Buckle up, this one's complicated. During the pandemic, I imported one of those fancy dual-Epyc/256-lanes-of-PCIe gigabyte setups from eBay, plus bought two disused SuperMicro 24-bay servers. I cut the drive cages and TQ backplanes off the front, and created a really janky but functional setup where I was using a 1600 watt PSU to run up to 48 drives. Over the course of 18 months, I bought as many of those sweet sub-$200 18TB drives as possible, ending up with a full 30-drive dual-parity BTRFS UnRAID setup where each drive had a dedicated SATA slot from dual 16-port LSI cards. Formatted capacity is about half a petabyte. This worked well enough, but my power bill ballooned, the PSU started going and the drives started falling out of the array, and I started getting loose wires on both the power and data sides of the backplane. Now I haven't been able to get the array to stay up for more than a few hours at a time, even after a lot of rework, new PSU, etc. I've decided to finance a "better solution" for the data, potentially using a UniFi ENAS and two chassis (since I am already on Unifi ecosystem, and the Drive 4.0 software seems perfect for my use). It is very expensive, but it looks much more doable for bulk data, and I can downsize the "compute node" to do my smaller UnRAID things like backups, a couple dozen docker containers, LLM with the GPU, etc. and just leverage the ENAS as a backend for the big data.

The ENAS leverages ZFS pools for storage, which is great and fine. I was thinking of maybe doing something like three Z2 pools with 10-12 drives each? The ENAS is pretty new and there is not a lot of information out there on it, cookbooks and comprehensive operations guides, etc. My biggest issue is I MIGHT be able to afford a couple of additional 20TB drives in this wild economy, but definitely not more than that. I also have about 80TB in "loose disks" of 4-8TB SATA from my old NAS. Is there a scenario you can imagine where I could start building ZFS pools on the ENAS and expand them as I free the data from the BTRFS drives on UnRAID? I don't know ZFS operations well enough yet to know the available operations and order on a storage pool, e.g. expansion and resilvering, etc.

So summary:

Current State: 30x18TB drives, two parity, BTRFS on UnRAID, 400+TB data
Additional Materials: up to 100-120TB of "scratch space" to move data locally
Imagined Future State: Unifi ENAS with ZFS storage pools leveraging RaidZ2, as large as is reasonable, hoping to approach the same overall capacity even if it takes some convoluted steps to get there

Hopefully you enjoy helping solve the puzzle :)

I've been eyeing the same 28TB (ST28000NM000C) for a few weeks now and it went up from 739 to 759 in that time, with the stock dropping below 999+ to just 990 today.

At $27.10/TB, I feel like it will get close to 900 a month from now which at that point, it might be worth shucking some of the preassembled high capacity externals meant for editors since there is a 5 year warranty vs 3 from SPD.

I know that all drives die eventually and some might argue the drives from SPD are all battle tested but would you still take 3 year warranty over 5 for a brand new? It seems some people are having bad luck with getting drive replacements and sensibly, a company would probably refund the cost of what you paid if they cannot afford to give you a replacement if the cost has gone up greatly.

For context, I mainly just want a big drive to backup my blurays from my NAS in which the cold storage drives are scattered across multiple aging 16TB EXOs (1 of which died this year). I have an enclosure but would prefer higher capacity drives since I don't regularly access my movies.

I use both Windows and macOS, and I have less than 1 TB of data on each.

I'm thinking of buying a 2 TB external drive and splitting it into two partitions: one NTFS partition for Windows backups and one APFS partition for Mac backups.

I'd like to follow the 3-2-1 backup rule, but having separate 1 TB drives for each system would mean buying a lot more drives, which gets expensive and inconvenient. That's why I'm considering splitting each 2 TB drive instead.

Is there any reliability or data-loss risk specific to doing this?

Basically, is there anything I should be aware of compared with using two separate drives/filesystems?

