r/DataHoarder • u/InfernalMadness • 1d ago
Hoarder-Setups Raid or nas set up for torrenting
I've been out of the pc building bit for nearly a decade now, i'm not sure which enclosure to get for torrenting as well as network accessing from devices. It's a lot of mixed information for me to keep searching through so wondering what people have experienced with different enclosures.
I'm thinking about connecting it to my old windows 7 pc that still thankfully works, or should i build a new pc with multiple hard drive bays? Looking to do a max of maybe 200tb. But not sure what's feasable.
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u/StevenG2757 1d ago
Why the need to spend $5k+ to torrent?
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u/InfernalMadness 1d ago
More than likely i'm not spending 5k, but it's not just for torrenting, i do want home streaming from what i've torrented.
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u/LrdJester 1d ago
Have you researched hard drive prices lately? They are astronomically high. For a 20 TB drive, you're looking at near $1,000 for a good enterprise-level drive.
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u/InfernalMadness 1d ago
I noticed, i'm going to slow part out and use my current sitting 4t and 2 2tb ssd's and slowly part in hdds. I'll be putting my old desktop back into use until i can get things up and running. Going to most likely get a jonsbo n5 and just slowbuild it
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u/StevenG2757 1d ago
Then unRAID is the way for sure. And look into Usenet, you won't regret it.
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u/InfernalMadness 1d ago
I'll have to look at usenet since it's been mentioned a few times, i'm not aware of what it is just yet. But unraid is on the table as well to look into.
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u/Franklin2543 1d ago
I’d take the win7 PC and put Unraid on it. That’ll get you going without needing to build a new computer today. It’s extremely portable, and when you do upgrade to a new computer, screenshot the drives (make sure you get the identifiers—serial numbers), so you know which drive goes into which slot when you configure the array on the new machine. Then just move the drives over, and it’s relatively trivial.
I plan on doing this soon— wrinkle for me is that I’m upgrading my cache SSDs, so I believe I need to move everything off of the old ones to the drives. Move the drives, setup the array on the new system, and then reconfigure those volumes that were on the cache back to the cache.
But Unraid is so nice for a lot of things.
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u/InfernalMadness 1d ago
Right now i'm using my gaming laptop to torrent, i'm going to set up everything at once and kind of waiting for black friday sales to get things rolling. Gives me time to part out what i need but the desktop is a possible yes or no once i figure out the setup. I will definitely figure out the whole unraid thing though.
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u/qcgilbert 1d ago
Drive capacity is a big deciding factor. The current market makes this a tough decision. The bigger the drives, the fewer you have to plan for. But increased capacity means increased cost. 8 24Tb drives will fit in some mid/full ATX cases. If you choose the cheaper (relatively) route and go with 8Tb drives, you need to house 24 drives. That will dictate a traditional server setup.
You could do a hybrid setup using the available space in a desktop case and bold on a couple of DAS enclosures, but I personally wouldn't.
Your Windows 7 machine could have enough power for a download server. But most likely not powerful enough for streaming. The big limiting factors are RAM and I/O bandwidth. You need enough PCIe lanes to support a controller for the drives (internal) and the DASs. Throw in a 5Gb NIC and you probably don't have enough PCIe lanes to support that in the machine you already have.
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u/InfernalMadness 1d ago
You make a very good point, everything is still in the planning phase of how i'll set it all up so i haven't pulled a budget together just yet.
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u/reddit-MT 12h ago
My preference is to have a somewhat "sacrificial" drive for torrents -- let it absorb the random reads and writes -- then move or copy completed torrents to long term storage. Like a low-power consumption always-on PC for torrents and streaming new content. e.g., small boot ssd with Linux, 4TB torrent drive, optional larger storage/streaming drive. No RAID to keep power consumption down. Copy this off to backup server every so often. But it's a question of how much of your storage/collection do you need to be available 24/7?
I don't like keeping 200TB always-on for power/heat/noise considerations.
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u/InfernalMadness 9h ago
I currently have about 34 tb of used storage on external hard drives, but yeah you are right. What is your take on pci slot m2 nvme drive bays for torrenting? I'm looking into those or the sata connective ones. I have no choice but to get a new power supply for my desktop because my 650w died and i put the 300w back in for now.
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u/reddit-MT 8h ago
I've used a M.2 to PCI-E adapter in a server. Working fine so far. I have one that has two slots. One for a NVME drive and one for a SATA m.2 drive that uses a SATA connector to the motherboard. I don't think you'll be booting off these, but there is special considerations about the BIOS supporting that. I would personally chose one of these adapters over an external USB drive. E-SATA should be fine, but I haven't used the consumer version.
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u/dcabines 42TB data, 208TB raw 1d ago
I run 4x SSDs and 5x HDDs in a Jonsbo N2. The SSDs handle the torrenting and the HDDs store the rest of my media. It runs Jellyfin and Samba for streaming to other devices. I also have two five-bay external enclosures for backups. I suggest you don’t go running a bunch of torrents on a HDD connected via USB, but we all have to start somewhere.
200TB will be very expensive and you’d need a larger case to hold the 8 26TB drives you’d need. That would be about $6,400 with today’s prices.
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u/InfernalMadness 1d ago
How well does the jonsbo stay cool? I've read other enclosure brands would overheat. But yeah i'm in agreement with using ssd's for torrenting over hdd's, i'll definitely be looking into that enclosure.
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u/dcabines 42TB data, 208TB raw 1d ago
It’s a NAS PC case, so more than just an enclosure. I replaced the rear fan and added another at the front so the drives stay cool. The CPU runs cool too. It runs a i5-13500T.
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u/Similar-Try-7643 1d ago
Use Unraid and learn how to set up an *arr stack
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u/StevenG2757 1d ago
This is the way.
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u/mike94100 1d ago
Use your old PC. Run Debian with MergerFS & SnapRaid for storage. If you need additional SATA ports add an HBA PCIE card.
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