Physical drive running low - what are my options?

[zam-ber]

Hi,

I have a small business which creates about 3GB's worth of files for architectural visualisations each day. When I started the business I stored all work on a 2 TB physical drive within my own workstation. Then thought, might as well back this up with onedrive, which microsoft at the time were offering 1TB of storage for free. I inevitably exceeded this after a couple of years and went for the one drive business plan, which is now providing me with 5TB of storage with the option to expand later.

I have now arrived at the problem of my physical drive running out of storage. 

Note: The 3D rendering and visualisation programs I use require files to be stored natively on the computers HD during operation, presumably to negate any dips in read / write which could be seen in using cloud services. Hence why I require full access to physical storage constantly. My main use for onedrive is backup. 

I was wondering what are my options for seamlessly upgrading my physical storage without having to jump through too many hoops with onedrive.

The scenario I'd like to avoid, is after installing the new larger physical HD (or local NAS), and copying all the data to it, is having to redirect onedrive to the new drive and have to resync 2TB worth of files to the cloud all over again, which I'd image would take quite a bit of time and would disrupt workflow, especially as I often need to access these files on a laptop away from work to show to clients.

Also any tips or advice on having my new physical setup configured as a NAS to be mirrored by onedrive would be of great benefit.

Look forward to some useful comments!

Cheers

ZB.

[#2]

Do you need all files stored locally all the time? With files on demand you can make files stored offline but free up space when you no longer need them to be! They are still searchable offline etc..

[#3]

@adam deltinger 

Hi, thanks for the reply. Technically no, but because I often go back forth between old and new projects, I'd rather not have to deal with the extra tedium of file management, going through checking on and off which folders to sync, and having to wait to download large files (Some can be 20GB!) when I need then on the physical drive.

[#4]

Hi,
OneDrive has unlimited plans, but it's going to cost you at least 50$ per month and since it's (annual commitment) then it's going to cost you 600$ per year. 

on the other hand, 5TB won't be enough for you because you're going to hit that limit too eventually.
so I think you better buy physical high capacity and durable HDDs, do a RAID on them on your PC or on a NAS.

if you have a Windows server, use it to build your own NAS and RAID it.