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I am looking for a solution to an issue ...
TL;DR: I have 20 hard drives full of various data, often not connected to any device, just laying around, and I need a solution to organize data on them, make that data accessible, and organize a back up solution to that data.
And ideally I want to do this without hiring a full time staff of professional data center folks.
Details..
I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to storing data, and the way I dealt with it so far was .. when my PC's HDD gets sufficiently full, I put in a new one into my PC, copy essential data that I need onto it, and put the old one on the shelf. I usually got drives in pairs, so I had two of everything. Then I repeat this for a few years. Past year's photos/etc are typically not accessible, and are in few many different places, I don't even know for sure on which hard drive or what folder exactly on what hard drive. I need a good starting platform to lay out all the data in front of me and so I can start organizing it. I also want to make this data accessible to not only me but to others on my LAN. Thus it is not only storage needs that I have, but layout and fair processing power - enough to copy/move files around for a while, and actively work on them sometimes, and not just "store them and forget them".
So current situation is that I have these drives (unconnected):
All of these drives with an exception of maybe one or two are FULL, like totally full, in some cases maybe with 5-10% to spare.
The naive approach: for a while I thought I could organize them one at a time - buy a hard drive that is 2 times larger than my current one, put stuff on that, and things will be good. Except .. they weren't - eventually that drive became full and I bought another one 2x larger, repeat. And here we are with that approach.. Even if I get a 20Tb Drive now if one exists, it will probably help me, but then I might end up here later adding the 20Tb drive to my list, plus what do I do with my existing drive eh?
I also wanted to try a thing to where I connect one, go through it, organize it, label it, and then ... put it back on the shelf.. That didn't work very well either as it's back on the shelf again... and how do you organize or use something that is not accessible?
So I am looking for something that will help me see all drives and work with them, storage large enough to where I can manipulate/move around/work on data and have that data be accessible to others as well, and back my data up.
Any advice on organizing things will help too!
Can you help & suggest things from general soft guidelines to specific hardware solutions or anything in between?
TL;DR: I have 20 hard drives full of various data, often not connected to any device, just laying around, and I need a solution to organize data on them, make that data accessible, and organize a back up solution to that data.
And ideally I want to do this without hiring a full time staff of professional data center folks.
Details..
I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to storing data, and the way I dealt with it so far was .. when my PC's HDD gets sufficiently full, I put in a new one into my PC, copy essential data that I need onto it, and put the old one on the shelf. I usually got drives in pairs, so I had two of everything. Then I repeat this for a few years. Past year's photos/etc are typically not accessible, and are in few many different places, I don't even know for sure on which hard drive or what folder exactly on what hard drive. I need a good starting platform to lay out all the data in front of me and so I can start organizing it. I also want to make this data accessible to not only me but to others on my LAN. Thus it is not only storage needs that I have, but layout and fair processing power - enough to copy/move files around for a while, and actively work on them sometimes, and not just "store them and forget them".
So current situation is that I have these drives (unconnected):
- 1TB WD1001FALS
- 320Gb WD3200
- 320Gb WD3200AAJB
- 320Gb 6A320YO Maxtor (2 drives)
- 2Tb WD20EARX
- 60Gb WD600 (2 drives)
- 80Gb D540X-4K (Maxtor)
- 130.6Mb ST3145A
- 300Gb BANC1B70 Maxtor (2 drives)
- 60Gb WD600
- 1080Mb ST31082A (Seagate)
- 250Gb WD2500JB
- 500Gb WD5000AAKS
- 164.7Gb HDS722516VLSA80 (Hitachi)
All of these drives with an exception of maybe one or two are FULL, like totally full, in some cases maybe with 5-10% to spare.
The naive approach: for a while I thought I could organize them one at a time - buy a hard drive that is 2 times larger than my current one, put stuff on that, and things will be good. Except .. they weren't - eventually that drive became full and I bought another one 2x larger, repeat. And here we are with that approach.. Even if I get a 20Tb Drive now if one exists, it will probably help me, but then I might end up here later adding the 20Tb drive to my list, plus what do I do with my existing drive eh?
I also wanted to try a thing to where I connect one, go through it, organize it, label it, and then ... put it back on the shelf.. That didn't work very well either as it's back on the shelf again... and how do you organize or use something that is not accessible?
So I am looking for something that will help me see all drives and work with them, storage large enough to where I can manipulate/move around/work on data and have that data be accessible to others as well, and back my data up.
Any advice on organizing things will help too!
Can you help & suggest things from general soft guidelines to specific hardware solutions or anything in between?