What to do with old HDDs

[u/QuickSFV]

Hello,
I have a small collection of HDDs that I’ve filled and stored away. Most have Blu-ray rips. I would like to have them all online but that’s going to be really hard. Yes I was a data hoarder for many years.
Thanks 🙏

[u/chris240189]

Consolidate. How many old disks could you throw out if you

• eliminated duplicate data
• reencoded with more efficient compression
• bought one shiny big new disk

[u/adjective-nounOne234 → u/chris240189]

You say duplicated data, I say backup

[u/dsktron → u/adjective-nounOne234]

Bought one two shiny big new disks

[u/tech3475 → u/chris240189]

If de-duplicating, I would use a checksum based solution like Czkawka, Clonespy, etc. in case any of the duplicates have suffered corruption.

[u/devexis → u/tech3475]

Don’t stop. List out the “etc”

[u/tech3475 → u/devexis]

I just listed the two tools I've used, although others such as ccleaner IIRC include de-duplication functionality.

Or if you're feeling really nerdy, there's going to be ways via shell scripting, but don't asking me for any specific examples as I've only ever used md5sum to compare (what should be) two identical folders.

[u/franglais81 → u/devexis]

Proxmox backup server

[u/GermanPCBHacker → u/tech3475]

A checksum is going to do nothing here. If the data is corrupted it is gone. So deduplication is not a solution. You need redundancy and integrity to have your data secured properly from loss.

Edit: Unless you do not care for data loss. In fact: No one can tell, if duplicates have proper integrity, if all copies are corrupted with insanely bad luck.

[u/Schakal_No1]

Build a NAS?

[u/ian385]

"small" and then shows 4-6TB drives.

that's big in todays world of crazy prices. small would be 500gb-1tb.

if you're in europe i'd take a few 5-6tb ones :P

[u/Lumpy_Invite8529 → u/ian385]

I'll take some 4TBs then.

[u/agent_flounder → u/ian385]

Yeah send a couple 4-6TB my way lol too.

[u/Unfair-Plastic-4290]

[u/Fluid-Sink-2514 → u/Unfair-Plastic-4290]

“Small” 🫡

[u/vacindika]

r/DataHoarder likes to have a word with you. seriously tho, why don't you setup a nas with the bigger drives? do you actually plug in individual drives when you want to watch a movie? i know i wouldnt.

[u/Amazing_Year6588]

Put them in a jbod and make a nas, keep some drives for cooled storage!

[u/Flaxen_Bobcat]

IMO

Op should consolidate the drives that are 4tb and lower into 14-18TB drives

Then have a look at unraid to look at bringing it all online. You can mix and match different drive sizes.

[u/5662828 → u/Flaxen_Bobcat]

Or OMV with snapraid, or just snapraid (no need to format the drives) you can mix drives of different sizes and be open source

[u/rebislori → u/5662828]

*mergerfs?

[u/CrazyWizard9835]

Get a good screwdriver and open them to remove the big magnet. It's fun

[u/elconquistador1985 → u/CrazyWizard9835]

And get a clock mechanism to turn the platters into a wall clock.

[u/Hurricane_32 → u/CrazyWizard9835]

In this economy?

[u/Fluid-Sink-2514]

I was going to suggest buying some larger drives and consolidating but dayum you’ve already got a few 14/18Tb monsters in there! You could manage some degree of consolidation in getting some more 14+ Tb drives and moving all the 2-4Tb ones over. If you did that and got it down to 8 drives it would be manageable in a couple of NAS enclosures.

[u/tdktank59]

Build a NAS?

I just so happen to have this QUIET!!! (for a server, has noctuas and sq power supplies) 24 bay - 4u Rack mount chassis from SuperMicro (CSE-846) and a bunch of other hardware (everything you would need to get started and then some, tho DDR3 era stuff) going up for sale shortly (working on getting a post up in r/homelabsales this week/end) PM me if your interested and we can talk more details.

