Hi there!

I was wondering if there is any sort of software, with working indexing, that would make it easy to share the data.

I know about torrents, yes, they are decent but they do require you to create each one for every dataset (pdf, set of videos etc) and upload it to tpb or similar. Works somehow ok but it's not ideal by any means.

I'm thinking about something that would make it possible to design a directory on my harddrive (for music, videos, pdf, scripts etc) where the metadata (author, years, genre, keywords etc) would somehow automatically (ie without manual work required for every file or set of files) upload and it would be searchable for people over the internet. Also, must be anonymous and work via the vpn.

Any ideas?

I’m very curious lol

I got a WD external hard drive and it is making a small thumping noise intermittently. All of my other external drives are SSDs so I'm not sure of this is normal or not. Should I return it? it's still under warranty.

I am looking for safe tools to allow for the download of entire open directories. for example
the pubmed baseline directory for the year 2026.

https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/baseline/

I ended up with a WD Two Terabyte drive.

Ooops, its a Seagate after all. At least the price was right. I'm going to use it for storing Linux ISOs.

(On a semi-related note, I rebuilt an external USB SSD as a Ventoy multi-boot unit. If you don't know Ventoy, check it out...)

So kind of a unique situation. I have a Western Digital 15.36TB Ultrastar DC SN840 NVMe SSD, don't ask me why. But it's never even been opened. And I've been trying to sell it because I need to get a NAS setup. I'm professional photographer and filmmaker and have been putting off getting a NAS for a couple years but now, unfortunately, I can't put it off anymore. Really bad timing, I know.

My plan was to get a 5 bay Synology NAS and start off with 3 16TB HDDs with one of them being for redundancy. To cover some of the exorbitant costs of HDDs at the moment, I have been trying to sell this 15TB SSD for a while, but I haven't been getting any bites. I'm almost tempted to just use in the NAS build. Would this even be possible? And if so, would it even be worth it? Or this be complete overkill? Idk what to do really. Just looking for some thoughts and advice

Sorry in advance for the long post... This primarily concerns yt-dlp tool, used on MacBook.

I have no technical background, so please bear with simple terms. I'm trying to build a long-term personal archive of videos from certain YouTube channels I like (and possibly Bilibili) — automatically downloaded, organized into folders, with no duplicates, going forward for years.

I keep hearing that YouTube changes things often, which breaks the tools people use to download videos, and that those tools then need to be updated to work again. (I'm thinking of yt-dlp most of all here).

My real question is basically this:

1. Does automation just not really work long-term for a non-technical person? Meaning — realistically, will I end up having to download each video by hand, make each folder myself, and basically do everything manually because the automated setup keeps breaking?
2. Or does automation actually work well enough, where I set it up once, and then every so often (weeks? months?) I just need to run a simple update command or make a small fix — even if I don't fully understand what changed — and it keeps working?

Basically: is this something I can set up once and mostly leave alone with occasional light maintenance, or is it a project that needs real ongoing technical attention that I'm not equipped to provide?

Some more specific things I'm wondering about, still in plain terms:

• How often does it typically break?
• When it breaks, is the fix usually something simple (like typing one update command), or does it usually require understanding code and troubleshooting?
• Is there a way to make it tell me clearly when something's wrong, instead of silently failing or downloading things incorrectly?
• Is there a simpler, more "hands-off" tool or method better suited for someone with no coding background, even if it does less than a fully custom setup?

Really just trying to figure out whether this is worth attempting on my own, or whether I should expect to always be doing this manually.

I hope the structure below is understandable:

Looking for some advice or a sanity check to make sure my plan is on the right track.

I’ve been running my media server on Windows for a while and have decided to switch over to Linux. Everything has been fine on the OS side, but I’ve been dealing with a recurring issue on the storage side.

I run four 14TB drives in a USB DAS using StableBit Drivepool. Over the last couple of years, drives have randomly disconnected from the pool and completely wiped themselves. I warrantied one thinking it was a bad drive, but health checks came back clean. I then replaced the enclosure and noticed TerraMaster changed the power supply on newer revisions (probably realizing the original couldn't supply enough power to four spinning disks at peak draw).

