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Building a NAS with Spare Parts

Bookhugger

Budget (including currency): <$500 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: NAS, Plex/Jellyfin, light game server duty

 

 

Hello all! I've had a streak of fortunate events that have left me with some spare hardware. I'm looking for some advice on how to best put it to use. I'm a photography student graduating in the spring and would like to have a true backup for my work. I won't be making serious money by taking photos for a while so I can't justify a proper prosumer solution. I am extremely ignorant to the world of servers or NAS's in general so please spell out any advice in beginner friendly terms. 

 

My current gaming system is:

i7 6700k

16GB Corsair Vengence

MSI Z270-A PRO 

MSI Duke 1080ti

Corsair RMX 850

NZXT S340 Elite

Current Storage Solution in the gaming machine is:

2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus

5TB WD Blue

8TB WD Black

240gb Samsung 850 Evo (Old boot drive, sitting empty right now)

I keep my photos manually backed up on both the WD drives (if someone has a straight forward folder mirroring solution I'd love that to, everything I found was confusing af)

 

Recently Acquired Spare Hardware:

i7 8700k

Asus Strix Z370-E Gaming 

2x 10TB WD Red - These were hand me downs from a photographer friend, they were purchased in early 2019 and ran in a small dual bay NAS enclosure until now. How reliable are they? Is there any way I can check?

Also have my old i5 5600k

 

I have two main ideas for what to do with the excess hardware and I would love feedback on which y'all would recommend or if there's another option I've missed.

 

Regardless of my storage/NAS plans I will certainly be swapping the newer mobo and i7 into my gaming rig. Then my plans diverge:

 

One Machine- Bigger Case

The simplest solution is to simply upgrade to a case with more hard drive bays. My S340 only has 3 bays, preventing me from installing the second 10tb drive. I'd sell my old processor, mobo, and case to pay for the new case. If I went this route Id probably also trade up to a 32gb kit of RAM as this option is cheap anyway.

 

2 Machines! 

This plan is where I certainly need the most advice. While upgrading my gaming rig I plan to buy a 32gb kit of RAM which would leave me the following parts to use for a server: i7 6700k, Z270 mobo, 16gb ram, old 850 Evo, and 2x 10tb WD Red. Is this starting part list even reasonable to use for a NAS/server? If so, what do y'all recommend for Case and PSU? Ideally I'd like some good headroom to expand my storage down the road so drive capacity is a priority. 

 

 

Sorry if this was a bit hard to follow. I'm extremely fortunate to have the 'problem' of figuring out the best solution. Thanks in advance for any and all advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, Bookhugger said:

2x 10TB WD Red - These were hand me downs from a photographer friend, they were purchased in early 2019 and ran in a small dual bay NAS enclosure until now. How reliable are they? Is there any way I can check?

Id check smart data, but they should be fine. A hdd should last you longer than 4 years, and If you use RAID 1 the chance of a dual failure is very low.

 

14 minutes ago, Bookhugger said:

The simplest solution is to simply upgrade to a case with more hard drive bays. My S340 only has 3 bays, preventing me from installing the second 10tb drive. I'd sell my old processor, mobo, and case to pay for the new case. If I went this route Id probably also trade up to a 32gb kit of RAM as this option is cheap anyway.

 

Id probably do this. Or get a USB enclosure for HDD and keep your case. Then you can use the USB hdd for backups, and unplug it when your not backing up so ransomware or other issues can cause lost backups.

 

15 minutes ago, Bookhugger said:

This plan is where I certainly need the most advice. While upgrading my gaming rig I plan to buy a 32gb kit of RAM which would leave me the following parts to use for a server: i7 6700k, Z270 mobo, 16gb ram, old 850 Evo, and 2x 10tb WD Red. Is this starting part list even reasonable to use for a NAS/server? If so, what do y'all recommend for Case and PSU? Ideally I'd like some good headroom to expand my storage down the road so drive capacity is a priority. 

 

Those parts will be more than plenty for a nas, but it will be more complex to setup and use more power. You can upgrade more, but If your hapy with those 2 drives, ID just use a single system.

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1 hour ago, Bookhugger said:

The simplest solution is to simply upgrade to a case with more hard drive bays. My S340 only has 3 bays, preventing me from installing the second 10tb drive. I'd sell my old processor, mobo, and case to pay for the new case. If I went this route Id probably also trade up to a 32gb kit of RAM as this option is cheap anyway.

You know for my first NAS iteration I used just the cheapest case I could find and I quickly out grew it.  I used a hard drive bay (you can order these) to add the extra bays to this case. It wasn't "pretty", but it was functional. (Just a thought / idea)  Later I did just order a case that would hold enough drives as I continued to expand.

 

truenas6.jpg

 

As for mirroring backups, there are automated solutions, but I still prefer to do this with scripts. I use a mixture of xcooy, robocopy, rsync, depending on what I'm doing and the machine. As sometimes I need the folders identical, sometimes I don't want them deleting files, just coping new files. 

 

As for the ideas, the two machines (Desktop and a NAS) is the more complicated route however I would tend to lean that way just as it puts your data in two different places. 

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