Storage Journey
My First Frankenstein
To start, I had old HDDs lying around. They varied in sizes (500GB - 4TB range), and their quality were questionable.
They were extras from my workplace due to HDD->SSD upgrades that we did. The 4TB one was from a dead off brand NVR system, so it already had plenty of hours on it.
Anyways, I ordered a HDD to USB reader mount docker device thing and fed the USB to my MiniPC ($29.39).
After a couple of weeks I decided I wanted to get a multi-HDD reader to USB device so I could at least salvage some of the other 3 TB, 2TB, 1TB drives.
I ended up getting this 4-bay DAS for around $171.
This would be my setup for a while.
Over the months, I occassionally looked at my bookmarked diskprices.com to see if there were any sales for HDDs.
Eventually BestBuy near me had 8TBs Seagate BarraCudas for $120+tax. I was able to get 2 over 2 seperate trips. I got another same 8 TB Barracuda on Amazon for $120+tax as well (4.20.2025).
They are $257.81+tax now on Amazon and $279.99+tax on BestBuy after the AI stuff (6.28.2026). SAD.
This is my present day setup: a 4-bay DAS with drives 8x8x8x4 (28 TB).
I never learned how to do UNRAID (single drive for lots of drives), and I was comfortable with my setup so I let it be.
Libraries
The Libraries
As mentioned at the first page, I wanted to get the Marvel thing out of the way. I did my research, and sailed. First it was the Endgame series, and then it was the TV Shows having to do with Endgame characters / the snap etc.
Then the rest of the library naturally came when something new I liked came on.
So today my main libraries are:
They are mixed around all 4 drives.
Over the months I've started filing my drives up and learned some nuances and softwares on the way.