Recently, my 10-year old drive that I pulled out of an old computer died. I want to buy another one now. The machine will run Jellyfin (I have an existing collection that I will be transferring from another drive), Immich, and the *arr stack.

I have this motherboard which has one SATA port and one PCIe x1 port. For this reason, I won’t be able to add a second drive for redudancy, unless I add a PCIe to SATA card.

My biggest concern is that I want the drive to last. I don’t want much capacity, I think 1-2 TB is enough. My budget is from 0€ (of course) to 65-70€.

So I have a couple of questions:

  • Should I buy an SSD or an HDD?
  • I live in Greece and ServerPartDeals is not an option because shipping is really high. Do you know a place where I could purchase it? (Preferably in Greece, but not necessary)
  • Do you have any specific drive suggestions?
  • Is there any other way (except for buying a PCIe to SATA card) to add more drives in the motherboard?

Thank you.

  • ShdwdrgnEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    At that capacity, I’ll cast another vote for SSD if at all possible, but you can certainly get small HDDs pretty cheap now.

    If you want the easiest and cheapest way to add more drives, do a search for “sata port multiplier”. These cards go for around $25US on Amazon or Ebay. They are NOT fast! It uses a single SATA port to run up to five drives, so all the drives split the bandwidth, but long ago I ran some of them for a few years without any problems. You simply run a sata and power cable from your motherboard to the card, then plug in your drives, it doesn’t even require a slot on your motherboard.