I currently have a pretty simple media server. It runs on a desktop made of old parts and has 4 6 TB drives in a raidz1 array. It is used by a lot of friends who add a lot of media, so its been nearly at capacity for a while. The desktop has no more open SATA ports or drive enclosures, so I’m not sure what the best option for adding more drives is.
I know the most obvious answer is buying NAS, but I think it might be a little complex for what I need, because no other devices need any access to this storage. I was considering purchasing a DAS, as it seems like a simple option, but I’ve seen many people say its not worth purchasing a DAS over a NAS. Any opinions would be appreciated.
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions! I’m likely going to go with a new case for some extra drive bays and a PCI-E SAS controller, this seems like the best option for the simplicity and price!
As others have said, running out of motherboard SATA slots doesn’t mean you need a new machine to support expansion.
You can get m2 adapter slots for more SATA drives.
If you think you’ll be building a NAS in the future, and are cheap like I am, you might consider getting a pci-e expansion card for SAS rather than SATA drives. They’re backwards compatibile with SATA drives, but open you up to being able to use SAS drives which are common in enterprise data centers. You can get used lots of those drives on eBay WAY cheaper per TB when the data centers hour them out.
I’ve got a machine with 16 SAS drives running the unRaid OS, and I’m very happy with it for data hoarding and media serving. The drives (with shipping) cost $5/TB.
Hey, thanks to your suggestion I got 8 SAS drives and a PCI-e SAS expansion card, but I’ve realized there’s something I didn’t really consider. How are you powering your drives? After my upgrade, my server will contain 12 drives, which my PSU unfortunately does not provide enough ports for. Is simply upgrading it the best option in your opinion?
Depending on how power hungry the drives are, and if your PSU has enough spare power, you can get cable splitters. I had some spare molex ports which I plugged a cable from Amazon that split it into 5 SATA power connectors.
You don’t want to infinitely split cables though, as tempting as that can be, because there are real electrical limits to doing that. Also just because a power supply is rated at X watts, that’s the total. Hard drives will use the 5V and 12V rails and usually there are individual limits on each rail.
Upgrading the PSU is another option. Probably the cleanest easiest best solution IMO. But even then, you probably can’t find a PSU that’ll give you 12 SATA connectors out of the box so you’ll probably need some splitters in there anyways.
In my case specifically, I’ve actually got a second power supply (because i already had it and it was otherwise just gathering dust) powering the extra drives. It’s a bit more complicated to get set up but, it’s an option as well.
Edit: also if you’re asking yourself where can you physically PUT the drives, I 3D printed these and slapped some fans on them:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4875498
I was asking just about power, but those bays will come in handy as I haven’t been able to get a new case yet, thanks for sharing!
A second power supply does currently seem like the best option. In my research I found Super Flower’s modular power supplies, which can apparently power a ton of drives
For the molex to SATA splitters, did you need to get one specifically wired for your PSU?
I’d never looked at them before, but yeah that super flower super modular supply looks pretty sweet. It looks like it has a ton of ports that I assume can be wired up as whatever you need.
For me, the splitters were just generic: they plug to an existing molex out connector and give you 5 SATAs on a ribbon.
https://a.co/d/gXtQ3Qp is what I’d bought, just for reference. The power supply I used them with wasn’t modular (ancient) and so whatever it had was what there was.
Maybe I misread, but if you are planning on having two different PSUs in play for the same system, it’s my understanding that it’s important to make sure the DC outputs share a common ground, which might be a little extra wiring.
I hadn’t really looked into SAS drives, but that sounds like a great option. $5/TB is awesome!