Creating a NAS for my university

majijdan · June 22, 2021

So I have wanted to create a NAS for a while except I have very little networking knowlegde. This NAS will be used to store my university projects on and to effectivly ensure that if for whatever reason my PC breaks down I would still able to have a verison of my work, as well as having one place where class notes can be stored from when I use my laptop.

I have the specs already sorted as this is just some spare parts I have lying around which according to my reasearch will meet the requirements:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/FNhVvf

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5 GHz Dual-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 CPU Cooler (£20.72 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: MSI B150M GRENADE Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£67.25 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£94.90 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£95.18 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 800D ATX Full Tower Case
Total: £278.05

I am probably going to run this in a mirroring as data is the most important for this case and not speed or efficiency. However I do have some questions. My university has banned routers and I am not sure if thats going to be an issue or not? Is there a method of me being able to have my laptop store nothing locally or having automatic backups as laptops get stolen all the time and my university is rather close to the capital? Is the mixture of the m.2 drive and the sata drive going to be an issue as the motherboard i plan to use only has one m.2 slot on it? If I where to bring along my network switch I have and plugged it into the RJ45 would then this NAS be easily found by other users as I dont want, for obvious reasons, other students viewing my files? How would FREENAS work with this system as I am trying to keep costs down and open source is the right way to go? If not FREENAS what would be suggested as an open source easy to use OS?

tkitch · June 22, 2021

So....

You're welcome to build a NAS? But that's way overkill for what you actually need.

Your best bet is to set up Google Drive or One Drive (or similar) and have it cloud sync your Documents folder / Desktop / etc. Getting 1TB of storage from either of them is a very low-cost endeavour, and will be way less effort than setting up a NAS. (That also won't be usable when you're not in your room.)

majijdan · June 22, 2021

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

So....

You're welcome to build a NAS? But that's way overkill for what you actually need.

Your best bet is to set up Google Drive or One Drive (or similar) and have it cloud sync your Documents folder / Desktop / etc. Getting 1TB of storage from either of them is a very low-cost endeavour, and will be way less effort than setting up a NAS. (That also won't be usable when you're not in your room.)

I mean sure however I want to learn how to for future reference. Cloud storage is fine I guess however I would prefer the expirence that this would offer for a learning opportunity.

CerealExperimentsLain · June 22, 2021

Wow, the 800D is a much worse NAS case than my 750D. o.O

The 750D ships with two internal 3x3.5" cages, but there's four possible positions to install them, so you can order two additional cages from Corsair and boom, that's 12 drives. Add a cage in the 3x5.25" bay and you're up to 16 (Maybe 17 depending on the cage you add) The 800D does have four neat hot swap 3.5" front cages, but other than that it's only got 5x5.25" drives to add some cages too. I guess it has 2.5" mounts elsewhere but so does the 750D.

If you want a tower with just 'a lot of drives' this is, frankly, a sub-par option. It's really not a lot of drive mountings for $300. It's a big steel box to move around that will mostly be empty.

majijdan · June 24, 2021

On 6/22/2021 at 10:23 PM, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Wow, the 800D is a much worse NAS case than my 750D. o.O

The 750D ships with two internal 3x3.5" cages, but there's four possible positions to install them, so you can order two additional cages from Corsair and boom, that's 12 drives. Add a cage in the 3x5.25" bay and you're up to 16 (Maybe 17 depending on the cage you add) The 800D does have four neat hot swap 3.5" front cages, but other than that it's only got 5x5.25" drives to add some cages too. I guess it has 2.5" mounts elsewhere but so does the 750D.

If you want a tower with just 'a lot of drives' this is, frankly, a sub-par option. It's really not a lot of drive mountings for $300. It's a big steel box to move around that will mostly be empty.

I got the 800D for £20 off facebook marketplace. Its cheaper than most cases at the best of time for the second hand market.

CerealExperimentsLain · June 24, 2021

7 minutes ago, majijdan said:

I got the 800D for £20 off facebook marketplace. Its cheaper than most cases at the best of time for the second hand market.

Okay at 20 GBP it's hard to hate any case. It's not a great NAS case but it's hard to diss it at 20 GBP... I'd not suggest it at USD$299 like Corsair marks it though.