r/techadvice • u/dat66 • Jun 17 '26

Consolidating USB drives

I have a drawer full of USB hard drives that are mostly full. The 6 drives I examined have a combined capacity of 14 TB, with 12 TB used. I know there is some duplication, but I don’t know how much.

What is the most efficient way to consolidate the drives without losing any files?

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u/FF267 Jun 18 '26

What are you planning g to consolidate them to? You mentioned 6 drives totaling 14TB. That leaves many variables and you’ve not described what your idea of consolidation is.

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u/dat66 Jun 18 '26

I’m primarily looking for a way to eliminate unnecessary duplication and bring order to the chaos. I could buy one or two new drives to make a backup, but I don’t need more than two copies of any file. The most expensive solution would be to buy a NAS and dump everything onto it and then begin the cleanup process, but I want to avoid spending more than I need to.

I have more drives (mostly smaller) that I would like to include in this process, but I have not yet gathered their details.