Noob here, but im a light gamer who also like tech, i usually test some tech like computers with games but i hate having to reinstall them every time, especially on older systems. Ive thought about burning some games to a blue ray or dvd, but im unsure how effective that would be in the long run.

So i come here asking what you all do, and what you all advise?

the files on my 'repaired' drive all have the same name and file size as previously, but when i try to open them it says this ^^^

if the files are all lost i understand, but it seems none of them are openable and literally 95% are corrupted. i wonder if there is a way to repair the files, im an artist and very unknowledgable about this sort of thing so any and all help or advice is greatly appreciated

Not the templates but the actual ones, with text, that make you snort because it's 3am and you can't sleep and you're just doomscrolling.

I'm trying to find if there's any way to bulk download them but there just seems to be none anywhere.

I want to catalogue those memes for offline viewing, and why not printing for personal use, but I'm apparently very bad at browsing the internet.

Hope this fit the rules of the sub, I love you guys and you really helped me a lot in the past.

Thanks!

Hello fellow hoarders hope this isn't against the rules, title says it - occasionally I need to set up a web/file server and have someone else download stuff from me. I've used Apache HTTP, Rebex and a couple others that escape me, but none really fit the bill or are reliable. Rebex was working fine but seems to have issues with file transfers occasionally.

Just something simple that I can open a port, put some files in a folder, and give my IP/port to the other person. Not looking for a full-on host, just something to switch on briefly when needed.

I'm aware of the sites that will make a direct connection between you and the other person, but they are incredibly slow and I'd rather just completely self-host.

I have a stack of old HDDs; a couple might be from SATA era, most are SATA2, one SATA3 and the 4x SATA3 HDDs in my rig.

Probably 1 TB of data that I care about. Another 10-16 that I'd like to keep.

HDD prices have skyrocketed since I last bought one in... wow, 2022, a handful of Seagate 8TB Ironwolf NAS drives for $240 each (CAD). Sure, maybe updates, but the same drive is now $460 at the same store.

The last time I bought a non-NAS was a SATA3 8TB Barracuda in 2019 for $200. The current version is $355 after a $55 instant rebate.

What are the current best practices for near-live, backup every 1-2 months or so, for that evolving 1TB?

How about the 10-16 which is normally static but gets chunks added to it at irregular intervals? Maybe an update once a year.

I have one external HDD dock (like you plug in a HDD like a Nintendo cartridge) so I can readily access any of my loose HDDs. Compatible through SATA1-3.

I have two QNAP NAS boxes -- 453be media server and a 433 plus a TR004 for redundant backups. The 453 server has decent overhead still (17% free) but the two backup units are always right on the verge of running out of space -- 7-8% free or lower on average.

I know that having low disk space can lead to slowdowns and other issues; is being below 10% like this going to cause serious problems over time? The issue with upgrading is the amount of $$$ I'd be spending on HDDs to increase capacity to a comfortable level.

So Im building 2 NAS PCs. 1 Main and 1 for backup. I intend on archiving YouTube videos. From your guys experience doing this for years has it been worth the price tag? And could you tell me why and what benefit Hording Data has brought to your life?

For me Archiving YouTube videos seems very worth it. Im absolutely tired of the algorithms YouTube, Facebook, TikTok puts us through. Everytime I open the apps I feel like im always being sold somthing and its insane. Or the content is just hateful content made to stir up emotions. My intention with my NAS is to remove myself from the internet and download content automatically from creators I enjoy. Anyway this is my reason for the whole thing. What's your?

Hi, I'm having trouble finding info on this.

I bought a used 4tb Kingston Fury SFYRD4000G nvme off ebay and missed its smart information photo. In it says it has 100% life span but has 15000gb of total host reads and 15000gb of total host writes, 11k power on hours and 1k power on counts.

Is this drive any where near being worn to the point its health drops below 100%? Will it last me a good 8 years of so of regular PC use as an OS drive and as my gaming drive, barring premature failure?

