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I have two desktops that are both fast. One of them I rarely use anymore, but it has 8 hard drives that I need to use quite often. My primary computer is in a smaller form factor and I don't want to put it into a large case.

Should I buy NAS bays for the hard drives, or is it better to set up the second computer as a type of sharing station itself?

The NAS option seems more portable and I swap out some hard drives about every 6 months.

Thanks.

The answer is "Yes".

But the question is going to have to be narrowed down to matters of convenience, compatibility, and the amount of work you want to put it.

Having faced this same thing too many times for me to count, I can tell you I have done things like left the old computer online and simply shared the drives to make it a file server of sorts, I have virtualized old computers so I could run them in a window in my newer computer using Oracle's VirtualBox, I have consolidated the contents of the old drives onto one single large drive connected by USB or NAS, and I've also simply transferred the old drive(s) into a new USB case.

So it's going to depend on the type of files you have and how you want to use them.

Queso's the expert here. And I'm going to agree with his "Yes".

My gut feeling is that you're not changing enough data to fill 8 drives anything like regularly, and that this is almost entirely something like FS scenery (or pr0n ) that is write-once read-only.

If so, I'd be inclined to consolidate into a NAS with at least the same capacity (using fewer, bigger, faster drives), and keep the old box powered off in a cupboard (possibly even off-site) as a cold back-up - leaving you with only the new stuff to back up.

But it depends how hard it is to recover all that stuff, and how important.

Thank you both! Indeed, it is shelf-stable information that will mostly be backed up.

It looks like consolidating into a NAS might be the best option, as the current speeds for some of my operations are painstakingly slow at times. While I hadn't thought of it, Queso's suggestion about VirtualBox will probably happen for the remainder of the other system, anyway, just because I can.

Thank you both!