[neilsen]

Hello!

I running out of disk space and am looking to setup a long term solution. I take lots of pictures and video for our non-profit org and currently have about 2 TB of pictures/videos. My setup now is pretty thrown-together, with a 2 TB internal drive almost filled and an external 2 TB drive mirroring the internal drive. I estimate about 750 GB of data each year.

I'm pretty open to any and all suggestions, though I don't care about having the latest/greatest equipment, but instead a cost-effective, pretty reliable setup to hold my data.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[continuum]

Given how cheap harddisks are, sticking with your current solution and simply adding/upgrading disks is probably the easiest.

For more serious reliability I would look at switching a disk setup or file system that protects against bit rot, but you describe just video and pictures, so a few errors probably don't matter very much to you-- at least not enough to justify the cost of a true hardware RAID6, or even a separate box with a filesystem better designed to protect against errors such as a Linux box with ZFS...

[FastMHz]

I use these on my NAS to expand....good value and work well, if not the fastest solution in the world. But more than adequate for large media storage.

My setup consists of two towers, one is primary and the second contains mirror drives.

[Infortrend Corp]

Hello!

This is my first post! This is to neilson, sounds like you take a lot of pictures and need more space! There are products out there that can compress your data into smaller spaces so that you don't need to delete them since you need them for work. I suggest looking at www.infortrend.com. They have some pretty awesome products that can compress data and they run the same exact thing as HP, Dell, IBM uses but at a WAY CHEAPER price. Seriously. I definitely recommend the EonNAS products. Take a look and you might find something that you'll like. =)

[creed3020]

Infortrend Corp, on 25 February 2013 - 05:20 PM, said:

Hello!

This is my first post! This is to neilson, sounds like you take a lot of pictures and need more space! There are products out there that can compress your data into smaller spaces so that you don't need to delete them since you need them for work. I suggest looking at www.infortrend.com. They have some pretty awesome products that can compress data and they run the same exact thing as HP, Dell, IBM uses but at a WAY CHEAPER price. Seriously. I definitely recommend the EonNAS products. Take a look and you might find something that you'll like. =)

Nice shameless self promotion there...

You definitely have options neilsen.

I'd recommend you do some research on:

1) How many hard drives does your current PC support physically and on it's motherboard? (Cheapest route)
2) Look into getting an external hard drive enclosure that supports RAID just like FasMHz suggested. This is a low entry cost for the hardware and will give you room to grow, options for redunancy to protect against data loss, and won't be a large hassle to setup.
3) Look into getting an affordable 4 Bay NAS that you can fill with affordable 2TB or 3TB drives. This option will cost you most but tick off all of your requirements and then some!