DIY NAS Advice wanted

[stewartnichol93]

If i'm re purposing some old PC parts, i5 2400, 4gb ddr3 ram. Onboard graphics. New small form factor case. new hard drives. Is there any advice you would give or a good place to start.
I want to be able to use free ware and store work documents, pictures and videos.
I have plenty of storage in my PC but occasionally i do something stupid and brick my pc and my back ups are never up to date. I want this to be for Storing created video content and archiving work presentations for calling on in the future for us both.
I don't need to be able to access these away from home, and it wont contain any confidential or personal data. I want me and my partner to both be able to access this at the same time from separate devices. PC and Laptop.

 

Im also open to simpler solutions if anyone has any.

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many drives? what sizes?

 

how well do you know linux? You can setup mergerfs+ snapraid to get "raid" of mixed drives sizes

[stewartnichol93]

I only want to aim around 8 TB + but looking at NAS, it seems kinda expenses even without buying drives. I would probably stick with all the same drive and just try and find the best price per TB.

And i haven't used Linux before.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, stewartnichol93 said:

I only want to aim around 8 TB + but looking at NAS, it seems kinda expenses even without buying drives. I would probably stick with all the same drive and just try and find the best price per TB.

And i haven't used Linux before.

so you don't have any drives now?

 

GOt a budget in mind?

 

Id probalby get the shucked externals, maybe start with 2x8tbs, about 140 a pop.

[stewartnichol93]

Wow that looks like a great shout hard drive wise, any clues on a good guide to follow setting it up as a file server. 

[akio123008]

34 minutes ago, stewartnichol93 said:

any clues on a good guide to follow setting it up as a file server. 

The easiest way to do so is to just run some linux distro on it, and configure that one as an smb share on the network.

 

There's all sorts of other fancy stuff you could do instead, but I found this option to be rather easy to set up and quite effective.