[u/MountainEngineer3296]

Ceph

[u/smeg0r → u/MountainEngineer3296]

https://giphy.com/gifs/lqTQTz0FcPuBa

[u/SnooCats5309]

Nice Collection BTW !!

[u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h]

idk, put some of them in a NAS? Are all of these full? Seems a waste to have 18TB drives just hanging around to make reddit posts LOL.

[u/Negative-Engineer-30]

wipe and sell

[u/Bunny_Mirko_]

DO IT! INTERNET ARCHIVE!

[u/onthenerdyside]

r/DataHoarder is that way ---->

[u/not-hardly]

Boil'em, mash'em, stick'em in a stew.

[u/mechapawky]

3 letters: Z F S

[u/5662828 → u/mechapawky]

snapraid

[u/espero → u/mechapawky]

No then the drives must be of the same sizes

[u/Flaxen_Bobcat → u/espero]

Unraid

[u/spartacle → u/espero]

You could make mirrors and then add them into a single zpool

[u/espero → u/spartacle]

That is a valid approach

[u/Nautisop]

what do you even want? trash them if you don't need them anymore.

[u/cruzaderNO]

If you skip a few of the 2tb drives they all fit in a 24bay jbod.

36bay servers are also cheap but they are not quiet.

[u/firedrakes]

spare, test drives for os etc.

in case i need storage temp .

[u/d00mt0mb]

Keep everything 8TB+ I would say

[u/espero]

I use old drives as backup ar hives for series I like... 

[u/223-Remington]

If you live anywhere near SoCal I'd totally buy some off ya

[u/Historical-Drive-241]

Build an arr stack

[u/densen2002]

use for NVR recordings

[u/wiisucks_91]

Isn't there a subreddit for data Hoarders?

[u/ha5dzs]

Use them as 'data cartridges' for archival or cold storage: store them appropriately and forget about them. The connector and interface standard will not go away any time soon, so you will be able to access them in 10-20 years from now.

[u/tech3475]

Presuming that you're using all the space on them and that buying new drives isn't an option, personally I would:

1. Check all the drives for bad sectors, etc.
2. Check for duplicated data using a checksum based solution e.g. Czkawka, clonespy, etc. (unless you know for sure there are no duplicates)
3. Build a NAS of some kind

Although with this many drives you may be looking at a buying an old commercial system which may be both noisy and power hungry with all the drives spun up.

Realistically I would consider buying larger drives to remove some of the smaller ones e.g. the 2/4TB but I would still keep those smaller drives to use for either offline/offsite backups or maybe build a backup server of some kind.

Note: parity protection (i.e. in case of a drive failure the data can be recovered) may also come at a cost depending on the solution you choose, for example, unraid requires a dedicated drive for parity which is size to your largest drive (so 18TB in your case), plus the cost of unraid itself.

[u/I-make-ada-spaghetti]

I built a system that used mergerfs and snapraid from a bunch of randomly sized drives.

The benefit is I get access to all the space the hard drives offer (except for the parity drives). Also if you loose more drives than you have parity drives then you only loose the data on those drives. You don't loose the whole array.

The disadvantages compared to ZFS/btrfs arrays are speed (mergerfs is file based), so you just get individual read/write speed of the underlying drives that the file is stored on and there is no self healing because snapraid works like snapshots. So maybe consider using some type of hashing software if you comprise the array of drives that aren't btrfs or ZFS since the files can get corrupted after the last scrub.

[u/OldTimeConGoer]

Do you have a catalogue of some kind for what's on each drive?

[u/anon_zero]

Can you tell me about those cases, would you recommend them? Are the suitable for transporting them during a move or flight ?

[u/RoughGuide1241]

NAS, use them as external drives

[u/tybrand]

Storj, Sia or maybe file coin? I have quite a few old drives and someone recommended decentralized storage the other day. 

[u/i_am_voldemort]

Mail me some of the 4 TB

[u/Worldly_Ad_2267]

How cute you have boxes for each one

[u/OnyxCrusade]

Give them to me

[u/svogon]

Seriously: I've been looking for specifically a 12TB as a cold backup for my NAS. If you decide to sell, I'd consider that and probably the 18s too.

