Looking for recommendations to build my own NAS on a budget

[Vulpen]

Hello!

I am in need of a NAS, and I'd like to build my own if it would save me a few bucks. I'm pretty tech savvy, however I've not dealt with any form of NAS'es before, so don't assume I know too much, especially when it comes to software.

 

My needs are as follows:

-Small(ish?) form factor

-Quiet

-Energy Efficient

-At least 2 HDD slots, so I can RAID them, but expandability (up to 4?) would be nice

-An internal storage for the OS (preferrably a M.2 slot, but a small SATA SSD would do as well)

-Able to run FOSS operating systems like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS. I don't like running proprietary software if I can help it.

-My budget is around 100$-200$, but I'm also interested in cheaper solutions if there are any.

 

I'll be using it mostly for personal cloud storage (Nextcloud), no VMs or 4k video streaming, so not a lot of horsepower is needed.

 

I've been researching my options and I've come across a few:

-A mini PC (like a raspberry) + DAS enclosure

-Repurposing an old PC into a NAS

-Building it from scratch (can get pricy)

-Just buying a new NAS (not a fan of this option, but do suggest me some)

-Buying a secondhand NAS (same as above, but slightly cheaper lol)

 

Can you tell me what pros and cons the above options have, and which will be best for my use case?

Also share any experience you have with unexpected pitfalls and other problems I might run into and how to avoid them.

Personally, building my own from a raspberry or old PC would be ideal, but I don't have any idea where to begin when it comes to cases (that are compact) and power supplies (that are efficient). Any suggestions and help would be appreciated!

[will0hlep]

14 minutes ago, Vulpen said:

Hello!

I am in need of a NAS, and I'd like to build my own if it would save me a few bucks. I'm pretty tech savvy, however I've not dealt with any form of NAS'es before, so don't assume I know too much, especially when it comes to software.

 

My needs are as follows:

-Small(ish?) form factor

-Quiet

-Energy Efficient

-At least 2 HDD slots, so I can RAID them, but expandability (up to 4?) would be nice

-An internal storage for the OS (preferrably a M.2 slot, but a small SATA SSD would do as well)

-Able to run FOSS operating systems like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS. I don't like running proprietary software if I can help it.

-My budget is around 100$-200$, but I'm also interested in cheaper solutions if there are any.

 

I'll be using it mostly for personal cloud storage (Nextcloud), no VMs or 4k video streaming, so not a lot of horsepower is needed.

 

I've been researching my options and I've come across a few:

-A mini PC (like a raspberry) + DAS enclosure

-Repurposing an old PC into a NAS

-Building it from scratch (can get pricy)

-Just buying a new NAS (not a fan of this option, but do suggest me some)

-Buying a secondhand NAS (same as above, but slightly cheaper lol)

 

Can you tell me what pros and cons the above options have, and which will be best for my use case?

Also share any experience you have with unexpected pitfalls and other problems I might run into and how to avoid them.

Personally, building my own from a raspberry or old PC would be ideal, but I don't have any idea where to begin when it comes to cases (that are compact) and power supplies (that are efficient). Any suggestions and help would be appreciated!

 

IMO the best options are to either "Repurposing an old PC" or "Building it from scratch" (this can actually be done quite cheaply with used parts), but what exactly is best for you depends on the use case, the amount of storage needed, ect..

 

Could you give us more details about these things .

 

Also in the event you go down the route of "Building it from scratch" we'd need to know what country you'd be shopping in so we could find you good deals on parts.

[voyager_]

We will defiantly need more information on what exactly you want out of it and where you are. If you're in the US a prebuilt can be picked up pretty cheap but potential upgrades will be more limited down the road but you can piece together a system pretty cheap on ebay/marketplace and craigslist if you're not afraid to potentially lose one of your organs. 

 

Do you have any old parts that can be used?

 

How concerned are you for power efficiency? Some used hardware can be really cheap but may cost you on your power bill.

 

You aren't planning to hardware raid the drives right? If you can add some to your budget I really like unraid especially if you want to grow the storage down the road. It will let you just add a drive and rebuild. Truenas may have a similar function, when I set up my servers they didn't and I went unraid specifically because of the ease of expansion. Truenas had to have drives added as pools (It has been awhile so this may have changed). 

