r/DataHoarder

So I'm building a NAS in a dxp8800 plus running TrueNas. I decided on 6 WD Red Pro 24TB drives in a Z2 pool.

The drives are out of stock everywhere or sold by third parties at ridiculous prices ($700 to $900)

A few weeks ago, I found two at a local microcenter for $509. I bought them.

Then a couple weeks later, at another near by microcenter, they got 2 in stock. I thought well maybe they'll come back in stock at my local microcenter. They did not and by the time I realized I should have just drove out there to buy them, they were gone.

A week after that, 2 more appear at an even further microcenter. I'm not driving... forget it. I'll wait, maybe I'll just go... nope... too slow. they're gone now.

2 weeks later... 2 more appear at a microcenter 2+ hours away. OK... lets do this! There isn't another chance of this happening any time soon so I'm set on going. Remember I only had 2 drives at this point. I drive out there and pick up 2 additional drives. That was a 4 hour trip.

I now have 4 drives.

Microcenter does not restock them anywhere. Then a couple weeks go by of checking Amazon daily... and suddenly I see $509 price on amazon, sold by amazon and will arrive a week or two later. I scramble to order them. It wont let me order more than 1 drive at a time. sigh.

I buy 1 drive on amazon. Then I get clever and order another single drive on amazon. They then no longer appear for sale on Amazon. Amazon may have only had a 2 or a few drives for $509. I checked yesterday and they had a couple sold by amazon for $650, they sold immediately and they're gone now.

Anyways the drives shipped. They're pictured above. I now have my 6 WD Red pro drives. I can't believe how challenging it is to buy something these days at retail, at retail price. $509 is already ridiculously overpriced but I think the lesson here is, if you see it and you need it, buy it or you may wait a long time, or pay a lot more later.

Side note. I almost switched to Toshiba drives, microcenter had a few 24TB Toshibas but they went from $500 to $850. I could have picked up two Toshibas for $500 with my first pair of Reds but decided against it.

I also tried to quickly post here to tell people Amazon had the WD Red Pro 24TB drives in stock for $509... by the time I wrote that post, they were sold out.

Are you all finding it just as difficult to get drives? Even the recertified or refurbished prices are right up there with the retail prices. Also it seems Seagate Iron Wolves are a more available. I almost decided to get them instead but they are more expensive. I did see their price drop a bit lower at times but they quickly sold out at best buy. I picked the worst time to build a NAS.

About 2 years ago, I decided to move a few of my servers that contain precious data to some great deal VPSs I picked up during Black Friday. After migrating all the data, I set up Duplicati on one of the servers to handle backups.

While configuring it, I came across something pretty concerning. It can silently corrupt backups over time. So when I  actually need to restore data after a disaster, the backups might not even work. Realizing this made me feel like the whole migration was a mistake.

After digging into alternatives, I found that Restic is considered one of the most reliable backup solutions. The problem is that it’s very bare-bones. I had to write a lot of scripts just to make it work for my use case, and even then, there is no visual interface since it is purely CLI-based. As someone who prefers working with a UI, this was not ideal.

I also tried Backrest after some research, but the UI felt confusing, and it was missing quite a few features I needed. I still had to rely on scripts for a lot of things.

Since I am a seasoned developer, I decided to build my own wrapper around Restic and publish it as an open source project, as there are not many polished self-hosted backup solutions. I wanted something with a UI similar to Duplicati, where creating and scheduling backups would be simple and intuitive. I initially thought it would take maybe a month. But boy was I wrong. It ended up taking almost 16 months to build, but the result is Pluton, a pretty robust backup app.

Here are the key Features of Pluton:

•   Automated Incremental backups with encryption, compression, and deduplication powered by Restic.
•   Backup Replication: Auto-backup your content to multiple cloud storage to create 3-2-1 backup plans. Even if one storage goes bust or gets corrupted, I can sleep well knowing I can recover it from another cloud.
•   End-to-end encryption: Backups are totally encrypted from your local machine to your cloud storage. The storage provider can't scan the data or train AI.
•   70+ Storage Support: Store encrypted data to any cloud storage (powered by rclone).
•   Easy Restore & Download: Restore or download backed-up snapshot data easily with just a few clicks.
•   Event Notifications: Get email/Slack/Discord/Push notifications on Backup start, end, completion or failure.
•   Auto Retry Logic: Automatically retries backups if they fail with customization options.
•   Intuitive UI: Manage everything from a single, clean interface.
•   Real-time Progress Tracking: Track the progress of backups in real time.
•   Extensive Logging: View app and backup logs right from the UI for better debugging.
•   Run Scripts before/after: Ability to run scripts before and after running backups.

Pluton can be installed on Windows, macOS, Linux Desktop, and can also be deployed on servers with or without Docker. Give it a try:

Link: https://github.com/plutonhq/pluton
License: Apache 2.0

Feedbacks appreciated.

Found a Samsung PM893 7.68TB SATA SSD on marketplace for $485 only. He lives not too far away, I asked if I can test it before purchase. So he brought the SSD within an hour, checked and registered on Samsung website, no problem. SMART showing zero hours, and 113GB written.

Started doing full write and read surface test, writing at 380MB/s on a USB 10Gbps enclosure already halfway through, and then the read test will happen, showing total 11 hours to complete.

Are there any other test that I should be doing? He left the SSD with me as the test will take longer. I can still give it back, but so far everything seems ok.

Hi everyone,

I’m considering buying a WD My Passport 2TB (75$) external hard drive mainly to back up my personal files. Most of my data consists of photography and cinematography projects, which are a hobby of mine. I also plan to occasionally connect the drive to my laptop to view these files.

I’m not a professional and don’t need anything too advanced, but I’d like something reliable and durable for long-term storage. I’m also curious about the built-in encryption feature and whether it’s useful in practice.

Would this be a good choice for my needs? Are there any reliability concerns or better alternatives in a similar price range? Additionally, would you recommend using a single drive for backup, or should I consider a second backup option?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

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