Turning an old PC into NAS. Should I do it or just buy a NAS?

[FRD]

Lately I've seen a tutorial on how to turn an old PC into a NAS. In the past I've always seen LTT videos on this topic, including one about using FreeNAS.

Now I'm wondering, does it make sense to turn any old PC into a NAS?

I'm in the market for a NAS, but they're a decent investment. I think I would spend around $300-500 including HDDs, but I still have a couple of old PCs here gathering dust.

I still have a couple of old PCs from back in the day. The best one is a Windows Vista with an AMD Athlon in it I believe. The other ones (2 or 3) have DDR2 RAM, I can't recall the other specs. Those were my first gaming PCs, 2 with XP on it and 1 with Windows ME. 3 of them are mATX cases, one of them is ATX, so portability is not great for a NAS. One of them is a SFF form factor, but it's an office PC with some kind of security that I can't remove.

 

I have a couple of questions about turning one of these into a NAS:

1. Do I need to install new Windows and reset the PCs to make it into a NAS? I rather not lose all of my old files and I like the classic OS.

2. How do I know if it's going to run efficient? They're old PSUs and probably have no 80 Plus rating, so I think it would be bad for my energy bill.

3. Can it also be made into a NAS with an external HDD instead of internal?

4. Won't it be slow with only USB 1 or 2 ports and a non Gigabit ethernet connection?

5. Can I run into problems with connectors? Let's say if for example the PC turns out to have PATA HDDs inside.

 

Basically the main question is, should I make one of these into a NAS or it's too old and not worth it?

I'm doubting to buy a NAS for a while now, but turning an old PC into a NAS could be a really cost saving method.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

What era are these machines? i think a c2d or a c2q would be good enough for a nas depending on what you use it for

[FRD]

3 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

What era are these machines? i think a c2d or a c2q would be good enough for a nas depending on what you use it for

The Vista one is 2008-2010, it has a Dual core. Other ones are from around 2000 and mostly around 2005 based (I recall because I used to play GTA SA on them). Quad cores weren't around yet, they're either single or dual cores.

I want to use the NAS mainly for transferring photos/videos, but also streaming from it would be nice if any PC could handle that.

[whispous]

Vista is un-updated, insecure and you don't want it to be exposed in any way.

While the hardware will be capable of runnign a file server, you'd do better installing a modern OS - a new Windows 10, an easy linux distro like Ubuntu or a NAS specific os like TrueNAS.

[FRD]

3 minutes ago, whispous said:

Vista is un-updated, insecure and you don't want it to be exposed in any way.

While the hardware will be capable of runnign a file server, you'd do better installing a modern OS - a new Windows 10, an easy linux distro like Ubuntu or a NAS specific os like TrueNAS.

Good advice, I know that Vista is indeed vulnerable. It still has those desktop widgets like the clock, just like the older version of Windows 7.

So I need any new of OS. In that case I'm not sure if I like to reset one of those PCs. Maybe after all I'm better off getting a NAS. It's more expensive, but in the end it's portable and much more efficient.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, FRD said:

Good advice, I know that Vista is indeed vulnerable. It still has those desktop widgets like the clock, just like the older version of Windows 7.

So I need any new of OS. In that case I'm not sure if I like to reset one of those PCs. Maybe after all I'm better off getting a NAS. It's more expensive, but in the end it's portable and much more efficient.

You know you can just sell all of them off and buy some cheap lga 1155 or 1150 hardware right? E3 v2 or v3 xeons are pretty cheap and so are the mbs (you can find almost mini itx boards for cheap), ddr3 is also really cheap

 

Os wise go for a dedicated nas os like truenas, im not sure how well w10 will work in a nas setting but id just avoid w10 just to not uneccesarily load your ram or cpu with bloatware tasks

 

Have a look at some yt tutorials for making your own nas, the benifit is they are cheaper and more expandable, though depends on what hardware you use cause you could buy a cheap 1155 or 1150 storage server off ebay and have hot swap drive bays. Heck you can even make a raspberry pi into a nas if you wanted something really efficient power draw wise

[Needfuldoer]

You can always disconnect the original hard drive and install a different one to experiment with. As long as the old drive is unplugged, and you put the system back the way it was before you boot from it again, that install of Windows won't know you've done anything.

 

I wouldn't run that old Core 2 machine, though. They're not very power efficient, and Fast Ethernet is going to be a major bottleneck. You can fix that easily enough with a gigabit network card, but there's not much you can do about its power consumption.

 

If you want to use an old PC as a home server, I'd recommend not going further back than Sandy Bridge. That architecture was a big step forward in power efficiency compared to anything Intel released before it, and for home use a NAS is going to sit idle more often than not. You'll also be able to take advantage of Quick Sync hardware video transcoding, which can be important if you plan on running a media server like Jellyfin or Plex.  You can pick up off-lease corporate desktops with Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPUs for a lot less than a new dedicated NAS appliance would cost. They'll typically come with 4-8 GB of RAM (with available DIMM slots for more), an i5 or i7, available PCIe slots, USB 3.0, and 80 Plus Bronze to Gold rated power supplies. (Expect it to draw between 40 and 100 watts most of the time.) An OEM machine will also probably come with a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 Pro license that will activate Windows 10 Pro (at least it did last time I tried). I'd recommend getting an SSD for the boot drive, and dedicating your hard drives to storage. Storing the Plex metadata database on an SSD instead of spinning drives will also make a big difference to how responsive the clients and web interface feel.

 

An Ivy Bridge based corporate desktop, plus a 240 gig SSD to boot from, should only cost around $120 total (USD, in the US) with some careful shopping on eBay. That will give you a great starting platform you can follow Anthony's "Your Old PC is Your New Server" video from.

 

Regular desktop Windows will work just fine for serving files to a home network off a couple drives. Just disable automatic restarts after updates, and install something like TeamViewer or VNC in an unattended, always-on, "start up when the system boots" mode to access the machine. (Remote Desktop is also an option, and it's built into Windows.) Then you can leave it running unattended in a corner, connected to just the network and power.

 

If you want to get into more advanced features like multi-disk arrays, ZFS, centralized user authentication, virtual machines, Docker, and file snapshots, you'll want to switch to a dedicated server OS like TrueNAS or Unraid. But at that point you'll want to run a server chassis with multiple hot-swap bays and maybe even dual processors. That's completely overkill for most people.

 

Just remember, a NAS is not a backup and RAID is not a backup! RAID is insurance against downtime and having to restore from your backups. If you have your NAS mapped on your desktop and get hit by ransomware, it will hit your files on the NAS too. You'll still want your important data backed up to offline storage like an external drive or M-Disc optical media.