Recommendations for External 6 Bay Drive Storage.

MrRobot

Hi all,

I am looking to expand my drive storage for my Plex media server to accommodate 6 drives, at the moment i have just one internal hot swap bay but is getting to be a pain keep swapping out the drives every time i want to watch something different.

I am looking for something with a maximum of six bays to attach externally to the PC but does not have to be hot swappable as the drives will be permanently connected and also not to expensive so if anybody can recommend anything or can offer any alternative ideas it would be much appreciated.

ChuckMountain

What existing PC case do you have and have you thought about looking at NAS device instead?

MrRobot

I am running a HP Z600 but all bays are taken, i did think about NAS but would that not be more costly.

ChuckMountain

If you jump to 6 rather than 4 it tends to push the price up and it might be cheaper to consolidate drives to bigger drives.

I had a quick look at the specs for the Z600 and from the one I saw it only had USB2 and no mention of an external SATA connection.  Do you have a RAID controller card with an external one?

If not you probably should look at getting one as USB2 will be a limiting factor in the performance of your system then.

For example a 4 bay DAS (Direct Attached Storage) starts at around £120 or so

External 4x JBOD enclosure with eSATA and USB 3.0 from IcyBox IB-3640SU3

but an 8 way one is up at £260 or so

8 Bay 3.5 inch HDD USB 3.0 external Enclosure Tower Box with JBOD from icybox IB-3680SU3

A five bay Drobo is £340 which used to get a lot of praise.

ChuckMountain

6 Bay NAS can be quite dear so its worth looking at whether it would be better with 4 one.  What size drives do you have?

As an alternative you could look at something like the HP Microserver

HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 AMD Opteron X3216 Dual-Core 3.4 GHz 8GB 4 x Non Hotplug  on Servers Direct

This takes 4 drives in the main body but will also take a fifth in the space where the DVD drive would go.  You do need a power connection splitter and a sata cable though.

This could run whatever OS you throw at it and can be left on 24/7 as its a low power consumption.  Your Z600 will probably drink a reasonable amount of juice.  100W 24/7 will cost you over £100 in electricity these days per year.

MrRobot

That is right there is no eSATA but i could add a card or would a RAID be better, i can consolidate my drives which is a good idea and like you said i could then look at a 4 bay, i was hoping not to spend more than £150 at the moment.

MrRobot

Wow you certainly know your stuff @ChuckMountain i appreciate your input there is plenty for me to consider.

MrRobot

Would this do the job @ChuckMountain

For Sale - HP Microserver N40L

ChuckMountain

In that case I probably would look at something like this.  You can get free postage via the AVF link from Scan

SCAN & AVForums loyalty programme

External 4x JBOD enclosure with eSATA and USB 3.0 from IcyBox IB-3640SU3

Plus a USB 3 controller card, need to check it will fit in your case it requires a spare PCIe slot and possibly power depending on whether you have a spare connector

SuperSpeed USB3.0 2 Port (NEC) 5Gbps PCI-Express Card

The DAS comes with the cables needed

You could then probably leave one drive in the main machine, leaving one to do something with?

ChuckMountain

Yes that's an older version of the one I linked to.

I had the prior version N36L before I upgraded and its a good little machine.  A little bit on the slow side when administering it depending on what you run on it.  Serving files though it was fine I had 4 to 5 HD streams serving Kodi clients as a test and it worked fine.

It does require an OS and that particular machine will take 6 drives if you stack two or top of one another where the CD Drive would go.

Just check the age of it as they have been out quite some time.  BTW because of a great deal at the time they were only around £100 new due to cashback from HP.