I have an old computer that I use for storing and streaming my media. It has an attached external drive. I would like to increase my storage and build something that could be extensible to at least 100TB. I am not worried about backup.
I looked and I think I need a HDD rack or enclosure. Some people gave me links to good deals on ebay and some other sellers but they are based on the US and shipping fees are high. I saw this HDD enclosure and it seems to be what I am searching but I don't if they are good.
If I where you I would just buy a regular case that can fit a decent amount of HDDs like a fractal define 7 or one of its older versions and transplant your current computer into that with some new drives. 100tb is 5 20tb drives so you don't need that many.
USB enclosures are not a great way to handle storage as USB tends to be unreliable.
100TB, external enclosures, no backups 🤔
I would pickup a used storage server with a lot of drive bays from eBay.
The external bays seem attractive but I’ve never heard good stories about performance or reliability.
For 100TB it's worth looking into a dedicated storage server -- there are tons of them available for cheap. labgopher makes it easy to track sales on ebay by price/storage/ram/whatever.
I have a couple of servers (all 2.5" drives) and a disk shelf (for the much easer to get large volume 3.5" drives) attached to one of them with an external sas PCIe card. I could push that to 300+TB if I had the cash
If you’re in it for the long haul buy a “cheap” used server off of eBay and upgrade it.
If you want something more inexpensive buy the cheapest case you can find with the most HD mounting points. Then get yourself a SAS controller from eBay and connect everything up.
I got an HP DL380 with 16 drive bays, and I basically just dump any old hard drives in it whenever I upgrade. I have 24TB in it, had it for years, and I've only ever lost one drive at a time, and I just shrink out the dead drive, and then toss another one in if I get a new one. "I'll move your files to your new computer if I can keep the old one..." I even 3d-printed a couple of 2.5"-3.5" adapters to stuff old laptop drives in there. Caddies? Uhh... I think it was 120$ from the local electronics recycler. It's old, it's slow, it's basically a giant samba share.