I want to turn my old desktop into a storage only device

You still need a backup plan and it sounds is if you're better off investing in a burner and blank disks. You can easily network the old desktop and attach as many hard drives as you have available ports. There really isn't a daisy chain option that I know of. In any event, you can network that PC and create shares on all the drives you want to attach. You can make it headless and tuck it in a corner somewhere. You'd make sure to install some sort of remote desktop on it if it didn't come with that capability. Anyway, you could deposit all the files you wanted but the hard drives will eventually fail. You'd lose only what's on the failed drive unless some theft or other calamity occurred. Again, temporary storage is all that we could call such a use for your desktop and not backup.

Network Attached Storage. Google it.

The plain fact is, no matter what type of HDs you have they can fail.

Your quest is very simple, just buy the biggest HDs you can and install into your old desktop. Make sure everything works and when you have data to swap into it, use the ext. HD and transfer over. While that seems like a good idea, beware you still have all the issues of a back-up, so whatever you DEEM CRITICAL DATA, burn it to CD/DVDs. Your laptop is probably has wi-fi ready, make a network and also do it that way as well, via the wi-fi or if you like a wired network. These all get your data to the desktop one way or another. Again, the above works once set-up but as always the HDs are h/w devices and they do fail. For all the data you say you generate, only you can determine what's worth saving. As another poster offered a NAS setup will also provide storage as well. No matter what the setup, figure your cost, the amt. of data, and what data to keep/save.

FYI- Don't count on ext. HD as permanent storage, they too are prone to failure, more so IMHO. I do like your idea, but again these are h/w devices that can fail for whatever reason. good luck

tada -----Willy

So if I back up my photos to DVD, I'd accumulate between 500-750 DVD discs every year. And of course if I make one back up DVD, I need to make a second back up DVD in case the first DVD fails. That's daunting; 1000-1500 DVDs each year. EEP!

Suggest you turn your old PC into a RAID Server. This method of storage was very popular a few years ago, and if you can, you might be able to save your data very safely, although there will be some expense (Where isn't there?)

Go to: <http://cnettv.cnet.com/?tag=hdr;snav#> When the CNET TV site opens up, type "Build a RAID Server" into the search box. A "how-to" vid will open up, showing you how to build the server.

Good Luck!

Yikes! Burn 1500 DVDs a year? You can't be serious. That's absurd. The DVDs may be more reliable, but they won't be substantially cheaper than hard drives. you'll save, what, maybe 20% or 30%? Probably no savings at all if you buy archival quality disks. If you factor in the time it takes to burn them, the DVDs are a LOT more expensive, even if you "semi-automate" the process, and even if you price out your time at, say, a dollar an hour!


You might want to consider blu-ray disks. The price per GB is even higher, but you'll have fewer disks to burn.

Another possibility is to get a USB hard drive dock. Cavalry (and others) makes a 2-bay unit for around $30 or $40. You plug up to two internal hard drives into the dock and conveniently access them like an external drive. You can even hot plug the drives in and out. It's sort of like a USB flash card reader except that you plug an entire hard drive into it. When you fill one up, just pull it out and plug in another. It's certainly cheaper than just buying external drives. Yes, hard drives may not be as reliable, but once you fill one up, you don't have to keep it running (I wonder what the life of a hard drive is if you just keep it on a shelf non-operating?)

Either a raid server or an NAS might be a good idea. You could build or buy one as mentioned, but let's say you put in four 2TB drives. You'll get some protection against a failure of any one drive, and get, say, 6TB of useful storage. But that will last you for, what, maybe two years? Are you going to have and maintain a whole server farm?

Whatever method you use, for this much data you will want to periodically check your data integrity as well. As you have already surmised, redundancy is also a needed part of the process.

You do have one thing in your favor; technology keeps advancing. A few years from now, you'll be able to buy bigger and faster storage for less money.

Another question is what your backup needs truly are. Do you need to archive 2-3TB/year, every year, in the foreseable future? Do you need to save everything for family, or as art, for posterity, possibly 50, 100 years, or more? Or do you need to save things for a few years max, after which your clients will no longer be ordering reprints?

Last, I have to wonder, 2-3TB a year? Maybe I'm missing something, but even if you have a high end professional camera and store everything as raw data at maximum resolution, you still must be taking pictures, what, every minute of your waking life, except for eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom! That doesn't include the time it takes to get the pictures out of your camera, edit them, back them up, or even look at them. After enough years, you literally will not have the time just to look at them even if you spend every single waking moment of your remaining life!

I came across this thread almost by accident. Download the iso for FreeNAS. It's a Linux based OS that is perfect for what you need. I know I am 3 years late, but if anyone else comes across this thread I hope it helps them. If your desktop has onboard RAID I suggest 2 drives in a RAID1 mirror.

http://www.freenas.org/