expiredswansong119 posted Mar 17, 2025 06:25 PM
Item 1 of 2
Item 1 of 2
expiredswansong119 posted Mar 17, 2025 06:25 PM
26TB Seagate External USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive
+ Free Shipping$300
$350
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Edit: ST26000DM000 mfg date 02/2025. Seagate website indicates the serial # on the drive is a Barracuda w/ 1yr warranty. Oh well, looks like the days of discount exos are gone, and I'll be returning this one.
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they know Seagate is putting garbage in their externals now
they know Seagate is putting garbage in their externals now
I'm hoping the advent of these cheap and affordable Seagate drives will eventually lower the prices of competitors. After all, in my opinion, the average person who doesn't know about Exos and those dastardly Barracudas will likely choose the 26TB $300 Seagate drive over the $550 24TB [amazon.com] Western Digital.
Having external drives may seem primitive, but they only spin up when in use—ergo, 9 out of my 10 are sleeping or powered down most of the time. I've had my external drive Plex Media Server setup working great for over a decade now. I would argue that having a RAID/Parity setup is actually more stressful on hard drives, as data constantly needs to be read and updated to keep everything backed up properly. Overall, I simply don't think silly and valueless media like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp are worth the expense or trouble of employing an expensive RAID setup; we'll have to agree to disagree.
As I've mentioned before, I don't value retail media data—in my opinion, it's virtually worthless because it's so easily obtainable and replaceable. (For example, I can easily replace 20TB of data in 6 days automatically, with no wasted time and very little stress or effort using my method.) I also keep the video junk separate from my truly important data, which I do indeed back up.
In my opinion, you are so heavily invested in your outlandishly expensive media RAID setup that you refuse to see alternative, more affordable methods for backing up, procuring, and curating large video media collections. You just don't seem to understand or appreciate what I'm alluding to or the methods that I employ, so you may never truly see my side of the argument...
While I understand you're trying to make your system more efficient and cost-effective, you're still doing it wrong, and you're missing a critical aspect of what experienced users have been trying to convey. Relying on multiple external drives that only spin up when in use may seem convenient, but it's simply not as reliable as using a RAID/Parity setup. If a drive fails, recovering data becomes far more challenging and time-consuming than with RAID, where redundancy and automatic recovery are built in. While you claim RAID setups stress drives more, the reality is that RAID configurations are designed to protect data, reduce risk, and provide peace of mind—something your method doesn't offer.
You also seem dismissive of the feedback from others, assuming your method is superior simply because it's more affordable and seems easier to maintain. However, you're overlooking the importance of data integrity, long-term reliability, and security. Experienced users prioritize these factors to ensure their media collections are safe and easily recoverable, rather than relying on a system that leaves them vulnerable to total data loss. It's clear you're not fully appreciating the reasons behind the preference for RAID, and it's disappointing that you continue to undervalue the more reliable, foolproof approaches that others are recommending.
not a enterprise drive.
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This is exactly why you need RAID and parity. Parity ensures that if a drive fails (which is inevitable, especially with the kind of strain you're putting on your Barracuda), your data remains safe and recoverable. RAID systems are designed to protect against exactly this kind of risk, automatically rebuilding lost data from other drives. Without parity, you're relying entirely on a single drive to hold everything, which is not only inefficient but reckless. At the end of the day, you're setting yourself up for disaster by not having the redundancy and data security that RAID provides.
So, you're looking at $500 for the Synology and $1,500 for five drives, two of which need to be reserved for Parity/RAID. That's $600 wasted to ensure virtually worthless and easily obtainable media, like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, is available 24/7. Such nonsense simply isn't worth it, in my opinion.
It makes much more financial sense to consider retail video media as disposable and unworthy of backup or RAID, in my opinion. The method I employ uses media managing apps to curate and procure media quickly and automatically. There's no stress involved if I lose 20TB of videos, as the apps I use will quickly and automatically download their replacements. (20TB in 6 days at 40MB/s, and many people have faster internet speeds than that, so I'd surmise the average time for 20TB would be 3–4 days.)
Don't forget, rebuilding a 20TB drive from RAID can take weeks, according to this article [spiceworks.com]. So, simply auto-downloading the files via the media managing apps I'm alluding to would be a much more efficient and productive use of your time. Why productive, you ask? Because most likely, the files you get will be of higher quality and smaller file size thanks to advances in codecs and compression.
