Brah wrote:So I'm starting from scratch next round - what would you recommend for a scalable, maintainable storage solution that accepts a variety of drives that does not go ESOL after a couple of years? The overall solution, not the drives, I expect them to come and go.
If this means a more home-built enclosure solution, I'll take that step - I just have not done any research on this yet. I am not going to buy any more WD-anything if their planned obsolesce is so short.
Home-bulit, although probably best option requires some experience. Without, you will waste a lot of time.
Clearly it's better to avoid any enclosure that comes from the hard drive manufacturers. Other than this, I would stay open. First thing would be to decide what, in terms of "architecture" you would like to have.
For example, a complete solution could be like this (all below I to IV together is a single solution):
I) NAS with RAID (all the files stored)
II) NAS or external hard drive with or without RAID (a full copy of "I")
III) optical drive (a full copy of everything that can not be restored any other
way - i.e. your personal photographs, videos, documents etc.
IV) any storage (hard drive, optical) outside your living place with at least one full copy of "III"
For "I" I would probably buy a 4 bay NAS RAID enclosure. At this point the pricing kicks in so you have to decide if you prefer:
a) mirroring raid (safer, slightly slower, 50% of the capacity of the hard drives you put in is gone)
b) RAID5 (faster, less safe, with 4 same cap. hard drives, capacity of 1 is gone.
If you implement also II to IV, RAID5 is IMO safe enough.
To look for a specific enclosure I would suggest to start from here:
http://pricewatch.vr-zone.com/sim-lim-s ... ricelists/
These are some price-lists from SLS. Almost ever single one has a section on NAS. Just get familiar with what is available around and how much it costs.
Some of the outlets have also web pages:
http://www.videopro.com.sg/products/ind ... 9c5l39sgi7
(I used to buy from them but they p**d me off one time too many. Still good enough for checking prices etc.)
http://www.storagestudio.com.sg/
(good storage choice but on the expensive side)
Once you shortlist some enclosures just start googling what people say about them.
Some things to consider:
- Check what is the maximum capacity of the individual hard drives the enclosure is able to handle. For example, with the current hdd choice it would be good if they could handle hdds up to 4TB.
- While googling look for potential problems for our climate (overheating, humidity)
