Plex Newb Help To Decide

General Discussions
1

So, here I am after years of pondering moving my collection to a server… To make a long story short, here is my conundrum:

I figure I need 24TB of storage in RAID5, so I’m planning on 4 WD Red 8TB drives.

Do I go NAS? (Not real keen on the idea after the WD NAS I had for a while.)

Do I build a new box with internal drives? I’m thinking an i7 3rd or 4th gen in a full tower with an SSD for the os and rips and software RAID for the storage volume.

Do I buy a RAID enclosure to connect to my business PC (an older i7 920 that still runs well but is getting long in the tooth)? I’m thinking a drive multiplier but I honestly haven’t read much good about the ones I’ve looked at.

2

RAID5 is overkill… with media playback you won’t be shooting for performance.
if needed go for RAID1 for security.

beyond that… drives don’t need to be internal. any halfway recent NUC will do the job as the server as long as it supports hw transcoding.

3

Raid 5 isn’t about performance, it’s about maximizing space while allowing for a single drive failure. And it’s a very good idea.

But there’s no need to bother with red drives, green is fine. In fact get whatever is cheapest in the size you want. Ensuring the drives stay cool, and isolated from vibration (rubber mounts) does much more for longevity than paying extra for the drive.

4

Exactly, a lot of people don’t understand the value of various RAID implementations. RAID1 is a steep cost in real estate for fault tolerance but no performance gain.

I’m finding red drives at very the same pricepoint as desktop drives. I don’t need 7200RPM drives for a few reasons…

Respectfully, this still doesn’t answer my questions