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Info 4-bay USB enclosure (only) - affordable alternative for NAS just for $200

2,486
840
NAS
Synology, TrueNAS
Operating system
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yesterday I had the opportunity to read strange article (quoted below). In the introduction I imagined a solution for photographers, amateur filmmakers who need immediate backup of quantum data as soon as possible to a safer type of storage during a production time. But this article has different targeting, this is really “affordable” ride - how to build home storage point (copy from the article):
For whatever reason you've got a lot of files to store and one hard drive isn't going to cut it. Maybe you've got an extensive and definitely legal movie collection, or maybe you're like me and have two decades of pictures at their original quality that won't fit into Apple or Google's expensive cloud storage.

so let’s understand the author‘s background:

But is a NAS really the right choice? Sure, you have a lot of data to store, but do you really need medium-speed access to that data from every computer in your house? I bet most people just want a way to combine hard drives, and the path of least resistance at first appears to be one of these extremely expensive boxes like the Synology shown above. That's without drives.

back to the intro of the article:
1. home store of legal movie collection
2. two decades of pictures
as main drivers of the storage point. Nothing more. No additional services.

Consideration:
1. speed
- you need “speed” just for initial copy of the movie collection or picture collection. Still the speed is limited by single bottleneck = speed of disk drive, what is >6x less than USB 3.1 for HDD (mentioned in the article as primary storage medium) ... in best newbie scenario about 100MB/s only = 8% of USB 3.1 possible throughput for sequential write
- for movie watching you need disk speed of data read <100Mbps = 12.5MB/s ... 44GB per hour. When some legal copy of movie has more than 44GB per hour of stored content it must be over 4k content. Check your TV network card speed.
- low cost HDDs can provide sequential read speed about 60MB/s
- low cost home 1G wired LAN (nowadays standard) about 80MB/s
- low cost home WiFi with 2.4GHz “n” class about 40MB/s ... still >3x than your TV
as you can see all the mentioned performance can fit the max needed speed 12.5MB/s.

2. extremely expensive boxes
- proposed solution (NAS replacement) is based on simple storage only, connected to you computer by USB only for $200 (empty 4bay enclosure). Then how to provide the media content for rest of family members?
There is an interesting idea from the author:
But if you're a laptop die-hard and don't want a drive enclosure tethering down your machine, I would recommend digging up an old PC and making it into a pseudo-NAS; install it on a shelf or in a closet, attach your drive enclosure

OFC, the article can provide for readers also (affiliated) link to Amazon.

Full mentioned article you can find here:
 
but how the tuner find an old PC with the USB 3.1?
Then cost of the DrivePool (used in the article guide) is another 30$ per computer.
Then cost of similar Backup solution for Win based PC (used in the article) is next 50$ per computer ... AB4B is free
Then cost of ....

Bad, bad idea
 
This is going backwards!

I particularly like this part, where you must “suffer” 😬

Seriously, it's fantastic. But if you're a laptop die-hard and don't want a drive enclosure tethering down your machine, I would recommend digging up an old PC and making it into a pseudo-NAS; install it on a shelf or in a closet, attach your drive enclosure and setup DrivePool on that. Of course, now you're going to have to suffer under the slow transfer speeds of your Wi-Fi network, but hey, you wanted network storage. That's on you pal.
 
Isn't this arguing DAS? And if you must NAS the DAS ... an old router with USB3 and file services wired to the network.

But if DAS speed is what you need then NAS'ing the DAS (or however you homebrew a NAS) will negate the speed you require. Unless you've >1Gbps connectivity, in which case 'old' kit probably isn't going to do it for you.
 
similar articles have just one target - monetize the link to Amazon
no one cares about consequences
 

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