NAS updates and drive stuff
So, the first of my 16TB hard drives have arrived to be used in my new NAS, so I still need to get 3-5 more, depending on how I want to handle things; if I want to do g for RAID5, I’ll probably go with a total of 4 drives minimum to replicate my old (4 bay) NAS setup. If I want to do RAID6, I’d need a minimum of 4 drives, but would want to have 5, with both setups leaving me with 48TB of storage, which is 4 times that of my old NAS as it’s configured! I imagine that 48TB should be a decent chunk of data to be working with, although maxing out the bays and using RAID6 would give me 64GB, which does offer double redundancy! As for the cost of the drives, I got this first one (an X18 Exos drive) via an eBay offer of £193.50, which is a significant discount compared to the £215 normally asked for!
I figured I’d need up to a total of 6 months to get all the drives if I buy one a month, and try and get the best prices for the drives. I also have 2 1TB WD Blues (SN580 if I recall correctly) that will be acting as cache drives, with the option of adding 2 more later if I want, though maybe I should actually keep an eye out for 2TB SSDs for the future, as having 4x 2TB SSDs – sticking with the WD Blues unless I find a cheaper supported SSD – sounds like a better idea, as then I’d have 8TB of cache to match the 64TB. Of course, to facilitate that, I’d also need to have heatsinks for each drive too, as it’s required by the NAS to have that. I also need to update the firmware as it’s a later ADM version that supports the Blues.
As for the overall costs of everything… Well, that’s definitely significant! This is what I’ve paid so far:
- Asustor Lockerstor 6 Gen2 AS6706T: ~£850 (paid)
- 2x WD Blues/SN580: ~£103.98 (paid)
- 2x ELUTENG SSD heatsinks: ~£11.18 (paid)
- 1x Seagate Exos X18 16TB (): £193.50 (paid)
- Total Paid: £1158.66
And these are my current estimated prices, based on what I would pay to buy them right now, for the stuff I need:
- 2x ELUTENG SSD heatsinks: ~£21.98 (waiting for sale)
- 2x WD Blues (SN580): £113.96 (waiting for sale)
- 5x Seagate Exos X16/X18 16TB HDDs: ~£1250 (monitoring prices)
- Total: £1385.94
I will note that when I do purchase additional items from the above list, I will update the prices I paid accordingly as I’ll probably pay for a few things at a time when it comes to the cheaper items, but this is why I need to buy things over a number of months! I’ll probably deploy RAID6 on the NAS just so I can use it because even with 32TB, it’s still not going to be filled up with everything I’d want to put on it, so I can gradually expand it at the very least! I do also need to recover the data from my old NAS array to put on the new one, but I need to get a 12TB drive to access that data! I’m also going to need to find the 4x SATA to USB adapters and USB hub I bought, so I know where they are, as they need to be with my portable archival station PAS!
I do also have a pair of HDD docking stations with 2 bays that I plan to setup at my desk later; I actually bought one with a card reader to go with one of the two I got at auction that don’t have a card reader at the front, because it’ll save me on space. The idea with using those docking stations is to setup the old array within them, and hopefully (when I can find it again) I can use the third one for my new array if I ever need to do so. The card reader bit is especially important as it means I will constantly have a card reader available, because it saves space! One issue though is that Linux is needed to access the array, which is a major reason why my PAS will be using it as its main OS. I do also want to get a USB adapter that would let me connect a 1541 drive to it too, but I am also getting a non-USB X1541 cable to use with my Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200/4300 Series with a crap screen just in case the USB method doesn’t work for some reason at the time!
I forget if I ever mentioned why the screen is crap; it has a passive matrix rather than active matrix screen, which is a damn shame because it would otherwise have been a perfect retro gaming laptop, as it has decent specs otherwise, including a DOS-supported sound chip, an OPL3, which is extremely important for running DOS games! Additionally, it has an 8MB S3 Savage/IX card (if I recall correctly) which will be powerful enough for most, if not all DOS games, and at least some early Win9x games too. Additionally, it has both parallel and serial ports, which can be pretty essential for certain applications. It might fall a bit short with games like Unreal Tournament, but by that point, you’d be fine running an XP based machine with a more powerful GPU anyway!
