Nas solutions ?

[MRSMIFFY]

Ok so i want a Nas for some mass storage and the cloud aspect of it , but as it stands i already have 2 x 1tb hdd's and a ssd boot drive.

 

What im asking is rather than buying a Nas with drives can i just use one of my hdd's and buy another drive if i need it , the hdd's i have are Western Digital Blue's so not specifically Nas drives , will i run into any problems?  

[Beskamir]

My own NAS is basically a server which uses FreeNAS for it's os. I needed server grade stuff for it though so I'm not sure if I'd recommend doing what I did. Currently I have only 3TB worth of storage space from it (2*3TB Western Digital Red drives in raid 1) since when I built it over the summer it was mainly just an experiment.

 

From an outside network I use a VPN to I access it since I'm paranoid about security/privacy. Again not the easiest thing to setup since I had to use an old pc and make a pfsense router from it since the dlink router, that my dad had to buy a year earlier, was not going to work. I probably did everything the hard way so while my solution is rock solid and I like it you might want to take advice from someone else.

 

As for NAS drives vs nonNAS drives, I'd recommend certified NAS grade drives. However if you don't have the funding I guess it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Just backup anything important just as you should normally do even with specific NAS drives!!

 

Also I heard that you could do some nice things with a Raspberry Pi, some storage, and Bittorrent Sync. Although with Bittorrent Sync you should be aware that most public places (ie schools) dislike torrent protocols for whatever reason Also BTS is better for syncing files from one device to another. I use it for an automated backup system since it's nearly instant and it backs up files that get replaced to an archive folder where they spend X amount of time before permanently being removed.

 

Hopefully I was of some help to you.