Help me build a NAS with the parts I have laying around.

starry · July 11, 2021

Budget (including currency): $400 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: NAS at least 8TB

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc):

This is what I have:

Phenom x4 945 and matching motherboard (motherboard has its own graphics chip)

FX-6300 and matching motherboard (motherboard has its own graphics chip)

A bin of various DDR3 RAM sticks

What I need:

A case with a bunch of 3.5" drive bays and 5.25" front panel slots so i can have a hotswap bay

8TB worth of hard drives, would like to run at least a backup system but if i can fit RAID 1 in I would also like that

A decent UPS

A PSU

If my expectations are unrealistic please let me know. Also ive never built a NAS in my life so I would greatly appreciate if someone could explain the pros and cons of various NAS software/OSes and how they work.

tikker · July 11, 2021

49 minutes ago, starry said:

8TB worth of hard drives, would like to run at least a backup system but if i can fit RAID 1 in I would also like that

A single 8 TB drive is already around the equivalent of approximatealy $350-400 here, so just one of those will probably eat your budget by like 90-100% already .

49 minutes ago, starry said:

the pros and cons of various NAS software/OSes and how they work.

Personally I use Unraid. It was simple to set up and expanding it is a breeze. I like that it runs from a thumb drive so you don't have to "waste" a disk on the OS

starry · July 11, 2021

1 hour ago, tikker said:

A single 8 TB drive is already around the equivalent of approximatealy $350-400 here, so just one of those will probably eat your budget by like 90-100% already .

Personally I use Unraid. It was simple to set up and expanding it is a breeze. I like that it runs from a thumb drive so you don't have to "waste" a disk on the OS

Based on what ive seen an 8tb drive can be had for as low as $160

Is this a bad drive?

Im willing to ditch the UPS if thats unrealistic for my budget

What is the difference between a DIY NAS and a premade enclosure like this?:

Is there an easy way to use one of these as a NAS rather than an external USB enclosure?

tikker · July 11, 2021

3 hours ago, starry said:

Is this a bad drive?

No, but those drives aren't made for NAS usage. For WD the NAS lineup is their Red, Red Plus or Red Pro drives and for Seagate the NAS lineup are the IronWolf or IronWolf Pro models. This isn't just a marketing difference. NAS drives are built under the assumption they are used in an enclosure close to other drives (so they are made to deal with vibrations better) and in RAID arrays (normal drives will try to recover from errors, which can get them kicked out of the array if they try too long). I'm not 100% sure if this affects the faux-RAID solutions of Synology, Unraid etc., but in general those other drives are not technically made to be used in NASes.

3 hours ago, starry said:

What is the difference between a DIY NAS and a premade enclosure like this?

Footprint, power usage and OS. If you go the DIY route you have full control over the hardware that goes in and what OS it runs. If you go with a premade box like Synology, QNAP or others you get a ready-to-go solution where you only need to add the drives. Plus it's tailored to its purpose, so you'll get a tiny footprint and low power consumption that is basically impossible to match in any DIY build.

I haven't heard about that brand, but Synology and QNAP are generally well reviewed and the most well known providers for these solutions.

3 hours ago, starry said:

Is there an easy way to use one of these as a NAS rather than an external USB enclosure?

Yeah that's kind of the point of these small boxes: to provide an easy to use mass storage solution. Keep in mind that if you want to make use of their RAID 1 or equivalent functionality, you'll need at least 2 drives. You also get the capacity of only 1 drive, as they will be mirrors of each other. An 8 TB RAID 1 solution would thus require you to get 2 8 TB drives.

Finally there's the obligatory "RAID is not a backup". RAID (or its equivalents) is just there to protect you in case a drive decides to die. If you store valuable data on it you should make actual backups.