Overall, if you understood my methods and the tools I'm hinting at, you'd have a better appreciation of my side of the argument. Sorry, no stupid jokes this time—I'm too tired. I will say that I was only trying to be humorous and meant no offense. If I insulted you, then I apologize
For the record, I built my first NAS with 16TB capacity (three 8 TB HDDs, the third being parity) last year with under $350 total. You still seem confused about the fact that RAID is a technology, it can be implemented with low end hardware and free software implementations. Just because a company can build a high end piece of hardware and sell it at a high markup utilizing the underlying technology of RAID, does not mean RAID is expensive.
You're essentially telling the guy with a basic HP laptop that you don't see how he can afford such an expensive piece of technology because you saw a MacBook Pro that costs $3500, therefore "laptops are expensive" lol
So, you're looking at $500 for the Synology and $1,500 for five drives, two of which need to be reserved for Parity/RAID. That's $600 wasted to ensure virtually worthless and easily obtainable media, like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, is available 24/7. Such nonsense simply isn't worth it, in my opinion.
It makes much more financial sense to consider retail video media as disposable and unworthy of backup or RAID, in my opinion. The method I employ uses media managing apps to curate and procure media quickly and automatically. There's no stress involved if I lose 20TB of videos, as the apps I use will quickly and automatically download their replacements. (20TB in 6 days at 40MB/s, and many people have faster internet speeds than that, so I'd surmise the average time for 20TB would be 3–4 days.)
Don't forget, rebuilding a 20TB drive from RAID can take weeks, according to this article [spiceworks.com]. So, simply auto-downloading the files via the media managing apps I'm alluding to would be a much more efficient and productive use of your time. Why productive, you ask? Because most likely, the files you get will be of higher quality and smaller file size thanks to advances in codecs and compression.
Overall, if you understood my methods and the tools I'm hinting at, you'd have a better appreciation of my side of the argument. Sorry, no stupid jokes this time—I'm too tired. I will say that I was only trying to be humorous and meant no offense. If I insulted you, then I apologize
For the record, I built my first NAS with 16TB capacity (three 8 TB HDDs, the third being parity) last year with under $350 total. You still seem confused about the fact that RAID is a technology, it can be implemented with low end hardware and free software implementations. Just because a company can build a high end piece of hardware and sell it at a high markup utilizing the underlying technology of RAID, does not mean RAID is expensive.
Yeah, building your own NAS is the way to go. I personally use an old refurbished Dell T3500 with a USB 3.2 card [amazon.com] and a Fusion-io 1.2TB solid-state drive [ebay.com] for my NAS. The entire setup cost me about $200 around 5 years ago.
That Fusion-io card was particularly a good purchase and a nice addition to my makeshift NAS, as it enables the old Dell to reach 2000MB/s read speeds—something I thought would be impossible on an older system. It's the workhorse and lifeblood of the NAS, handling all downloads and uploads. It won't wear out anytime soon, as those cards are enterprise-grade devices with incredibly long lifespans.
About the RAID debate: since I consider all retail video media virtually worthless due to its ubiquity and ease of obtainability, I feel backing up such valueless media is a waste of time and resources. Of course, I back up my truly valuable data, but I would never spend an extra dime on the dastardly Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.
As I've stated previously, with fast download speeds and if you've configured your media collection via the apps I've alluded to, there's no need to RAID TV shows like My Mother the Car anymore IMO. I'm sorry I can't elaborate further on my 'secret' methods, but may Pasta be with you on your journey of possible discovery.
That may be true for most but many of us collect stuff that is more "obscure" or niche and redownloading at a later date often is not feasible/possible.
Talking about rare movies Blu-ray remux, never to be uploaded again
as you know a torrent is based off a swarm of people seeding bits of the file. You cant just retrieve everything you lost with no parity to recover from.
Who has the time to do this lol.
Imagine someone like myself with 250TB of data. It would take me a year to recover and hundreds of hours to recover if the torrent was even alive. Imagine getting 50KB transfer speed only to stop days later at 80% because the swarm died on a 4K UHD remux that was 50GB as an example. My media server wouldn't be like I had it . I have rebuilt 24TB parity in 3.5days and my data was still accessible with no down time. complaining about how long it takes or cost is just hillarious ,especially bragging about that he bought a USB transfer card to move data.
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