DingdongTP

I will, thanks!
 
So it's easier for the end user to interface with a "cloud" ui, rather than with SMB network drive mapping and all that, I think I get it. And probably has the advantage of being easier to setup if the other users use a Mac computer by any chance probably.
 
You've been a great source of help, I will try to understand if I can do all that security stuff and try to set this up ASAP, I've ordered all the parts today!
Thanks once again!

If I recall correctly Squarespace retains control of everything regarding your domain name, I'd check with support.
 
I use NC as a google drive replacement, as it's easy to share files to people online via webdav. What makes it secure is reverse proxying the access to it via cloudflare's SSL. OpenVPN is a good solution too, but you still need a way to present the files you want to share to individual customers. NC has account management and access settings per account already built in.
 
You can disable all the plugins you don't need like calendar, contacts, and all the "office" stuff
 
 
 
 
 

Hi, I'd replace the case with a Fractal Define R5. It's cheaper and generally better quality than Antec, and very silent. Comes with 8 bays too.

For remote file access to work safely, you need to own a domain name. I have several internet facing services and sites I host from my server / NAS. It's a tedious process but it's the best way I have found to make everything work.

My setup:
Ubuntu server in a VM on its own small SSD with Docker installed, and Portainer for easy management. nginx proxy manager running on Linux Nextcloud running as a TrueNAS plugin, so it can easily access storage. Nextcloud is reverse-proxied through nginx proxy manager to a CNAME record on Cloudflare, and protected by Cloudflare's free SSL. So when I type `cloud.mydomain.com`, NPM knows to route the traffic to the correct internal IP address on the network. You will also need to correctly setup port forwarding on your router.
 
My ISP also happens to change my public IP address frequently, so in order for the root domain record to work, I have oznu/cloudflare-ddns set up in Docker with the correct Cloudflare API key, so it automatically changes my root domain record on Cloudflare when my IP changes.
 
The fact that it's all reverse proxied behind cloudflare's IP masking and SSL certs makes this way of doing things reasonably secure.

btw I run all this, emby server, and dozens more docker containers on a Ryzen 2600X and 32GB of ram. Rarely is my system ever taxed. It's a super lightweight build in terms of how much resources this needs, and it's been rock solid for me so far.

Lastly, do setup a periodic cloud sync task on TrueNAS, they have b2 cloud storage integration directly in the UI. It's super easy.

GL!

Following this post: 
I have tried to learn more and look out for solutions for my setup, and I've come to a hardware and software list that I would like help with, to sanity check my choices, and to get you guys' input on this, as this is my first NAS build.
 
Hardware-wise, I've selected these components (haven't bought them yet, so feel free to give advice on better component choices):
Case: E-ATX Antec P101 Silent Black (109,9€) - 8 HDD 3.5'' bays, so it helps me expand in the future; Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 Torpedo ATX (141,9€) - 2.5Gbit LAN built in, 6 SATA ports that as far as I know don't share any bandwidth with any m.2 slots, so I would only need an HBA card if I installed 8 disks CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G (199,9€) - Built in graphics, so I don't need to have a discrete GPU if I need to troubleshoot something of if the board can't post in headless mode; RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-3200MHz (117,9€) - Gives me room to upgrade to 64GB in the future by just adding 2 sticks; PSU: Seasonic Core GM 500W Semi Modular 80PLUS Gold (59,9€) - By my calculations 500W is enough to power this whole system, even if I add 8 HDDs; OS Drive: SSD 2.5" Kingston A400 120GB TLC SATA (23,9€) - Cheapest SSD I could find to run TrueNAS on; Cache Drive: M.2 2280 KIOXIA Exceria 250GB 3D TLC NVMe (28.9€) - Fast sequencial and random read and write speeds (should I have 2 of these in mirror for redundancy?); Storage: 4x Seagate Exos X18 18TB (299,08€ each) - 54TB available in Raid z1, very good €/TB ratio, with room to add 4 more drives in the future if I need to increase my storage; TOTAL COST for the Hardware (excluding drives): 629,50€. Software-wise, this is what I'm inclined to choose:
OS: TrueNAS Core - ZFS, good performance for the storage, as I'm going to be reading and writing mainly video files to the NAS (I work in video production, said so in the post mentioned earlier); LAN File Access: SMB share, mapped to a network drive on my editing machine; Remote File Access: OpenVPN or Nextcloud (this is what I REALLY need help with) - I need to be able to access the storage remotely, as well as having my remote editors be able to download footage from the NAS to edit on their machines, and then upload the final exports back to the NAS.
I also need my clients to be able to upload recorded footage to the NAS, and download final exported videos from it.
I want some setup where I can configure users, each user having different permissions to access specific folders.
Example: I have access to everything; Editor has access to "raw footage" folder, "projects" folder and "final exports" folder; Client only has access to "raw footage" folder and "final exports" folder.

Do both of these solutions offer no bottleneck to speed when accessing remotely? I want the internet speed to be the only bottleneck in remote access, if possible. What are the pros and cons to OpenVPN vs Nextcloud? Is there another solution I'm not thinking of?  
Sorry for the long post, hope you can give me a hand in this journey building my first NAS.
Thank you!

