Add additional storage

Pghpooh

Senior member
Jan 9, 2000
791
1
81
I'm running out of storage space. I have a 6 year old Dell Inspirion desktop. It has a 1 tb drive and I added a second 1 tb drive. Also, I have a old external drive made by Seagate that is 250 gb and that is full.
To add more space I was thinking about buying 2 of these. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ex-_-DesktopExternalHardDrives-_-22152425-S0C
Each is 5 tb. My desktop pc is usb 2. I was going to add a pci card to give me 4 usb 3 outputs.
What are your thoughts???? Any suggestions???
Another thought was to add a nas. Any suggestions there??? I have a ASUS RT-N66u router with 2 open Ethernet connections and 2 usb connections. The connections on the router are usb 2.
Looking for the most economical way to add more storage space.
Again,,, your thoughts and suggestions are needed!!!!
Thanks
Pghpooh
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,376
762
126
Why don't you replace one (or both) of the internal drives with something bigger? You will have better performance as well.
Heck, I would replace 1 HD with a SSD, and then get a 3 or 4TB HD for data, then have an external for backups.

The router's USB ports are anemic for anything but basic things.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,292
62
91
Why don't you replace one (or both) of the internal drives with something bigger? You will have better performance as well.
Heck, I would replace 1 HD with a SSD, and then get a 3 or 4TB HD for data, then have an external for backups.

The router's USB ports are anemic for anything but basic things.

I agree... as long as the PC itself is still working for you, upgrading the storage isn't anything out of the ordinary. In fact, if you are still running the OS on one of the HDDs, getting a 256GB SSD for the OS and programs, and then a larger 4-8GB HDD for storage would improve usability substantially. I do agree with Elixer... whatever storage solution you work out, you need some sort of backup; an external drive would be good, that way you can easily secure it or at least unhook it from the system.
 

ignatzatsonic

Senior member
Nov 20, 2006
351
0
0
For external backups, you might consider using a dock, connected by either USB or eSATA.

The advantage is that you can insert any compatible ordinary hard drive into the dock and aren't locked into whatever drive might be included with an external drive. And you avoid any enclosure related issues.

Internal backup is certainly faster and I do use it, although I wouldn't want it to be my only backup.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,369
10,067
126
ULR-102388767_main01_amz_mn_8968490.jpg


http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8968490

Here's the dock I use, it's pretty fast, plugged into a USB3.0 port.