A spare system with this much space is available, in that I have a spare R510 @ eqiad that could be used. (It has 12*2tb disks, so it should be the best option to accomadate this use request.

As this would simply be used during the transcoding, and final storage would be elsewhere (need to clarify this with @Katherine-WMF), the use will be temporary.

Also for @Katherine-WMF, will these be shipped to us on an external hard disk? (Or a normal hard disk, we have external disk bays we can attach them to.) This is typically far easier than attempting to upload them.

@yuvipanda: if you know the answer to the above questions, please let me know.

This is the ticket from last year. -> T84465 which is still stalled. (and T84439, T84467)

problems were:

• file format not supported (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video) (should be .webm)
• files too large to upload to commons (should be under 5GB)
• shipping of HD to datacenter was necessary because everything else took too long (?)
• files were corrupted on the disk and in Apple format (backup on second disk)

("Commons can't take files over 5GB (IIRC), and it won't take MP4 either...)

regarding the usage, is temp space for transcoding.
as for the actual way of getting the drive, i'd like @VictorGrigas to comment.