Recommendation about how to manage media at home

General Discussions
1

I am looking for some advise. I have a family of 4 people. We all have win10 laptops and Android phones.
I have an old laptop running Plex as a server. I have hooked up an external HD#1 to store many photos and videos, etc. I have another external HD#2 hooked up to this computer. This hard drive #2 backs up (using windows backup and restore) all media from the personal laptops and also from HD#1
So my data is spread:

  1. On Android, backed up on Google drive
  2. On multiple windows laptops including Plex Server itself.
    I love to be able to see everything.
    I am afraid of stressing the BACKUP hard drive #2 by having Plex read from it.
    Any suggestions on good ways to consolidate all/most media so I can view through Plex?
2

I have a number of NAS drives setup (as of now 5 4TB and 1 2TB) running in RAID 1 (not the best, I know, but it works for me). I put them on a rack in a small room with it’s own AC vent that stays pretty cool.
This allows me to spread my data over a number of drives, if I have catastrophic failure of one drive unit I do not lose everything, and allows me to grow my storage as my needs grow. I just added another 4TB drive about 3 months ago.
My Plex servers (4 of them as well as 1 Emby server) all have the drives mapped and all share access to them.

3

Thanks. I wanted to avoid setting up NAS.
I am thinking maybe have the laptops backup on onedrive
The smartphones backup on google drive
Have those shared with one google account and one microsoft account
Use plexdrive and rclone to map those to plex server.

4

it all comes down to how much media content you have to store.

at some point, you may (or will) exceed the size of a single hard drive, at which point RAID (or similar) becomes necessary.

cloud storage is another method, but that has ongoing costs, and is completely dependent on your internet.

many people start out with 1 or more usb drives.

eventually they tend to migrate to a NAS. a good nas will allow for eventual upgrades by adding more drives or replacing old smaller drives with newer larger drives.

many nas also have ways to backup to various cloud storage too, so you can backup your local devices to the nas, then let the nas backup to cloud.

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5

I have a low end WD MyCloud NAS that can only be used to store media. I have a laptop as a server too using the NAS for PLEX. any of your clients can hit your server and play media from the NAS. Then you can have your USB Drive backup the data on the NAS in case of failure. Can usually get a 4TB under $200.

6

Your pricing is quite old - 4tb WD Red are $109 on Amazon

7

That’s just for the hard drive itself if you already have a NAS to put it in. The example I gave is typically $199 and when on sale even less, which it is now for $169
WD 4TB My Cloud Home Personal Cloud Storage - WDBVXC0040HWT-NESN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076CTK55W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rOjbDb0G9WA2R

8

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