Use NAS temporarily as a DAS?

[Darth_Rune]

Hello,

 

I'm new to NAS. Currently in a predicament. Is it possible to connect a NAS (that I built) directly to my other pc, and only allow that pc access to the NAS and its RAID 1 functionality? I do not want the NAS to connect to the router or the Wi-Fi. Want it offline for security. Basically, I temporarily want my NAS to act as a DAS. How would I go about this? I have a LAN port on the NAS, so just connect it to my pc over ethernet?

 

Thanks.

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can connect over ethernet and set a static IP on both devices.

 

But id still suggest plugging it into your main network. Setup correctly there isn't really a security issue.

[Kid.Lazer]

It would only work if you manually enter IP information into your NAS and PC. Both it and your PC do not contain a DHCP server, so they won't be able to communicate unless they both have static (and compatible) IPs set manually.

[LIGISTX]

52 minutes ago, Darth_Rune said:

Hello,

 

I'm new to NAS. Currently in a predicament. Is it possible to connect a NAS (that I built) directly to my other pc, and only allow that pc access to the NAS and its RAID 1 functionality? I do not want the NAS to connect to the router or the Wi-Fi. Want it offline for security. Basically, I temporarily want my NAS to act as a DAS. How would I go about this? I have a LAN port on the NAS, so just connect it to my pc over ethernet?

 

Thanks.

As others said…. Yes. 
 

But there is no real reason for this. The only real vector in is via other internet connected machines (the NAS itself being on the network won’t have anything actually internet facing). If someone/some virus infects your PC, it likely will try and spread it to your NAS via the SMB share…

[baronvonsatchel]

It's almost certainly unnecessary, but if you're really worried about it the easy thing to do is disconnect your router from the internet. Your local network will be able to connect to each other, but no data will enter or leave your house.

[Needfuldoer]

"Making all your data accessible to all your devices" is the point of a home NAS.

 

You can keep your files private with user permissions. As long as someone else doesn't have the password to your account (or the root account), they won't have access to your files.

 

You could also set up an iSCSI target that only your PC can access, but at that point you might as well just plop a couple high capacity drives in your PC and not deal with the network bottleneck.

[Darth_Rune]

Thanks for the replies guys. 

And I understand the "network" part of the NAS and that my request sounds a bit silly. But basically I'll be traveling out of country soon and I will not have router admin privileges or in some cases access to the router at all. And having my NAS on at home and be accessible remotely is not an option. So I'm trying to convert my NAS temporarily into a DAS for me to lug around in my travels. Is it possible? Or are the hardware requirements for a DAS just too different for it to happen? 

I'll be connecting the NAS-converted-to-DAS to my laptop btw when I'm traveling.

 

My NAS build btw:

___

CPU: 

Intel Pentium Gold G7400 3.7 GHz Dual-Core Processor

___

MOTHERBOARD:

ASRock B660M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1700 Motherboard

___

RAM:

Corsair Vengeance LPX 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory

BOOT SSD FOR OS + RAID 1:

TEAMGROUP MS30 128 GB M.2-2280

___

STORAGE:

(×2)   SATA Solid State Drive

Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive

___

CASE:

Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Desktop Case

___

POWER SUPPLY:

Thermaltake Smart 430 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply

___

 

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, Darth_Rune said:

Thanks for the replies guys. 

And I understand the "network" part of the NAS and that my request sounds a bit silly. But basically I'll be traveling out of country soon and I will not have router admin privileges or in some cases access to the router at all. And having my NAS on at home and be accessible remotely is not an option. So I'm trying to convert my NAS temporarily into a DAS for me to lug around in my travels. Is it possible? Or are the hardware requirements for a DAS just too different for it to happen? 

I'll be connecting the NAS-converted-to-DAS to my laptop btw when I'm traveling.

 

My NAS build btw:

___

CPU: 

Intel Pentium Gold G7400 3.7 GHz Dual-Core Processor

___

MOTHERBOARD:

ASRock B660M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1700 Motherboard

___

RAM:

Corsair Vengeance LPX 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory

BOOT SSD FOR OS + RAID 1:

TEAMGROUP MS30 128 GB M.2-2280

___

STORAGE:

(×2)   SATA Solid State Drive

Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive

___

CASE:

Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Desktop Case

___

POWER SUPPLY:

Thermaltake Smart 430 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply

___

 

Why can’t you have it on at home? What are the limitations to this?

 

Why would you not just either add storage to your Pc/laptop, or use a few external drives for this? 4TB of storage is much to little to go through the cost and difficulty of building a NAS. (Oh… it’s already built, why did you build it for such a small amount of storage? I’m all for building a NAS, but 100 dollars worth of harddrives seems like an interesting thing to have built a NAS around). 
 

I still don’t understand why you can’t just leave it at home, or buy a 4TB external drive and just take that with you. 

[Needfuldoer]

For your use case, a >4 TB external drive makes a lot more sense to me than lugging the NAS around as an external drive. Is it hosting services you want to use (but can’t reinstall to a VM or something like that)?

 

If you’re dead-set on doing this, just connect the NAS and laptop together via Ethernet. Get a USB NIC for the laptop if you plan on using wired networking at the places you’ll be staying.