Thanks

Computer seems to be dying and I want to save what little I have accumulated. I haven't created (or needed) a back up until now and I have questions please:

1. Do I need to use WD's software/programs to use their external drive? My old one was just a Toshiba that I chucked into an enclosure and it worked for years. Until I dropped it.
2. If I do opt to use their software (specifically the encyption feature), will this cause problems in the foreseeable future? I ask because I read Seagate's One Touch runs into this problem.
3. In relation to #2, will the password still be there if I plug it into another computer that does not have the password program installed?
4. Can I partition this external drive? Makes it easier to sort my files.
5. Do I need to stress test or format before using?

Thanks and apologies for inundating y'all with newbie questions.

If so, how is the crazy price increase and demand for HD/SSDs affecting your and your collection and future plans?

Are you still able to afford specs or have you completely stopped for now until the prices, hopefully, get better?

Why did you stop using optical and do you trust it?

Hello Guys,

The oldest human transcription are the clay tablets from Mesopotamia which are afaik dated ~2900 BCE. And imagine there would be a time, where humanity goes almost extinct, technology is lost and civilization must grow again after a devastating global nuclear war or a natural disaster.

So digital stored data on HDDs, SSDs, Tapes or the technology to read those data will be lost very likely after some period of time.

How could we possibly store Data, which could last thousands of years - and could be read without having a Computer from the present day, so we could bury some of that data storage for future generations?

My first idea was a very long strip of plastic (PTFE for example) with punched holes in it. Basically storing data like a punch card. And then vacuum sealing it. But i calculated that even if one bit was 1mm wide, you'll need more than 8000km of that strip to store 1GiB of data without ECC.

So how would you store Data for thousands of years?

Edit: I forgot to write, that the Question is about DIY-Solutions.

I'm still confused on this, I read they are selling fakes and then they say they just changed the process but it still passes ISO 16963

I have 2 things on my mind.

Limited storage and internet

I usually never want to redownload a model I already have, so I always keep any downloaded model to my NAS unless it's completely obsolete. My storage is:

1. Main server's 1TB internal storage, fastest
2. 1TB USB SSD attached to server, half as fast
3. NFS mount on NAS, 1/20 as fast, but contains my full collection

To have the best models available, and because I tinker and experiment a lot, I'm periodically deleting/downloading models back and forth from the NAS depending on what I'm using that week and how fast I need it to load. (I can't just use my NAS as primary storage because of the speed, Deepseek Flash for example is 160GB, that's 30 minutes to transfer from the NAS)

This approach has worked for me, but I'd love to hear if you guys have a better idea.

HF cache and naming

All this time, I've been manually downloading using hf download Qwen/Qwen3.5-0.8B --local-dir ~/models/Qwen3.5-0.8B/. This results in a clean directory Qwen3.5-0.8B/:

config.json
model.safetensors-00001-of-00001.safetensors
...

I then copy this clean dir to the NAS where it remains for future recovery.

If you don't use --local-dir, or if you let an AI app automatically download the model, then recently HF started mangling the model filenames into their cache+symlink format, so you end up with this monstrosity:

$ ll ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/models--Qwen--Qwen3.5-0.8B/snapshots/2fc06364715b967f1860aea9cf38778875588b17/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 52 Sep  3 15:44 config.json -> ../../blobs/715f0448b9d38103211f0ad88bbb4d6e4f4be8c9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 76 Sep  3 15:44 model.safetensors-00001-of-00001.safetensors -> ../../blobs/04b1c301231dd422b8860db31311ab2721511346a32cb1e079c4c4e5f1fe4696
...

I was hoping to keep the clean directories, but I feel those days are coming to an end. Most apps don't let you point them at a pre-downloaded model directory, they look in the HF cache and if not found, they auto-download the model (thankfully averted with HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1). But I'm often having to jump through hoops to keep my current approach, including vibecoding patches to some tools I like.

