January 14, 20206 yr Hey guys, I am looking at redoing my home server. My current system is running Windows Server 2012r2 and I basically have stuff spread over 3 different size drives. I’ve basically just been adding drives as I need more storage, but it’s not really scalable. I’ve been keeping things in single drives mainly because of a hardware failure, since it’s used hardware, if the system dies I can basically just move the drive to a new system and keep going. It’s basically just being used for a PLEX server and file storage. It doesn't run any VM's. Current server specs: Core i7 3770 w/16GB RAM 1x 8TB HDD - Plex Media (50% full) 1x 4TB HDD - Random Crap / Backups (50% full) 1x 2TB HDD - Downloads / User Data (25% full) 1x 120GB SSD (OS) 2x1G Intel NIC (Bonded) I’ve got my old i7 4770k gaming system (16GB RAM) I’m thinking of using to upgrade my server, and if I do that it’s probably worth upgrading the OS. I like the idea of setting up an array, or drive pool, that I can just add drives to in the future to increase storage. I’m guessing I probably don’t just want to take the 3 drives I have and put them in a pool, as it likely won’t be the most efficient use of space. Should I just bite the bullet and get 2 more 8TB drives, keep my existing 8TB drive (for a total of 3x 8TB drives) and not worry about the other drives? What about an SSD Cache? I’ve got 2 240GB SSD’s I could put in for a cache. My biggest concern is moving existing data over. Since I’m running windows all my drives are NTFS, and if I just pop my drives into a drive pool I’d lose everything, so I’m guessing setting up a new system with new drives is the way to go. If I get 2 new 8TB drives, can I build a pool with that, copy my data over, then pop my 3rd 8TB drive in and just expand the available space? Another concern is if I have a hardware failure, can I move my drives and OS over to a new system easily? Thanks in advance.
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