Just be aware that old hard drives are especially susceptible to catastrophic failure. If you're doing a media server on the cheap out of an old laptop or computer you no longer have a use for, using your old internal and external drives makes a lot of sense. You can get both external hard drives and external solid-state drives, too, and they're subject to the same pros and cons as their internal counterparts. In this instance, external drives are your best friend. The same is true if you're using a single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi. If you're relying on a laptop, you may not be able to easily upgrade the internal storage. Don't waste your money on the best of the best budget SSDs are a good option for media sharing. They also happen to be more expensive than hard drives, though the price of a good quality solid-state drive has dropped. They use NAND flash rather than moving parts, and you don't have to wait for the hard drive to 'spin up' before your server can start accessing the contents. Solid-state drives (SSDs) are faster and less prone to failure. You'll need to use your drive's web-based interface to install and configure your media server. Plex has packages available for Synology, TrueNAS (formerly FreeNAS), Western Digital, and unRAID devices (as well as many others). You can even build your own NAS drive out of an old computer. Older or weaker models might not fare so well with high resolution or high bitrate content.

Some of the best NAS devices cost more because they're better suited to media transcoding. There's a NAS out there for every budget and use case, but the more you spend, the more capable your drive will be. You can buy NAS enclosures without any storage at all, or you can choose to upgrade storage (ideally with quality drives designed for use in a NAS) as your needs grow. The term 'NAS' refers mostly to the enclosure, which usually has space (known as 'bays') for drives.

They're always on and can be placed near your router and connected via Ethernet for the best performance. NAS drives are convenient in that they are dedicated devices that you 'set and forget' to provide network-based storage. If you have a network-attached storage (NAS) drive, you may be able to install a media server on it and share media that way. Consider Setting Up a Media Server on Your NAS

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