford to consider them if they weren’t close in price.
I’d be really interesting in seeing a photo of how you did your shelving unit. That a cool idea. Thanks for that!
Again thanks for sharing your knowledge and ideas. Really helpful!
It’s there a non-NAS option for storing/rigging 3.5" HDDs in some sort of a computer tower where they could still easily connect - even via USB? That would be pretty great. It’s kind of amazing how much space they can take up. LOL.
I have found that good shelving that has flexible shelf positioning works quite well. I currently have my entire system on one of these. I set it up with the top shelf about a foot down from the top and the next two spaced so that an external drive would fit laying flat and the bottom about three inches from the floor. The bottom shelf holds my UPS and some other power strips for the USB drives and the top holds my server and networking hardware and one power strip for everything on that shelf. The two shelves in between holds all my USB drives, I have 11 at this time and space for more. I also have two six port powered USB 3.0 hubs on the top shelf. BTW: Since I have a UPS that everything on the shelves plugs into all the power strips do not have surge protection in them and only one power cord, the one from the UPS needs to be plugged into the wall.
I find the shelving system to be better, and cheaper than a tower system and it takes up very little floor space and the wheels make it easy to move if needed.
Of course the myriad of wires for the USB cables and power supplies and other things do make for a bit of a mess but the whole system lives in a spare bedroom I made into a workroom so the whole thing is out of sight. Besides I kind of like a bit of chaos in my life.
Like, a lot smaller. The 3.5" external desktop type drives take up a lot of space and as I move forward, I’m wondering what I could do to reduce that.