Recommendations for 5TB+ storage option for Plex media?

[Atty]

I'm looking to expand my current MyBook Duo in Raid 1 for storing my Plex libraries.

Part of me is content leaving all the media on a regularly attached drive, connected to my MacBook Pro but another part of me wants to get a NAS.

I'm wondering what drives, enclosures, etc, would be the best recommended? I don't really have a set price right now but under $200 for the enclosure alone or if it includes drives in the $300-$400 area.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations and ideas!

FWIW: My plex library is accessed at MOST by 3 people, usually only 1 and thats me locally.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Price under $200? You can barely even get a single 5TB hard drive for $200.

Probably your best bet is a QNAP TS-251+ or TS451+. Get the one with 8GB of RAM if you can afford it. (Will speed up reads and writes of numerous small files.) QNAP has directions on setting them up to run PLEX as well.

Definitely not $200 though.

Alternatively, buy a refurb tower with room for 3-4 HDDs internally. A used ATX workstation on FleaBay would be ideal, and probably cost less than a NAS enclosure. It'll use more power, though, and be noisier. But it will kick the QNAP's butt in terms of CPU power. Then set it up with whatever collection of hard drives you can scrounge (capacity doesn't matter too much), and a copy of unRAID.

 

[Atty]

Price under $200? You can barely even get a single 5TB hard drive for $200.

That was worded poorly and I've edited it, that budget was more for an enclosure versus the whole deal. If I get an enclosure first I'd put my 2 4TB drives in it and then expand later. I've edited the post to reflect that a bit better.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That was worded poorly and I've edited it, that budget was more for an enclosure versus the whole deal. If I get an enclosure first I'd put my 2 4TB drives in it and then expand later. I've edited the post to reflect that a bit better.

Ah, ok. That's more reasonable.

Well, $200 for an Intel-powered NAS enclosure (the Intel Atom CPUs are typically the requirement for video streaming servers like PLEX) is doable, but barely. Show around a bit, though, and, well, hey, Black Friday.

Alternatively, what I said above about a refurb tower still applies.