So awhile back I tried this by having my system SSD be a smaller 500GB drive and I had another 1 TB SSD for games but turns out I was doing it all wrong.

Seriously just invest in a 1 or 2TB M.2 SSD and thank me later, especially if you’re on windows. Then have a hard drive for programs you care less about and for data storage. My current config has even kept the 1TB SSD as an auxiliary gaming drive that I use for games of lesser importance or demand.

I just wouldn’t ever put a windows install onto a drive that’s slower than any of your other drives and also you have to be very careful about the size of that drive. I tried to do this on a 100GB SSD like a decade ago and it didn’t go very well

[–] UxyIVrljPeRl@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

If you have enough data for a extra hard drive id recommend a nas.

A good 2Bay one is between 100 and 200. Add 2 drives for a raid 1 and your data is protected against drive failure. Now you have a storage place that is accessible from all Devices. Wanna watch a video?Well its there and playable from PC, Phone or your TV.

[–] pulverizedcoccyx@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

You know how that goes though, now the ethernet isn't fast enough to allow that nas experience to be seamless. 2.5gbit... 10gbit? Now you need a new switch maybe a new router too. It just goes downhill from there haha

[–] UxyIVrljPeRl@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

One of us! One of us! One of us! One of us!

Funnily enough, network is the only thing i didnt touch. I changed my habbits so that my server does all the work/heavy lifting. I started with a cheap 2bay nas, switched to a 4bay micro server, that i later modified to 5 for an cache ssd. From there i build a am4 machine from scratch and added a ups.

Currengly im waiting gor a good deal on drives as the used space slowly creeps from 22tib to 23tib(100% used)

[–] Snowyday@startrek.website 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I’m dumb. Any advice on how to get started with something like that? I’d appreciate product recommendations appropriate for a newb

[–] baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 months ago

Synology is a NAS Iʼd recommend. However, after you become more familiar with the command line and if you are building your own Debian machine with a motherboard that supports many hard drives, I would recommend something like this procedure; this applies especially if you are the only one who will be accessing the files and are just wanting a way to combine the storage capacities of multiple hard drives.

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

I did the same. Have not had any real problems with the configuration. I would have gone for more storage but high speed high capacity ssds do get expensive.