I would simply stick with what you have and add a few USB drives as needed. I have used USB drives for several years and have zero problems.
I also do not use Raid as it is too inflexible for my needs. I use StableBit’s DrivePool to combine multiple drives. I am currently up to 50 TB in total space.
Remember that video is very undemanding and speed is not an issue for any reasonable setup.
As far as VMware goes. Get another machine for that and run nothing but Plex on the machine you have now.
Plex can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it and I believe that simple is better and a single computer dedicated to Plex is about as simple as it gets. KISS is the best principal for running a server.
@Elijah_Baley said:
I would simply stick with what you have and add a few USB drives as needed. I have used USB drives for several years and have zero problems.
I also do not use Raid as it is too inflexible for my needs. I use StableBit’s DrivePool to combine multiple drives. I am currently up to 50 TB in total space.
Remember that video is very undemanding and speed is not an issue for any reasonable setup.
As far as VMware goes. Get another machine for that and run nothing but Plex on the machine you have now.
Plex can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it and I believe that simple is better and a single computer dedicated to Plex is about as simple as it gets. KISS is the best principal for running a server.
@Elijah_Baley said:
I would simply stick with what you have and add a few USB drives as needed. I have used USB drives for several years and have zero problems.
I also do not use Raid as it is too inflexible for my needs. I use StableBit’s DrivePool to combine multiple drives. I am currently up to 50 TB in total space.
Remember that video is very undemanding and speed is not an issue for any reasonable setup.
As far as VMware goes. Get another machine for that and run nothing but Plex on the machine you have now.
Plex can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it and I believe that simple is better and a single computer dedicated to Plex is about as simple as it gets. KISS is the best principal for running a server.
What are you using for drives and USB devices?
I use a mix of WD and Segate I make the choice primarily based on price as I find at any given time the reliability charts are virtually meaningless as they relfect what happened a year or two or more ago and drive manufacture methodology changes faster than that. I generally by the best price on a $$/TB scale. The last I bought was: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TKFEEBW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
As far as USB devices I assume you mean devices to allow connecting multiple USB drive to one USB connection: The ones I use are no longer offered but they are just Amazon Basic 7 port hubs. They have been replaced by: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E6GX4BG/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&th=1 but I will probably, pretty soon, get a couple of the 10 port models as I have a need of the 7 port ones for another task and they are each within one port of being full. As long as USB hubs are reasonably sturdy they all have about the same reliability. The electronics involved are very simple and quite standard and Amazon Basics are a pretty solid brand for simple things.
The only drawback of my setup is all the cables but that is pretty unimportant to me as I do not mind a bit of a mess of wiring and I don’t spend time watching the server and it lives in a back room well out of normal view.
But when you use your program to add in the drives what happens if one dies? Do you lose everything or just what ever is on the one drive? Also it seems like that would be alot of power as well for each USB drive you are using?
@Rammstein874 said:
But when you use your program to add in the drives what happens if one dies? Do you lose everything or just what ever is on the one drive? Also it seems like that would be alot of power as well for each USB drive you are using?
Nope. DrivePool has duplication so that, just like Raid, you have good redundancy. In fact it is better thab Raid because your files remain accessible regardless of the computer they are plugged into. DrivePool stores everything in native format so even if the computer it is on all fails all your files remain accessible and you can simply install DrivePool on another computer and plug the drives in there and the whole pool is restored auto-magically.
Once setup it requires almost no maintenance and you can add drives of any size to the pool by simply plugging in a new drive and telling DrivePool to add it.
As I said the only drawback to using USB drives in this way is the number of wires running around your system. Also you must have a number of power strips (or one huge one) as each external drive must be powered by its wall wart.
@Elijah_Baley said:
I would simply stick with what you have and add a few USB drives as needed. I have used USB drives for several years and have zero problems.
I am thinking about this as well. My current setup has another 6 months or so before my media drive is full, so will have to look at either a NAS or USB/eSATA solution soon.
I personally use USB drives myself. I have a bunch of pci-e USB3.0 controllers with drives hooked up to them. I don’t rely on drive pool or RAID, i have 2x of each drive and have simple file sync between them every night. I have mostly seagates expansion and some 2 bay docks with regular SATA disks.
What about getting like a 4 bay USB 3.0 drive and going that way? I jut can’t see myself having 298376412397 USB drives lol I am looking for a solution to use without problems and have the space.
@Rammstein874 said:
What about getting like a 4 bay USB 3.0 drive and going that way? I jut can’t see myself having 298376412397 USB drives lol I am looking for a solution to use without problems and have the space.
That would be quite usable but I have over 50 TB of drives and I only have 11 hooked up. But, if I were starting again from scratch I might well consider USB case(s) there are 8 bay USB cases that seem like they should work quite well.
In fact if my whole system is still viable when I next need to add storage I may add a case with some regular drives.
To overcome the clutter problem I acquired a rolling shelf (it was being thrown out by a local convenience store) with enough shelf space to hold all the drives. It has 5 shelves that each can hold six drives but one is used for the computer and another for my UPS and plug strips but that leaves three for drives so I could add up to seven more than I have without rethinking my arrangement. By changing the way things are arranged and by moving the plug strips to the outside part of the rack I could even make space for 5-8 additional drives. I very much doubt I will need more storage than that before the nature of media changes to the point where everything I, or most anyone else, has is obsolete.
50TB of USB drive WOW!!! I love my WDC 12TB drive and it works great but thinking of having a bunch of then in the space i have would be crazy!! lol
Spike i see you have a Synology, how are they for using with Plex?
With my current config i can’t see myself having a bunch of USB drive…I could get like an 4-8 bay and go from there but i am also thinking that having the network feature build in and other things might be best.
I know most of the NAS out can not match the 2600k right now but if i can get something close to it that would not be bad.
@spikemixture said:
Can I assume 50tb of usb drives would use quite a lot more power than a big NAS holding 50TB?
Now common Elijah if you started again you would not got the NAS path ??
Nope I believe using an NAS is generally a mistake unless it is set to expose each drive independently. I dislike Raid in general and I do not trust any system where I cannot access the files without the special hardware. That is I like to be able to just, if needed, unplug the drives from one computer and plug then into another and have full access to the files.
As far as power usage goes; I have never seen any indication that USB drives use significantly more power that internals. Remember that USB drives and internal drives are basically the same and the only real operational difference in power consumption would be the in interface’s and both still have to spin the drives and read/write the data.
As I said the only real problem I see with my setup is clutter but that is not really a problem for me as I do not watch my server, I watch my content.