If speed isnt a great concern, Unraid may be a good option just for its ease of expansion later down the road. Transfer speeds can be greatly improved by adding a cache drive ( plan to put them in raid for safety). My network is all gigabit but with the ssd cache I can write 1tb at 100-120mpbs until the cache is full. TrueNas uses ZFS which is a great file system but expansion is more difficult, unlike unraid where you can add a drive and let it build. I run dual parity drives just for a little extra peice of mind. Backblaze or something similiar may be a good investment too, just as an addition precaution.

Oh okay than I understood u wrong XD

looks like amazon doesn't have the best prices either, unfortunately.

I must say, the prices are not great for portugal, if pcpartpicker.com is anything to go by. Squeezing a fast SSD and some cheap-but-good components here and there barely puts the build out of budget. That shipping cost is brutal, almost 220 euros!
PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor €182.90 @ Globaldata Motherboard MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard €94.90 @ Globaldata Memory Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory €134.89 @ Globaldata Storage Mushkin Enhanced Helix-L 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive €113.58 @ Newegg Portugal Video Card MSI Radeon RX 570 8 GB ARMOR OC Video Card €159.90 @ Globaldata Case Cougar MX330-G ATX Mid Tower Case €131.46 @ Newegg Portugal Power Supply Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply €114.33 @ Newegg Portugal Monitor Asus VZ279HE 27.0" 1920x1080 60 Hz Monitor €236.32 @ Newegg Portugal   Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts     Total €1168.28   Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-13 19:32 CEST+0200    

for sure, ill have to get back to you later though, ive gotta go live my life right now lol

Do you have anymore computers to test the drive with?

You can use a 2.5" Internal HDD with a desktop too.

Yes. It's just a SATA connection. It should work in a desktop. 

That's fine, glad it was something simple. 

Happy that you recovered everything
 
Future reminder: don't trust those external enclosures. The 2.5" are good, since all the current is from USB, and it's stable (well, unless your pc is broken, or you're using a powered USB HUB); but I've had tons of issues with 3.5" ones especially power related. The current of your house is not 100% stable, and the power brick that comes with those external enclosures is neither reliable.
 
The only HDD hub i have to use is behind an APC UPS, and almost every time i use it i check the power brick before using it.

It's the P650RP6 now with the updated 1060 pascal gpus.

Depending on where you live a Clevo P650RE might be a good option for you, it has a beefy CPU and a nice GPU so you should find yourself playing and coding comfortably (besides all the customization which comes with a Clevo) 

I've never used EaseUS, i recovered the files everytime using photorec (that does not recover the directories, since it does a low level scan to recover the files) and some partition managers to recover partitions.

When you scan on low level, the program scans the clusters in your hard disk and reads everything. After that, it identifies the files by reading them (not the extension, the file) and saves them as the corresponding type identified.

When you recover the partition, instead, recover the "index", the part of the hard disk that tells where that file starts and where it ends, and how directories are organized on your hard disk. That's why when you recover a partition you get everything back.
 
I'd say, once you recovered the file, give it a shot. The worst thing you can do is format the disk, and it's something you will do anyway, likely.

Listen, i'll be clear with you: i'm the last man on earth that can explain how to use these program to anyone. I'm really bad at this. You can find every information here http://gparted.org/display-doc.php%3Fname%3Dhelp-manual

If you didn't write on your disk, and you manage to recover all the partition table, you'll find the hard disk AS it was before the errors. So yes, you'll find every directory and every file where they were before.

I have never seen this before but I found some thing to try out:
http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/
If this doesn't work, you have to find a professional.
Good luck
 

if you can copy the data on the drive, then copy it to an external drive and wipe the drive this can fix broken partitions

There are tons of programs that can scan the unallocated space. Find one that suits your needs and go for it. I use photorec.
DON'T WRITE ANYTHING ON IT, Don't format, don't wipe, don't do anything, unless you are sure you tried everything.
You can also try to recover the partition table, and mount that without writing to the disk. An useful tool is a cd or a pen with UBCD on it.

Things don't last forever. Stuff break. Back it up and get a new one. The disk inside this one is just an ordinary internal drive which you can install in a computer straight up or you can get an external enclosure for it. Since it's the USB disconnection, it's highly likely that the drive inside is just fine, just the PCB in the enclosure is acting up. You can verify using a program called Seagate Seatools for WIndows.

Oh, then I think I will swap the drive from the enclosure to the PC right when I can, thanks for the help!

CPU intensive games benefit A LOT from an i7 compared to a i5. Hyperthreading and cache memory are more important than what you can read everywhere. "i5 are more than enough for gaming, i7 are worthless !" is what everyone is saying, even PC hardware specialists will tell you that sometimes. It's not true ! i5 are of course great CPUs, but it's not enough in every scenario. I upgraded my i5 3570k @4.6GHz with a i7 4790K@4.6Ghz. I was really skeptical at first but I changed my mind quickly. CPU intensive games like Vermintide or GTA V saw significant gains, sometimes 10 to 15 more average fps, same on the minimum framerate. i5 can bottleneck your system quite easily, believe me.

In essence the difference between them is if you need or want hyper-threading or not. And that comes down to if your software can make use of it or not. In the best case having HT where it can be used adds about 50% CPU performance. In other cases, the difference can be zero. You can look up other i7 vs i5 benchmarks for an idea if a particular game or other software uses it or not.