This might be a dumb question, but I’m relatively new to this so here it goes. I have well over 500 gb of videos at this point and I’m wondering what’s the best method of storage? External hard drive? Some kind of cloud service? Any specific recommendations would be appreciated.
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Nah man, not a dumb question at all! I just recently had to address the same problem, and I went with an external SSD. You can go with an external hard drive too, it’s just a matter of if you prefer saving $$ (hard drive) or faster speeds + no noise (SSD).
I grabbed a 2TB Samsung T7 off Amazon, works just fine for me so far!
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I use two NAS Drives, one with 4 and one with 8TB capacity. Depending on the NAS system, those drives are reachable within your home network even with shut off PC and also through internet if feature is provided and activated…so it is kind of a personal cloud drive
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I’m also facing this problem now, the best option would be a 2tb SSD, but it’s quite expensive if you choose from good manufacturers, so it all depends on your finances
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Best method for data storage, if the data is important for you:
- Data should be available wherever I want at all time => SSD + Cloud as Backup
- Data should be available wherever I want => SSD + 2nd HDD or NAS at home as Backup
- Data is only used local => HDD (or NAS with HDDs) + 2nd HDD or NAS as Backup
- Data is only used local and I like it fast => SSD (or expensive NAS with SSDs) + 2nd HDD or NAS as Backup
… if data isn’t important for you and you’re broke af
=> HDD
… if data isn’t important for you and you’re not broke af 
=> SSD
… if you shit coins + good internet connecton
=> Cloud storage (+ cloud as backup)
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I use external hard drives, usually 4TB or higher…whatever the best deal seems to be. I like Seagate, but the last one was a Toshiba.
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I got this awhile ago. Maybe a little bias because I worked for them but this is a great deal.
Its not the snappiest drive out there but you don’t need one of them.
If it’s just a porn stash than I consider that to be expendable.
This seems like a great deal
So for 100 and some bucks you get 2tb home and cloud.
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Thank you to everyone for your suggestions. It’s really helpful!
Pppfff… Do you even fap bro?
Just kidding 
, I vividly remember the anxiety when my laptop’s hard drive started filling up. I have a 2TB HDD and now I’m on a 4TB HDD. I wont be able to get another one for a while since I’m on team
and I’m kind of freaked out about the idea of it dying. At least most everything is on the previous 2TB HDD. I haven’t had issues playing things on my laptop from my HDD. I do have issues playing some things over network with VR from my HDD, but there are multiple things that could be causing that and I haven’t spent enought time trying to troubleshoot it.
Thanks for that explainer @mADsCRIPTS!
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Oh I see @g90ak “Destroyer of Hard Drives” liked my post above! The sweet irony of showing up here! My hard drive screams out in terror every time you post because it knows I will never pass up those beautiful upscales. 
(they actually are reasonable sizes for the scale of improvements they provide 
)
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I built a server currently running unraid with 20TB capacity (using seagate ironwolf pro drives), around half full with a crucial P5 1TB ssd as cache for writes and for ongoing projects such as upscaling, interpolation or encoding (don’t want to do that off the slow HDDs).
Then I run a 10gig connection to my main PC, which makes the write speed to the server & read/write for ongoing projects comparable to a pcie gen3 nvme drive.
That way I can run projects on main PC hardware directly off the storage to my RAM.
I also have a 1gig uplink to the router for off-site cloud access. This is still fast enough to stream 4K to my laptop when traveling
This man does it right. 
I keep all my porn local, so I just run a ton of spinning drives for archiving and SSDs for projects. Fractal Meshify 2 XL has a ton of drive bays that are well cooled. Connected via a hardware RAID controller in non-raid mode. 70TB total. I may have a problem…
Did I mention this is separate from my plex server for non-porn stuff - bunch more space there too haha.
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This is why I run both Plex and Emby.
Separate dockers for separate needs 
Only issue I have is I have not yet fully figured out a private enough way to direct share links to my stash to other people, bypassing the need for MEGA etc. as I have thousands of upscaled & HFR’d videos, but do not want to expose my IP and routing it all via a domain on a VPN is a bit rough.
Yeah, I just run an FTP for friends with a VPN. Not trying to go crazy with thumbnails and direct streaming, but easy way to share large files with friends without having to go through a file sharing site. Bi-directional too, so if they want to share something back its easy.
Yeah the thing is I have a massive collection of stuff I would genuinely like to share with the community here, but really cba to pay for separate hosting just for that, putting myself at further risk if that account gets reported for whatever reason.
So I’m quite picky about what upscales I actually end up posting as a result which sucks to be honest
lol you holding out on us?!? While I’m over here paying for MEGA pro! jk. I hear ya. Maybe just do an “upscale of the week” and have people vote on what you should host for a week. Could be fun and engaging for the community.
I was considering doing an index and uploading stuff based on what’s actually requested.
The thing is most of the videos I have, I no longer have the original source so I can’t even do a before/after and no idea where I first got the video from.
But either way I do definitely want to find a way to make it all accessible
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Anyway to get back on the topic of video storage, there are many variables at play such as what total capacity you think you might need, what level of redundancy/loss prevention you are comfortable with, whether you require off-site access, what speeds you might require (4k 10bit HDR movies are more demanding than 720p amateur porn), what hardware you expect to be playing the content back on ( you could do something like re-encode all your stuff from h264 to h265 for potentially up to 50% less disk space with higher hardware usage in playback and less compatibility) and so on.
There are just too many things at play to give an answer.
That said I would strongly recommend, whatever medium of storage you settle on, do relatively frequent SMART checks on it, look out for any signs of degratation and if it is an external drive, unplug it when not in use to prolong the longevity of its life expectancy.
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I really like Stablebit Smart Scanner - it will regularly do read/write checks as well as monitor smart across all drives (yes it increases wear, but its worth it). It’s saved me several times by warning of bad sectors or SMART issues and given me time to copy data off to a new drive with minimal loss.
I can recommend Stash App, which is a self hosted porn manager with direct Handy integration, which makes it superawesome for me.