cheapest nas?

[12345678]

I've seen some built by using raspberries, but I'm limited to 3 drives if I'm not wrong?

 

how many drive ports do I need? I still don't know exactly, I'm looking for solutions then I'll decide what's suites the best

[Levent]

RaspberryPi is a computer and you are not limited by the USB ports it has, you can always slap in a USB hub and connect as many harddrives you can power. I got a OrangePi Zero, that has 3 external drives connected to it despite having 1 USB connector onboard. Main issue is always power with these all SBCs, I got a laptop power brick which I got 3 LM2596s connected to it. One LM2596 powers external harddisks via modified cable. One power the orangepi zero, and other one power a USB hub that is also connected to orangepi zero via usb headers. It is a relatively cheap and dirty solution but it has been working perfectly for the last 2 years.

[RONOTHAN##]

It really comes down to how much storage you need and how many drives you want to use. Something like a Core 2 Duo optiplex can be found for a similar price as a Raspberry Pi on the used market, and you should be able to get 4 drives natively plus room for expansion through HBA cards, but getting an HBA can be $40-50 on eBay if you do need more drives than that. A decommissioned server is a great option for cheap, it's what my NAS is running on, since it you usually get a lot of added stability and management features (IPMI is awesome) and you usually get a decent amount of expansion, but you're limited to what you can find on the used market and power consumption will be something you have to worry about. 

 

I would try to answer that first question before you decide what to buy. If you need 2tb of data and just want to run a simple RAID1 (mirrored drives) with no plans of expansion, then a Raspberry Pi is probably your best bet. If you want to be running something like 8 drives in a RAID6 (two drives of redundancy) or you want to expand the array in the future, then something like an old Optiplex and an HBA or a decommissioned server might be the better option. 

[BondiBlue]

That depends on how much storage you need. I'm still running an old Dell OptiPlex 755 as my primary NAS, and in the past I've had 9 or so drives in it. With higher capacity drives that would be quite a lot of storage. The machines are basically free these days, and parts aren't expensive either. My particular OptiPlex has spent its entire life as a server in one capacity or another, and the only thing that's ever gone wrong with it is the PSU. I swapped it out for another one and it's been great since. Right now it's been on since October, and it has zero issues.

 

If you don't need a whole lot of storage but want something that's contained within one case then I'd suggest looking for an old OptiPlex or something similar. 

 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, 12345678 said:

 

 

how many drive ports do I need? I still don't know exactly, I'm looking for solutions then I'll decide what's suites the best

How much storage do you need? A NAS can be a single drive or it can be hundreds. There is no defined number of ports. You choose.

[evilcloud]

On 7/31/2021 at 10:49 PM, 12345678 said:

I've seen some built by using raspberries, but I'm limited to 3 drives if I'm not wrong?

 

how many drive ports do I need? I still don't know exactly, I'm looking for solutions then I'll decide what's suites the best

you're kinda doing it the wrong way round.  In order to come up with solutions, you need to know what you want first

 

Best to work out what you are looking to do, then recommendations can be made accordingly.  For example, if all you literally want to do is host files, then you can plug a usb drive in to a lot of routers, or use a pi, or Odroid do specific nas units like this ODROID-HC2 : Home Cloud Two – ODROID (hardkernel.com)  Whereas if you looking to run a host of applications/web server/minecraft servers, then something like pi will probably grind to a halt if more than one person is accessing it all at the same time.

 

Also worth noting that I know a lot of people recommend old pc's or severs, but be aware that running things like that can cost add up quite a bit in power costs, and in servers cases - noise! If you are going to use an old computer or server make sure that it's at least post sandy bridge as before that idling power usage was terrible.

 

Also no need to have your servers running 24x7 if you go to sleep   Scheduling on/off times can also work wonders for your power bills...

[12345678]

anyway I just realized that I can use my router as a nas