I have a home media server with a ragtag collection of external drives. Capacity is starting to run low and some of the drives are showing their age. I'd like to consolidate sensibly and economically. At the moment these are my external drives (all connected via USB):
| Device | Total Size | Used | Available | Usage % | Notes |
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| /dev/sdb | 3.6T | 3.0T | 508G | 86% | media |
| /dev/sdc | 2.7T | 1.1T | 1.5T | 44% | media |
| /dev/sdd | 4.6T | 4.0T | 295G | 94% | media |
| /dev/sde | ? | ? | 1T | ? | Not mounted; very old drive - should be copied to backup and discarded |
| /dev/sdf | 11T | 9.0T | 1.4T | 87% | current backup drive |
I got sdf five years ago (it's a Western Digital 'elements' external drive). and I back up to it using backintime from the other mounted drives. I'm wondering about:
- Get new external drive
- Copy current backups to new drive
- Repurpose backup as primary
- Put old primary drives in cold storage
This might be a bit fiddly for the repurposing using backintime and keeping the mount paths for jellyfin but Jellyfin consistency isn't 100% critical. This strategy would suggest to me that I should look at an 18TB drive or greater for it to be worthwhile.
Is this sensible? Are there any particular recommendations or places I should look?
Thanks!