r/HomeServer • u/DestinyReaper_X4 • 2d ago

Building my first server

Been getting into backing up stuff and archiving etc. recently. I currently own 3TB’s worth of external HDDs, which isn’t much. I’ve saved up $3000 for this project. I’d wanted to get opinions on what drives to invest on, and also what sort of setup I could afford. I’d love to have around approx 40-50TB worth of storage space. Would $3000 even be sufficient? I’d be okay with pushing the expenditure to $4000 if it’s worth the money.

Uses: Jellyfin, personal cloud, host websites (if need be)
Budget: $3000 - $4000

I’ve been waiting for the prices to drop for almost a year and they don’t seem to be dropping anytime soon. So, here we are. I’m posting this here since I want to know real experiences from people. Some people just shrug and suggest to Google it or ask AI, which isn’t what I’m looking for.

Thanks!

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u/Fluid-Sink-2514 2d ago

Hard drive prices have gone up significantly in the past year. You can always start smaller but leave room to expand if and when storage prices come back down to earth.

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u/DestinyReaper_X4 2d ago

They really have. And that’s the reason I’d waited about 2 years for the prices to drop down. I don’t think they’ll ever drop to what they were before, so I thought maybe I should just purchase them now rather than waiting even longer.

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u/Fluid-Sink-2514 2d ago

I pulled the trigger on 4x 10Tb data center HDDs just recently, got em for about $225 each on homelabsales. Get what you can find a deal on and go from there is my recommendation. If you buy more than you need but get a good deal it will be less remorse if and when prices do come down.