How much are HDDs worth?

[tmiranda]

I've got the same Thermaltake case. You need to buy more of the conversion cages.

[Addict]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I've got the same Thermaltake case. You need to buy more of the conversion cages.

Hm, ok. Seems a little misleading in the description to me... Thanks for the reply!

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Addict

As far as I can tell, the only way to make this happen is to have two more of the removable 3xHDD 5.25-to-3.5 conversion cages.

Sorry, I should've mentioned that you need to buy two more harddrive cages for it to maximize the number of harddrives. Link

And I recommend the original cages from thermaltake instead of buying conversion brackets. These cages have fans to properly cool the drives.

[Addict]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Sorry, I should've mentioned that you need to buy two more harddrive cages for it to maximize the number of harddrives. Link

And I recommend the original cages from thermaltake instead of buying conversion brackets. These cages have fans to properly cool the drives.

No apologies necessary!

I wrote Newegg though to see what they say about the semi-misleading description though. I found the cages just a couple minutes ago, will certainly buy one or two if I need to!

Thanks again for the links...can't wait to get my NAS into it.

[jdamore]

Hey Stanger-
Have you found your solution for more storage? I am in the same boat and am curious what you did.

I'm especially torn between buying a bunch a 500Gb or a few 1Tb drives.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jdamore

Hey Stanger-
Have you found your solution for more storage? I am in the same boat and am curious what you did.

Not yet, I am, surprisingly, having trouble parting with the money at the moment.

I had been thinking that I'd replace everything (my X6 and my 3ware array, 3.25TB total), with a 3ware 9650-12MI, a Norco Infiniband 12-bay enclosure and 5 1TB drives. There is some amount of logic to that, like I'd basically be covered for a long time because even with HD DVD/BD rips (figure 25GB/pop) that would cover me for upwards of 400 discs.

But, that is (roughly) $2500 investment up front, just to replace what I have, and would "only" increase my capacity by about 500GB.

Now Infrant fixed the firmware in my X6 so my faith is restored and I've begun looking at things a bit differently:

For the price of the 3ware, or the Norco enclosure, I could buy a brand new ReadyNAS NV+, which if I added only 3 TB drives I could replace probably 8-10 drives in my server. That's "only" a $1500 outlay. And of course with that being a whole new box, it wouldn't require replacing my current array, so I could get the whole endeavor down to about $1200 (NV+ with 2 1TB drives, which would expand my storage by 1TB.

And of course there's the third option, replace all the drives in my ReadyNAS with 1TB drives, which, for about the same $1200 would increase my capacity by 1.5TB, and would also cut the power consumption.

I'm especially torn between buying a bunch a 500Gb or a few 1Tb drives.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not even a question, get the 1TBs. At ~$0.25/GB they're a great deal, sure not as great as a 500GB, but I'd rather have a single, 3W 1TB drive than two, 8W 500GB drives.

[jphipps]

I defineately agree with you on the cool aspect... My daughter repeatedly watches the same movies over and over... I usually watch many of my DVD's over and over.

I had used the distributed model... A 3x300 Raid 5 ( 600GB ) in my sage server, 4x400 Raid 5 ( 1.2TB ) in my living room PC, and 2x250GB Mirrored in my wifes PC. I am already out of space and have 8 port sata raid controller, 4x500GB drives and a new server case that will hold 11 drives on order.

I also like it cleaner by having a single box in my home theatre room, and not 600 or so DVD's sitting on a shelf and having to search through them and shuffle the plastic disks around...

P.S. Newegg has 500GB WD drives for $90....