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The original was posted on /r/datahoarder by /u/Phoenix_of_Anarchy on 2024-01-24 05:56:10+00:00.

I’ve been following this sub for a month or two now, after I set up a Plex server and realized I needed a lot more storage if I wanted to do anything real with it. Right now, all I’ve got is 4tb across 2 ssds (which I know is chump change for most people in this sub, but is pretty important to me for the speeds, and I’d like to free up the one I’m currently using to store Plex data as soon as possible) plus a bunch of little flash drives. What I’ve gathered is that, at least for a plex server, HDD speeds are going to be just fine and offer much more storage for much lower prices, but what is a good price per terabyte? Looking on Server Part Deals I see things for as low as ~$13-14 per tb. Is that a good deal? bad deal? suspiciously good? And while we’re at it, if I buy just the HDD itself and not a whole hard drive, I’ll need some sort of enclosure, right? So what is considered good for that? I did try looking on the wiki for these things, but many of the links are dead or I just don’t know how to decipher the information I’m given into what I do and don’t need. My endgame, when I win the lottery or otherwise have large sums of money to spend, seems to be NAS, but for right now I’m just looking for one or two, well priced, large units (10-15tb should be enough to rip my entire dvd collection and then I probably have another 10tb of junk either cluttering up other storage devices, that I want to download but don’t have the space for, and at least two boxes of paper files that I wouldn’t mind digitizing [though I know this won’t end up taking too much space]). Lastly, unrelated but I figure this is the place to ask, I’ve recently found that a youtube channel I used to watch deleted almost all of its content a couple of years ago. I can get some of the videos from re-uploads and a couple of them ended up on altCensored (I didn’t even know this was a thing until today) or the Wayback machine, but the majority of the catalogue is lost to me. Does this community know of anywhere else I could look? For a time the videos were just unlisted, but at some point they disappeared completely, and I’m at a loss looking for them. As you can tell, I’m a bit of a noob at this, but I’d love some pointers so I know that I’m doing it right. I should also say, because I get the feeling a lot of people here are big computer nerds, I don’t have a desktop. I have a laptop that I use for everything and an old potato laptop that I’m running Plex on, so any recommendations would need to be compatible with that setup. Again, I eventually intend to get a desktop, I just don’t have the money for it right now.

TL:DR:

  1. What is a good price/tb on hdds and where do I find the best deals?
  2. What are some good HDD enclosures (docks?) that I can rely on and won’t break the bank?
  3. Some of the terms still don’t make a lot of sense to me, based on my use described above, is there anything I should watch out for or be looking for in particular?
  4. Are there any places that I can look for deleted YouTube videos?

Thanks so much!