I want to build a proper server with room for 40+ HDDs to move my media server to and have RAID 1. I know a lot about PCs and software, but when it comes to server hardware I have no clue what I’m doing. How would I go about building a server that has access to 40+ RAID 1’d HDDs?
40-drive RAID is moving out of homelab territory and pretty deep into enterprise storage systems.
Do you already have these 40 drives or are you spacing out a new NAS from scratch?
If it’s from scratch I’d first see if I could get it down to 20 or 24 larger drives to allow the whole thing to fit in a single 4U rackmount case.
Bigger than that and you’re probably stuck with proprietary NAS hardware to link together multiple racks.
With 140TB+ of existing data, I would need 16 18TB HDDs to have RAID 1, and I also need the ability to expand. Really, I just need to have all the data accessible over the network so I can manage it from my main PC and stream it via a Plex/Jellyfin server. Maybe 4 smaller DIY NAS systems accessed by a separate system? I would really prefer no proprietary software if I can avoid it, and enterprise is out of my price range after I’ll be spending $3,000+ on HDDs.