My portable hard drive stopped working three weeks ago. I mainly used it to store movies and stream them to different devices.
I've been searching for a good deal on a portable hard drive for the past three to four weeks, but I haven't seen many promotions lately.
Why have good deals on portable hard drives slowed down recently?
Just looked at the NVMe option. Looks like a good option. Looked at some ozbargain forum and someone linked this NVMe enclosure - https://www.amazon.com.au/ORICO-NVMe-Enclosure-Gbps-Support/…
Is it good? do you have any other suggestion?
Portable spinning drives are a relic; for $100 you can get the same 1Tb drive as an SSD which is an order of magnitude better.
If you're only doing movie storage then a 'desktop' 3.5" external drive will be significantly better value per Tb, assuming you can likely plug in the power adapter anywhere you're watching movies - or setup a Jellyfin instance and stream to your devices over wifi instead and you will no longer need to move the drive around (which would have been the main reason your current drive died).
I use an Asus Router to connect my 2.5" external hard drive, configuring it as a network drive for convenient access throughout my home. I have another 3.5" external drive for other data storage, but its bulky and power adapter makes it a pain to move around (if there are any network issues). Therefore thinking to use 2.5" external hard drive again.
Would using Jellyfin instance or an NVMe enclosure offer a more convenient solution?
What kind of network issues are solved by moving your router around? I'd look at fixing those before buying another harddrive.
If your PC is on 24/7 then Jellyfin works fine. That's what I do, little micro sff runs all that kind of stuff with a big ol' drive attached.
Some times (very rarely) network drive doesnt show up on my home theatre laptop. But after restarting the modem it will get fixed so not much an issue. If it is late night, I just plug the hard drive to the home theatre laptop and fix the issue next day
How do you connect a wireless router to a HDD. Does the external HDD have Wifi and you just keep it plugged in all the time? I had a dig around the settings in my Netgear RAX10 router but couldn't find a way to connect to a HDD.
https://www.netgear.com/support/product/rax10/
I have-not followed any of these videos however just linked it for your reference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iS5OCxgBG4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgjLl5LWpQc
@Benzy: Thanks. After I posted I checked my router and there's no USB port so I will upgrade my router soon, just need to research what's the best one.
Surely everyone's got legacy 3.5" HDDs, 2.5" laptop HDDs, and 2.5" SATA SSDs laying around that I haven't bothered throwing away because they still work. They're not used in anything these days.
Long ago I got a powered external USB 3 adapter for SATA drives that I can just plug any of the spare ones into, and use for backup of anything.
Maybe get a 1 disk nas, and put your own disk in it.
Buy them from Wish for extra regrets!
No ragrets
.
Build your own. Get a deal on an nvme enclosure and grab one of the many nvme bargains listed almost daily.