Budget Compact NAS

[AlexAngelliux]

I'm in the market for a home NAS to backup some data. Particularly a Minecraft world that is very important to me, which I backup roughly once a month. This would be in addition to backing up photos, documents, 3D models and other files. I don't need more than a few terabytes so a 2 disk NAS should be fine for this. I may use this for streaming on Plex, but I'm not 100% on that yet. What's a good NAS for general backups that is relatively compact and good on a budget?

[Needfuldoer]

A used two-bay QNAP or Synology isn't a bad option, if you just want a storage appliance.

 

For a little more flexibility, get an off-lease prebuilt corporate office PC that has at least two 3.5" bays. Pretty much anything Sandy Bridge or newer is fine.

[m9x3mos]

2 hours ago, AlexAngelliux said:

I'm in the market for a home NAS to backup some data. Particularly a Minecraft world that is very important to me, which I backup roughly once a month. This would be in addition to backing up photos, documents, 3D models and other files. I don't need more than a few terabytes so a 2 disk NAS should be fine for this. I may use this for streaming on Plex, but I'm not 100% on that yet. What's a good NAS for general backups that is relatively compact and good on a budget?

You might want to look into the new offering from ugreen in Kickstarter now. It has docker support so you can run plex and minecraft docker servers with it. 

[AlexAngelliux]

24 minutes ago, m9x3mos said:

You might want to look into the new offering from ugreen in Kickstarter now. It has docker support so you can run plex and minecraft docker servers with it. 

I saw a video on it, and it looks nice! The video mainly went over issues with the software but it looks really nice and upgradeable so I might go with that!
EDIT: Upon looking, it isn't set to ship until June, and I want it sooner than that.

Edited April 1 by AlexAngelliux

[m9x3mos]

1 hour ago, AlexAngelliux said:

I saw a video on it, and it looks nice! The video mainly went over issues with the software but it looks really nice and upgradeable so I might go with that!
EDIT: Upon looking, it isn't set to ship until June, and I want it sooner than that.

Fair enough, wasn't sure what your time frame was like. 

What sort of budget excluding drives are you looking at and how many drives? 

Getting a used optiplex with an i5 that can support the amount of drives you want is probably the most adorable method. You can usually get these used pretty cheap depending on your country. 

[AlexAngelliux]

3 minutes ago, m9x3mos said:

Fair enough, wasn't sure what your time frame was like. 

What sort of budget excluding drives are you looking at and how many drives? 

Getting a used optiplex with an i5 that can support the amount of drives you want is probably the most adorable method. You can usually get these used pretty cheap depending on your country. 

I'm in New York, and I'm fine getting an old business PC I just have to find them. Do you know of any companies or websites that have consistent stock or anything like that, or is it best to just look on Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist/eBay?

I also have my old laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad with a 10th Gen i5. I could get necessary adapters or whatever to turn that into a homemade NAS, right?

EDIT: Specific budget, not factoring in drives, is less than $300. Drives I can pickup whenever and budget for later.

Edited April 1 by AlexAngelliux

[m9x3mos]

1 hour ago, AlexAngelliux said:

I'm in New York, and I'm fine getting an old business PC I just have to find them. Do you know of any companies or websites that have consistent stock or anything like that, or is it best to just look on Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist/eBay?

I also have my old laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad with a 10th Gen i5. I could get necessary adapters or whatever to turn that into a homemade NAS, right?

EDIT: Specific budget, not factoring in drives, is less than $300. Drives I can pickup whenever and budget for later.

I would avoid using a laptop as you would need usb adapters and those are pretty finicky unless you run windows and then your nas software in hyper v.

I am not aware of specific sellers but usually going to Facebook market place might get you the best deal and if you can get them to show you it running is probably the safest bet. Then you wouldn't pay shipping. 

[m9x3mos]

Just now, m9x3mos said:

I would avoid using a laptop as you would need usb adapters and those are pretty finicky unless you run windows and then your nas software in hyper v.

I am not aware of specific sellers but usually going to Facebook market place might get you the best deal and if you can get them to show you it running is probably the safest bet. Then you wouldn't pay shipping. 

To add some clarity, as a backup nas I have one running on a m920q that I upgraded to 32gb ram and connected a 5 bay orico usb c enclosure and then it runs windows 11 pro and setup the storage with truenas scale running in a vm and pass in the drives so it can manage them. 

I was not able to get it working correctly under truenas or unraid directly due to the way these enclosures work. They have connection issues in Linux and send the same serial number for every drive which causes problems. 

So this vm method was the only way I could get it running. 

It isn't the fastest thing but it handles the 1gb connection without issues. 

[Blue4130]

8 hours ago, AlexAngelliux said:

I'm in the market for a home NAS to backup some data. Particularly a Minecraft world that is very important to me, which I backup roughly once a month. This would be in addition to backing up photos, documents, 3D models and other files. I don't need more than a few terabytes so a 2 disk NAS should be fine for this. I may use this for streaming on Plex, but I'm not 100% on that yet. What's a good NAS for general backups that is relatively compact and good on a budget?

How many people will need to access this? If it is just you, then honestly for only a few TB, I'd just get two seperate 4tb external drives and use them. To me, a NAS is best if there are multiple people that need access or you have more data than what a harddrive can hold.