[MarkPol88]

How are the prices of something like N100 in the place you live? It could be low power alternative to some old second-hand tech and probably better option than something like Synology.

If I am talking out of my ar*e, please tell me why - I am looking to upgrade my own NAS right now with similar needs as OP.

[m9x3mos]

1 hour ago, MarkPol88 said:

How are the prices of something like N100 in the place you live? It could be low power alternative to some old second-hand tech and probably better option than something like Synology.

If I am talking out of my ar*e, please tell me why - I am looking to upgrade my own NAS right now with similar needs as OP.

I run a mini pc that has an n100 that runs windows as the host and virtualize truenas and pass in the drives from a 5 bay orico enclosure and that seems to work well. 

If there are mini pcs that can take multiple sata that could work but I haven't seen any, hence the enclosure and the need to run it virtualize under windows to get the usb enclosure to be stable. 

[MarkPol88]

41 minutes ago, m9x3mos said:

If there are mini pcs that can take multiple sata that could work but I haven't seen any

I was referring to something more like this, than mini PC:

ASRock MB Intel N100M: Amazon.de: Computer & Accessories

[Vulpen]

Woah, thanks for all the quick replies.

 

I'm from Bulgaria (eastern europe), and PC parts are on the pricier side here, due to VAT, and especially compared to our wages here, hence the low budget I set out for this project. A mini pc with N100 cpu here costs about 400-500 BGN, which is roughly 200-250 USD.

Still, I'd prefer giving more money now on a power-efficient machine, than giving them for power bills years down the line.

 

For now my storage requirements are rather humble, I think two HDDs in RAID of about 500-1000 gb would be more than enough for the time being, but I'd love to have the option of expanding down the line. I just don't want to be bottlenecked by something stupid like the usb header (in the case of miniPC+DAS) or the cpu speed, I want the storage to feel snappy and approach the max speed of the drive or network.

 

As I mentioned I'm not well versed in NAS software, so can someone explain how software and hardware RAID works and which one I should use?

 

I have a couple of old parts lying around from the ddr2 and ddr3 era, some motherboards, ram, cpus, but again I'm concerned with their energy consumption. If I went down the "build your own" road, wouldn't it be better to buy newer secondhand parts that are at least ddr4? Or maybe repurpose a laptop board? - at least they are made with energy efficiency in mind.

[m9x3mos]

1 hour ago, MarkPol88 said:

I was referring to something more like this, than mini PC:

ASRock MB Intel N100M: Amazon.de: Computer & Accessories

Ah, that is cool. I didn't know they were sold like that. Might need to look into getting one of those for my backup NAS instead of a mini pc.

[m9x3mos]

52 minutes ago, Vulpen said:

Woah, thanks for all the quick replies.

 

I'm from Bulgaria (eastern europe), and PC parts are on the pricier side here, due to VAT, and especially compared to our wages here, hence the low budget I set out for this project. A mini pc with N100 cpu here costs about 400-500 BGN, which is roughly 200-250 USD.

Still, I'd prefer giving more money now on a power-efficient machine, than giving them for power bills years down the line.

 

For now my storage requirements are rather humble, I think two HDDs in RAID of about 500-1000 gb would be more than enough for the time being, but I'd love to have the option of expanding down the line. I just don't want to be bottlenecked by something stupid like the usb header (in the case of miniPC+DAS) or the cpu speed, I want the storage to feel snappy and approach the max speed of the drive or network.

 

As I mentioned I'm not well versed in NAS software, so can someone explain how software and hardware RAID works and which one I should use?

 

I have a couple of old parts lying around from the ddr2 and ddr3 era, some motherboards, ram, cpus, but again I'm concerned with their energy consumption. If I went down the "build your own" road, wouldn't it be better to buy newer secondhand parts that are at least ddr4? Or maybe repurpose a laptop board? - at least they are made with energy efficiency in mind.

Any older generation stuff is going to take more power. That is going to be up to you depending on how much your energy costs if it is worth it to you.