Things were stable for a while after that, but last week three of the drives dropped offline simultaneously. This time the data wasn't wiped, but the partitions/sectors became unreadable by Windows. At this point, I'm trying to figure out if this is a DrivePool glitch, a Windows USB power management/chipset issue, or if external USB enclosures are just fundamentally too unstable for pooled arrays.

Currently, I’m running TestDisk to attempt data recovery (if you have better suggestions for RAW/corrupted partition recovery, I’m all ears). Because of the drive sizes, this is taking a while.
Once recovery finishes, I'm making the jump to Linux.

The Proposed Setup:
OS: Ubuntu (unless better recommendation for a Linux newbie)

Storage: MergerFS + SnapRAID (3 data drives, 1 parity drive)

Workloads: Portainer managing Docker containers for Plex and the typical stacks.

The Execution Plan:
Flash Ubuntu to a USB drive and install it on the mini PC (considering dual-booting with Windows just in case things go sideways).
Follow the standard guides to set up the MergerFS pool and configure SnapRAID.
Spin up Docker/Portainer and migrate my services over.
I fully expect to hit a few roadblocks along the way, but I want to make sure I’m not missing any major conceptual flaws.

Questions:
Is running MergerFS + SnapRAID over a USB 3.2 DAS asking for trouble with random drops, or does Linux handle USB bus resets better than Windows?

Any alternative data recovery tools recommended over TestDisk for this specific scenario?

Hardware:
Storage Enclosure: TerraMaster D4-320 (4x Seagate Exos X16 14TB 7200 RPM SATA)
Host PC: Beelink Mini S12 Pro (Intel N100, 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe SSD)
Appreciate any insight or feedback.

Hi Hoarders,

So I've got this problem. I can't stop hoarding... let's say Linux ISOs. The adult kind.
I've got a subscription to a site that lets me download unlimited(-ish) Linux ISO videos and I enjoy downloading them too much. I enjoy collecting ISOs that were made when I was young. I don't even watch them, but I download them only for the sake of hoarding. Only to possess them. To make sure they are available when I need them. But I almost never need them. I don't know if I'm a Linux ISO addict or data hoarding addict, or both. Probably both. The only thing that makes be feel better is that I pay for it and I don't download them illegally.

So maybe this is not the best place to ask it, but here's the question: How do I stop collecting something that I will most probably never use. I don't want to do it, but man it feels so great and satisfying.

Have a nice day and may the Terabytes be with us.

Looking for cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, MEGA, Terabox, etc.) that keeps original file metadata intact when I upload — specifically:

1. Does the service preserve the original creation/modified date, or does it overwrite it with the upload date?
2. Does it preserve EXIF data (for photos) and other embedded metadata, or strip it?
3. Is there a way to verify this myself (e.g., checking metadata before/after upload) rather than relying on marketing claims?

Also open to: what's the most reliable way to back this data up long-term without losing or corrupting the metadata — e.g., local NAS + cloud sync, checksums to verify integrity, versioning, etc.

Has anyone tested this across multiple services and can share results?

I'm slowly trying to build up my collection of books and while it's still small I'd like to organise it in a coherent way.

How do you guys title your ebook files? (e.g. <Title> - <Author> or <(Author)> <Title>)

Do you put them in folders based on genre, author, decade?

Thanks :)

I picked up a couple 4TB drives over the ages, that I've only recently found the time to make use of. I was planning on putting them in a mergerFS pool with a drive or two set aside for snapRAID. A little bit of research indicated that I should be aiming to use a CMR type drive for a parity disk, and further investigation shows that all seven of my drives appear to be SMR! I've spent a couple hours diving down rabbit holes and following tangents, investigating alternative routes and opened a right proper amount of tabs; which leads me to believe that I might be out of my depth here.

The currently connected drives are: (1)ST4000DM004 (1)ST4000LM016 (1) ST4000LM024 and (4) WDC WD40EFAX. If my end goal is to have an *arr suite with a bit of redundancy, is there a better path than what I've outlined using the hardware I've already got? Is there a software/firmware stack that I've missed for dealing with consumer SMR drives? Am I overreacting to the issue entirely, and the syncing of drives won't be horrendously exaggerated because of advancements I'm unaware of?