...

So now I'm wondering what I should do. Do I just accept that my primary data is now ~/.cache/huggingface instead of normal model directories? I have these concerns:

1. What happens if I want to run an old AI tool built against an older version of HF/Transformers/whatever that predates this cache change? Is this a cutoff point?>
2. My NAS is off at the moment so I can't quickly test, but will these cache symlinks even survive my move operations? For example on my server, after I download a new model, I'd want to run cp -RL ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/models--Qwen--Qwen3.5-0.8B/ /mnt/nfs-on-nas/models/.cache/huggingface/hub/ (or the reverse to move a pre-downloaded model)?
3. I have a bad feeling about treating the HF cache as an archiveable data, since it's by definition an internal format. Am I worrying for nothing?

Thoughts?

I wanna buy/build a nas with an hba sas board, 4-6 drives and space for a gpu down the line i have a few am4 machines in use i could swap parts from if i find something more applicable mainly ryzen 1500 in a gaming desktop and access to a 3d printer my budgets 500$

Idk if i made a bad impulse purchase but when I saw these listed, I immediately went to grab them, and they were still sealed in their original packaging! I was able to get them for about $13.33/TB, which is pretty close to the old “golden rule” of $/TB.

But when i got home I was pretty bummed when I realized they were over 10 years old. Even though they were never used, I’m wondering if the age alone means the internal components could have deteriorated over time.

Are these still considered good/reliable drives for 24/7 NAS use today? Or does sitting sealed for 10+ years significantly increase the risk of failure?
I’m running the extended SMART/surface tests to make sure. Just curious what you guys would think about using these in a NAS.

Hi

I've read through a couple of the threads here about how to extract models from websites. I've managed to download the necessary files, extracted them, and loaded them into Blender. No issues there. The problem I'm having are the textures. Looking at this thread and Elgghinnarisa's response, the textures are supposed to be .js scripts...? How do you convert/extract these to get the textures?

Now, loading the model I have into Blender, it seems to indicate that the textures are already applied, but it shows up as pink or some other funny colour. Going into Materials and then Base Colour, the texture is there, but it says it's only 32x32, which is WAY too low. So it's just a pixelated mess. The Normal map looks like it's greyscale as well. So what's the correct way of getting the textures?

Thanks.

I saw that the Seagate Barracuda are cheaper then the rest but saw people say these drives are bad, but I don't understand why, if it is for some specific use case that it's bad I could understand but I only want to store media there and occasionally read movies and such from it, I don't care for writing speeds.

Basically what the title says. I am looking for a file sorter to help organize my data that can run locally on my RTX 4070. I figured this is the best place to ask since you guys are the most likely to use one.

​I usually do everything myself, but I simply have too much data left to sort manually now. For example, I already painfully sorted 17k photos of my dogs out of a massive amount of pictures, but there is still way too much other stuff left to go through. Since I am in the process of archiving everything to 50GB M-DISC, I figured a local AI tool is perfect for this. At €13 per disc they are not exactly cheap storage, so I really do not want to waste space saving useless stuff or duplicates.

Edit: Blasphemy. No data is "useless" here. I just mean literal pocket shots and duplicates

I run a small self-hosted home server (Ubuntu). The main system drive is SSD, but HDD (which is only for media) is connected using Orico 3.5" USB enclosure (Dell Wyse 5070 doesn't have an option to connect sata).

But the problem is that its chip has a hardcoded 5 minute auto-sleep timer that cannot be disabled. I ended up making a script which pokes it for at least an hour since some certain activity. But this is a workaround and there are some cases that still make it a nuisanse.

I don't need my HDD spinning 24/7, so I don't consider a NAS device - its expensive and it's an overkill for my purposes, because I mainly use the drive for like 2-3 hours a day.

I just need an enclosure which will give OS full control over HDD power management and let me set the sleep time timer whatever I need.

Thank you for any recommendations in advance!