Need a good tutorial setting up NAS at home

[xDanielxOossiex]

So I recently built a second pc to set it up as a NAS server for myself. I have googled and asked some people I know, but I just can't seem to find the right tutorial for me.

If anyone has a good tutorial on setting up a NAS @ home in 2020, please provide the link to me.

 

NAS specs:

Gigabyte B85M Pro3, i5 4690, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz, 128GB SSD (curr. Win10Pro on it), 1TB HDD (3TB NAS HDD incoming soon).

 

NAS requirements:

- Easy setup and accesibility, with GUI

- Accessible from any device with internet

- Automatic phone pictures backup

[Jarsky]

Consider XPEnology (Synology's open source DSM software): https://xpenology.org

It has a GUI, cloud sharing and iphone/android sync (DS Cloud)

[clinkydoodle]

There's a lot of variables here. Are you planning on keeping the Windows 10 Pro install and using that? In that case you'll need to start enabling file and storage services in windows, or would you be looking at going down the custom NAS OS (UnRaid/FreeNAS etc) route? You could also go down the install Linux and do it all yourself route too. Hardware wise, are you going to be running any kind of redundancy on the NAS in case of disk failure (which is quite common), whether it be a raid controller or software redundancy like what is offered with UnRaid and FreeNAS etc? 

 

My opinion would be to run UnRaid (as its basically the easiest way to get a NAS system up and running), then you can use the web GUI to manage it, you can set up some port forwarding on your router, add a dynamic DNS docker container (as I'm guessing you'll be using it at home and wont have a static IP from your ISP). If you did go down this route, you'll need a USB drive for booting from (you could then use your SSD as a cache drive), and once you've got your 3TB disk arrived, you'll be able to set up a parity disk using that (I would highly recommend using a parity drive for redundancy). I'd also recommend installing some more memory if you can, as 8GB will get chewed up quite quickly (especially if you're running VM's or containers on it). From there, install the community applications plugin (threes loads of tutorials online) and the world is your oyster when it comes to functionality, you can run docker containers to give you the functionality you need.

 

the only slight downside with UnRaid (the only one I've seen) is I had a friend who tried to set one up but didn't have any windows devices (you need one in order to create the USB boot drive). As long as you have a windows machine to set up the boot device, you should be good.