So uh.
While I'm now in the market. What do I even look for in a HDD any-more?
Is WD still good? 'cus these are ooooooooold now lol (Blue is the one that just went "ha ha.. HAHA UH OH :)"
Actually next question, is it worth actually sticking with a HDD anymore?
Like I've never filled this thing (was close before I got a SSD that now hosts my games)
Is it worth just getting an SSD replacement for double the cost?
Is it a good idea still to have a mechanical drive????
@DarkOverord I have SSDs in my machines and a NAS full of HDDs for bulk storage. The NAS volumes are mounted directly into the file system as "Documents", "Pictures" etc
@tryst @DarkOverord 100% seconded on running a NAS for file storage nowadays, especially one with a RAID array for redundancy.
@tryst @renbymon @DarkOverord they can be a bit pricy though and not for everyone
@Lazerus101 @tryst @DarkOverord That depends on if you want to buy a prebuilt NAS or if you're happy to build one yourself, and how much total storage space you need.
@renbymon @tryst @DarkOverord either way they still arent exactly cheap.
@Lazerus101 @tryst @DarkOverord I guess that really depends on what the budget is. If you've got an old machine (2 core x64, 8GB ram, 16gb SSD) you can press that into service as a NAS with just two identically sized NAS drives, which is where the main cost comes from.
@Lazerus101 @renbymon @DarkOverord You get what you pay for
@tryst @renbymon @DarkOverord I'm doing something similar but with what started as an old PC but is now a purpose-built DIY NAS.
Just going to be "that guy" and say that while you're right, people tend to forget that with drives of similar ages and use patterns, it's not unknown to have secondary failures during a RAID array rebuild. I love the convenience but RAID is not a replacement for backups and following the 3-2-1 rule.
@philpem @renbymon @DarkOverord This is true. I bought 2 drives when I set it up initially, then bought a 3rd a year later for this reason. So far, so good.
@tryst @renbymon @DarkOverord I tend to do similar - partly for that and partly to spread the cost. But all the doomspeak and naysaying aside, I agree very much that having everything in one place makes it far easier to back things up, and the convenience of having the same files on any machine on the LAN more than makes up for the slight performance hit.
And if performance bothers you, please let me introduce you to enterprise SSDs and 10GbE :)
@philpem @tryst @renbymon @DarkOverord pssst, CRS504-4XQ-IN (£600)
@evi @tryst @renbymon @DarkOverord How dare you tempt me like this! 😆
How are the Mikrotik routers to configure?
@philpem if you have some knowledge of Linux firewalls and network topology you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.
They’re extremely capable, but the interface to harness this power is a bit basic; that is to say everything is there, but there is no hand holding at all. You are given rope and you can either pull a tractor or hang yourself and it will just do that.
There are plenty of guides and there is a reasonably nice community, as long as you approach them honestly. Since you know older gen tech, that would also just lock you out if you told it to, you should be fine tbh.
@renbymon @DarkOverord Aye. I'm using a Synology with redundancy. If a drive fails, I can just pop a fresh one in and it will rebuild the array. There is a slight access time penalty, but on gigabit Ethernet it's only very slight and the convenience of having all my files available on every machine more than makes up for it.