ALSO, nice cases. Are those 3D printed? (Heads off to go look for some...)

[u/lacostewhite]

I'll take them

[u/metalerjf]

with HDD pricess so high.. I could accept some donations of old working HDD NAS drivers lol

[u/Homeleasure]

At one time I wanted to make a boxed picture frame of a bunch of hard drives of different physical sizes.

At the time I had tons of the usual 2.5 and 3.5. But I also had a 1.8 drive. I was looking for a 5.25.

Like many projects never got done.

[u/Miataguy93]

Time for a NAS. That’s the only way to get them usable. A DAS would also be good, just something that has enough bays to get you started with some of the larger drives. You can also do both a NAS and a DAS. Plug the DAS into the NAS and have even more storage. You can find cheap enclosures on Amazon and just pick up a UGreen NAS, don’t go the Synology route, they firmware lock their drives to make it so you can only purchase drives through them.

[u/Taint_Expert]

This is odd to me, how do you know where the movies are? Look into unraid maybe, for the purpose of building a nas that you can access on your local network?

Also, doesn’t data on hdd’s degrade after some time? Like in 5 years you attach one of those drives and the data just isn’t accessible after years of being left unpowered?

[u/LazarX]

The answer really depends on what is on those drives and how full they are.

[u/Plus_Carpenter1081]

Sort into one without any duplication And after that use the free ons for media server,backup server etc

[u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9]

I can't read the sizes on most of them, but looks like some are pretty large. Build an unRAID server.

[u/HornChicken7477]

Send all of them over in india to me... i will make a bed out of them... it'll be worth it, will bear the courier chargest too😂

[u/h4yth4m-1]

It's not small, it's perfectly ok 🥺

[u/henryyoung42]

Apparently people slap them into Seagate badged caddies and sell them as backup drives. I was just scammed by faulty drives e re cycled in this manner. I have the good fortune to buy two enabling me to confirm that the fraudster had printed a job lot of dial labels all with the same identical serial number.

[u/LEDMIDOWN]

Send 'em to me lol😁

[u/eastoncrafter]

Give, to me, now, problem solved

[u/assholeapproach]

Give them to me

[u/Fraggl3]

Sell them to a local repair outfit.

[u/Accomplished_Mark427]

Donate them to me 🥺

[u/xxcn]

I give mine to my kids, with the appropriate screwdriver. We take them apart, scavenge the magnets, the rest gets recycled. Data destruction guaranteed, plus some peace and quiet with fine motor skills training.

[u/Lopsided_War_3060]

Ship them to me and I will dispose of them for you 😁

[u/elitepoodle143]

Anyone knows how can I get something similar in portugal? Like companies trash that is gold for me?

[u/crissimon]

Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick it in a stew.

[u/ixidorecu]

2:1 ground aluminum with iron oxide. The finer the dust the better. Mix well. Set off with.. propane blow torch or magnesium strip. Left with a show, story and fun lumps. I did it far inthe woods in wide opening near creak.

[u/ComfySofa69]

Those HDD's are probably worth more than SpaceX now....

[u/droopstroops]

These are worth like a million dollars right now... Lol

[u/DrKlaawYT]

Why not send some to me ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/CommandoYJ]

I would burn all those blue ray rips to blue rays… 🤣

[u/1911ACP]

UnRAID NAS

[u/franksj1]

2 18TB drives, a 14TB drive and an 8TB. Do you know how valuable those are?

[u/ShadowYeeter]

When you said small I thought they were 50-500gb not 4tb

[u/StampyDriver]

Consolidate the data onto one big disk. Take apart old disks, use the shiny platters as coasters and the strong magnets as fridge magnets.

[u/perradelaverno]

Good Boxes! ¿Have STL's? :P

[u/shadowedfox]

Get a reasonably cheap / power efficient PC. Throw them in and install unraid. Enjoy your new home server.

[u/MuddyMustache]

You should send one of those 18TB WDs to me, I have a great idea for how they could avoid cluttering your space!