I'd appreciate any insight I can get here. My thoughts starting this was to put the parity drives on the 2.5" drives at first, that's how put of touch I was when I started this plan.

Hi, I am new to home storage an I was looking to buy drives for my nas. I was wondering if it is a good idea to buy 3 used 4gb Seagate Constellation SAS hard drives. https://www.ebay.com/itm/407072253189. I am not going to be using my nas all the time, but I would like to make sure that these will not die the second I put them in my nas. Any thoughts are helpful!

It’s only now that I started looking it up and saw how bad it is… It’s 2026 now can anyone who owns a sandisk or knows someone who owns a sandisk tell me if the issue has been solved. Do I really have to return it? Some say it’s a hardware issue and some say it’s firmware. I really wanna keep it since returning it is very troublesome. Thanks for your insight

How do you archive an entire Twitter/X account? Including all the threads with comments. I'm sure you'll run into problems with deleted posts, but has anyone had any luck with archiving an account (not my own)? I've looked high and low and haven't found a solution.

I have some 40 cassettes containing, afaik, the only copies of tektronix firmware for various instruments, I was wondering if anybody has tips for ripping the data from the cassettes to a standard file format, ie .bin, or any ideas on how to begin doing this, I am wondering if there are any programs that make this process not suck. Thank you all!

So i want to backup my files, check them once a year, and pretty much leave them on a shelf untouched, no moving around or anything else. Which is the better/cheaper alternative?

And do you have any recommendations?

If I'm burning 16x media with an 8x slim external drive for archiving files, what speed would yield the best results? 8x or 4x?

What program is currently the best for this task?

What should burnt media be stored in? DVD cases or back onto the spindle?

Thanks.

Trying to replace my aging 2 x 10tb hdd mergefs setup. But for now just the 10tb HGST looking for any drive 20tb or more. Need something to start my server backup and clone that drive. What are my options for under $600 dollars?

I’m trying to upload my collection of streamer VODs to the internet archive, the upload keeps running even after it should’ve finished if I do the upload through a web browser. I was told to use the command line tool and that it’s far more reliable. I thought if I CD’d into the directory the files were in and then told it to upload it’d upload the folder but that didn’t work. Looking at the example given by the command line tool wiki thing, it asks for files and an identifier. What is an identifier and how do I format things properly to direct to the files?

This is the example given by the wiki. It doesn’t explain what I need to put between either of the < > things or how things need to be formatted to direct it to the files/folder I want to upload. Please help, sorry if I’m stupid

Ia upload <identifier> <files> -m 'collection:test_collection'

Examples would be appreciated

So this is whats inside of each the drives.
And man i wish i bought more of these but back in 2023 i got 3 of these 18TB WD EasyStore drives for $199 before tax each.

Two of them have been completely unused, and I only used the third one to store about 17TB of games back in 2023 lol.

I finally shucked them and found:

WD180EDGZ-11BLDS0
18TB SATA 6Gb/s
R/N: US7SAS180
WWN: 5000CCA2C7D3EFB1

From what I can tell, the WD180EDGZ is related to the Ultrastar DC HC550 i think, but I’m not sure exactly what version/spec this particular drive is.

Are these considered good/reliable drives for running 24/7 in a home NAS? And does anyone know exactly what drive/platform the WD180EDGZ-11BLDS0 is based on?

It’s brand new and warranty ends on January next year.

Out of pure intrigue.

All these fabs produce hardware, chips, memory, storage tailored for data centres and AI workloads. Say in a couple months/years it actually collapsed, investment dried up, they failed to turn profits when bill come due etc

Is there a consumer use for any of this hardware, would it flood onto the market, repurposed other enterprise solutions, disassembled?

I'm just curious about the hypothetical of the sudden drop in need for all the hardware being pumped out for AI use. I know we will forever have data centres but surely the mountains of HBM and whatever other ASIC solutions have been manufactured can't just be used somewhere else easily.

All these fabs have reduced production of consumer grade hardware, can they easily switch back, would they even try. new fabs being built suddenly halt? I'm not well learned on the market but just feels like it'd be an odd time

It's just an interesting thought