The best way I can compare it is that it’s basically a Toshiba Portegé 3440CT with parallel and serial ports (it has neither), and a sound chip that will work under DOS with no tweaks or extra software needed. Truth be told, I need to revisit the 3440CTs and the 3110CTs to see if you can enable the sound cards to work in DOS as they were aimed at Windows. All 3 of these model sets are capable of running Windows 98 SE and also XP, though as the 3110CTs have a Mobile Pentium II CPU, you’d probably be better off running XP on the other 2, as they use Pentium IIIs or Celerons based on that architecture. You do also have a single USB port on all of them as far as I know, if that’s useful at all. They also have dual PC Card slots as well, so adding a parallel or serial port to the Portegés isn’t a problem, though you are best off adding those to the top one to keep the bottom one clear for a card without a big thing sticking out the end!
Of course, with the parallel and serial cards, it’s one or the other and not both unless you manage to source a docking station, but at that point, you probably will have those ports (and maybe even a game and Ethernet port) anyway! I haven’t delved too much into the Portegés beyond compiling their specs into a spreadsheet along with other Toshiba models, but that’s been left incomplete for years at this point! That said though, if anyone wants to see the unfinished sheet, do let me know! I’ll probably get back to it eventually, but I also need to take a couple of days to work out what else I need to do to finish it off! Either way though, looping back to the Satellite Pro I have (I think it’s a 4210), it’ll never work for most games unless there’s slow movement, which rules out most action games, but anything turn-based or text based should be fine! It does also have built-in floppy and optical drives too, which makes it easier to rip those media types without needing anything extra, apart from more exotic formats.
But yeah, I still have a long way to go to meet some of my goals, especially as I need to find a decently priced 12TB HDD to transfer the data, be that an external, or an internal connected via a SATA adapter or even just using a purchased enclosure to keep it safe till I’m ready to move over the data, especially as I need to wipe the old array to reset and also fix it! This is by far my longest post to date, but it does go into detail about my plans regarding both my NAS boxes, and the associated hardware I need to achieve those plans. I’m doing this all entirely out of pocket, hence why it’ll be accomplished slowly, and with more emphasis on saving money, although even if I was getting supported by others – which I’m not really ready for at this point, hence why I don’t talk about anything like that – I’d be inclined to get the best prices for things anyway! I do need to shake up all of those platforms as I have presences on them in order to have provision for when I think that I’m ready to be at that point, plus it’s about reserving the handles, especially as it’s not just myself that I’m doing it for!
Anyway, that’s pretty much it for now. I will be updating the lists as and when I get more items, but I’ll probably be keeping an eye on any upcoming sales too, so I can save as much money as possible, especially due to the sheer amount of stuff (not just mentioned here) I have to purchase to get stuff moving along! I’m also probably going to be doing a short video of me installing the SSDs (with putting the heatsinks on) and HDD in the NAS, as well as also showing where to put the outside stick of RAM whilst I’m at it, but not the inside because that was a bastard to get in there! Hopefully, this year will be the time where everything can take off, because I have other plans including a Web server and game server, as well as also a home lab, but more on those later!
#2025 #computerHardware #computerRepairsUpgrades #ComputerStorage #Filming #FuturePlans #hardwareUpgrades #LBRYOdyseeVideoPlatform_ #NewsUpdates #rantsRaves #StormSWorkshop #StormSWorkshopSGU_ #StormkeeperSWorkshop #Toshiba3110CT #Toshiba3440CT #ToshibaLaptops #Update #Videos #Windows2kXPLaptops #Windows9xLaptops #YouTube
Not AI-generated 
