ares35

i bought a few smr drives, knowing they were smr. they were cheaper, a lot cheaper than the same amount of space in cmr. used only for static media storage, so that’s not a big deal, really., but holy hell was it slow getting stuff on them initially.

i have a few self-powered externals that are also smr (quite common with those as they use 2.5in notebook hdd). when those things have to start shuffling bits around and rewriting tracks, sustained write speeds fall well under what even usb2 can send.

i bought a big external hdd recently on impulse… a clearance sale. it was really, really cheap. with the thinking that i could ‘shuck’ it because i’m short on space in a couple storage systems. i checked. i can, but i haven’t. hell, i haven’t even used it yet other than to run a full smart diag on it, followed by a full format and a read/write verify. took days. then i put it back in the box and have basically forgotten about it until now.

you have to be careful on what models you buy. some have usb built onto the controller board (no internal sata) or other things (e.g. encryption chip, weird power) that make it more difficult or even impossible to use the internal drive in an environment other than the enclosure it ships in.

patents is what you’re thinking of. and all (afaik) of them relating to mp3 format have expired.

usb nvme adapters are not expensive and it likely won’t be the only time you need it. they are a handy accessory to have on hand if you have nvme storage.

don’t mess around with imaging to a file on the zfs, then restoring it. simply clone nvme -> nvme using a usb nvme adapter then replace the internal with the clone.

a pallet of 4th gens? i have a dozen left here from around that era that i can’t get rid of without literally giving them away. they’re ‘tolerable’ for a gui linux or win10 with an ssd, but the ‘performance per watt’ just isn’t there with hardware this old. i used a few of them (none in an always-on role, though), but the rest just sit in the corner, without home nor purpose.

these 800 g1s are, iirc, 12vo, so upgrade or reuse potential is a bit limited. most users would want windows, and win10 does run ‘ok enough’ on 4th gen, just make sure they’re booting from ssd (120gb minimum). but they’ll run into that arbitrarily-errected wall-of-obsolescence with trying to upgrade or install win11 when win10 retires in ~ 18 months (you can ‘rufus’ a win11 installer, but there’s no guarantee that you will be able to in the future). that limits demand and resale value of pretty much all the pre-8th gen hardware.

we do that around the veggie garden, but with aol cds.

absolutely this.

it’s a hell of a lot more work and liability than just renting the server space and letting the user do ‘whatever’ with it.

smr drives are horrible. we have some here. some by accident, others for cost savings (used only for long term, large file storage)–but all of smr’s faults are really not worth it… maybe at half the price per tb it might be–for some use cases, but not at current pricing.

the last batch we got in don’t even support trim, so i guess the only way to ‘clean up’ zones is to literally dump everything off, secure_erase them, and ‘start over’.

devices on the hub share the total bandwidth to/from the host system’s usb port. data going between drives on the same hub has to travel to the host then back again.

so: transferring files to/from a single drive will go ‘full speed’, transferring files between two drives on that hub will run at about half speed, accessing data on all the drives on that hub at the same time (such as syncing a snapraid array built on externals all connected to that hub) will be painfully and brutally slow.

absolutely. turnkey retail product is the answer here.

OR, a normal windows-based (so they know how to navigate it) desktop with one or more internal drives added. set up the shares, done. i’d add stablebit drive pool and maybe cloud drive to it for pooling, redundancy, and encrypted online drives to hold a copy. no weird hardware setups, no ‘foreign’ ui, no raid arrays to babysit…

co-mingled inventory is a thing, yes, but i think you get better support from amazon for items they sell, even if from that inventory, if there’s a problem.

the shroud appears to be the same, as illustrated on p49 of each model’s service manual:
https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/poweredge-t320_owners-manual_en-us.pdf
https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/poweredge-t420_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

if you buy off amazon, buy from amazon. buying storage from a marketplace seller is a total crap shoot.

many older ssd are actually better in terms of longevity because slc and mlc typically have/had higher endurance than newer tlc and (especially) qlc.

i found a couple vendors implying 2x32gb compatibility, one selling a 2x32gb ram kit (‘guaranteed compatible’ they say) and the other selling the pc itself (oos, though) with 64gb, for this model even though its published specs say 2x16gb max. so it might just be possible, depending on the specs of the memory modules.

buy one kit first from a vendor with a reasonable return policy and try. that’s all you can really do.

browser-based ‘clients’ with large directories and large numbers of files in a single multi-file upload are going to choke. you need binary bits on the parents’ end, such as a dedicated backup or sync utility.

if you could populate your server with their existing files using a physical drive, that would be better, and perhaps faster and easier, too–then a browser-based upload solution could probably handle the much smaller ‘updates’ of new stuff. have them consolidate all the existing files on one external (plus also on a second for a local backup). hell, you could do that bit via remote desktop and all they’d need to do is connect the drives and let you in. then somehow get one of those drives to you (ship, deliver, you pick up. whatever is feasible).

i understand they don’t want to pay, but would $12.00 for a full year be cheap enough to consider? ovh has a new customer deal going for 2gb ram/20gb storage vps. $0.97 a month for the first year, and you can add up to ten of those to a single new account.

i have cable, in the us, it goes out for awhile probably on a weekly basis. calling them is pointless.

if i really need internet–and i did a couple weeks ago when it happened (i don’t carry an internet-capable phone), my office is less than five minutes away and has dsl. the phone company has proven itself to be far more reliable than cable, even if they are scummy, greedy bastards just like cable and wireless companies.