Introduction When configuring a new storage setup, system administrators around the globe face the same dilemma: which RAID level to choose. Like with most things in life, it’s a compromise, a trade-off if you will. We need to balance performance and redundancy, keeping in mind that losing raw capacity will result in increased costs. Digital … Read more
Introduction If you’re in the market for a new hard drive (for data-hoarding purposes or otherwise), you’ll no doubt have noticed that hard drive models are often listed by color. Simply put, particular models of hard drives are assigned a color to indicate their capabilities and intended uses. The manufacturers assign these colors to help … Read more
For the vast majority of data-hoarders, hard drives are their preferred storage medium. As you might expect, it’s not unusual for someone dedicated to the data-hoarding hobby to have several hard drives in use at any one time. The question that we see asked over and over again is “when should I replace my hard … Read more
Introduction If you’re a data-hoarder, the thought of deleting any data once your hard drive is full probably fills you with a sense of terror (rightly so!). For most people, the best way to increase their free storage space is to install an additional hard drive into their PC. The process of adding a second, … Read more
Introduction If you’ve spent any time browsing the various forums or subreddits dedicated to data-hoarding, you’ve likely seen this common question being asked: “What are the best hard drive alternatives?”. This is often asked by newbie or aspiring data-hoarders and unfortunately, the question isn’t often satisfactorily answered. In fact, some people responding to this question … Read more
Introduction I’ve been regularly buying hard disk drives for the best part of three decades. Over this time, the capacities have increased tremendously. It’s sometimes difficult to appreciate just how much hard disk capacities have increased over this time. Whilst many data-hoarders are well aware of current drive capacities, there’s still some confusion from the … Read more
As you may imagine, as a data-hoarder, I’ve owned dozens, if not hundreds of hard drives over the years. Each time one of my hard drives reaches capacity, its contents are copied to a new drive, and the old drive is removed from the computer. I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t like to … Read more
Introduction I’ve been reading good things about Open Media Vault (OMV) for a while now, and have decided it’s time to give it a try for myself. I have a new Proxmox host that isn’t currently doing a great deal so I’ve decided to spin up a new VM and install OVM there. Until this … Read more
Preamble Many people have difficulty deleting data from their systems, even when this data is outdated and still widely available online. If you are one of these people, you may in fact be a digital data-hoarder. For example, if you’ve watched last night’s episode of Coronation Street, do you delete it from your Plex or … Read more
In my last post about SSD storage, I introduced you to my friend Dave. Dave is getting into data hoarding with aggression and he keeps asking me questions about storage. He called me last week and asked “what layer is iSCSI?“. I was a little thrown at first but after some probing, I was able … Read more