Thanks for the shout out! I'm with you, I think both are great options, and at the end of the day, having a storage device with a warranty and a vendor to handle the nitty gritty can be nice, if you don't need certain features or the price that you can only get with DIY.
WHAT!? Is that THE Jeff Geerling??? Haha, in all seriousness, thanks for the comment man! You were such a huge inspiration with getting into this hobby. I specifically remember watching one of your pi cluster videos having absolutely no idea what this kubernetes thing you were talking about was, but I loved it. Also, hope you’re feeling better. Crohns is a really sucky thing.
Yeah, but if ur in the EU it would cost a lot of energy for a 2nd hand pc and for a pre made one it is quite expensive, so the best would be to get a 2nd hand premade.
Hello Everyone! Marco here! Thank you for watching and thank you Hardware Haven for taking a look at our NAS! We love all comments, whether they are praise, questions or criticism. We're happy to reply! Thanks again!
@@corvoattano9303 Thank you! We try to make it easy. As an enthusiast myself, I do my tinkering on the machines that are not important and not holding important data. We have tonnes of backup options and our products happily talk with competing products like Synology and TrueNAS to keep your data safely backed up.
honest from my personal experience given a choice i will always build my own nas since the control i can have over it and it can be much more than a nas ie: actual linux running docker container or stuff like that but i am a nerd and not normal people so yea
Prebuilt nas is not that different from just a prebuilt computer, you can install Linux on those too. And since it is basically a RPi you can most likely easily install a custom Linux rom on it
I repurposed an old nas and it turned out fantastic. If anyone remembers, HP made a storage unit called the HP Mediasmart Server. It's a 4 bay micro server they made back around 2010 that ran Windows home server (Extremely outdated and basically unusable today). It's original specs were intel pentium dual core, 2 gigs of ddr2 ram, and 1gigabit ethernet. You can upgrade these machines without a bios update which is surprising. I swapped the pentium out for a Core 2 Quad 8200s (4c/4t) cpu and upgraded the 2gb ram to 4gb of ddr2 which is the max this machine can handle. Cpu is dirt cheap like $18. DDR2 ram on the other hand is a bit expensive. I paid $60 for my 4gb stick. I paid $150 for my EX495. I don't require a large amount of storage space but the biggest drive it'll recognize is 2TB per bay. So 8TB total. I have it set up running open media vault in raid 5. I quit all streaming services and decided to become my own service using Jellyfin and buying my dvds. I have spent more money paying for my entertainment up front, but in the long run I'm saving money big time. Screw streaming services. No more monthly fees, 5 different subscriptions, altered/changed media, or shows getting removed due to licensing issues. I'm in control of my content and I love it.
I used a laptop with broken screen as a nas (screen removed). The laptop had lots of usb 3 ports where I connected HDDs. Also put 2 SSD's inside the laptop for files that are regularly used. Only downside is little less raid options. 🤦🏻♂️ The power draw is really low and energy efficient because it's a laptop and it has a build in battery in case a power outage happens. My dell laptop has a bios option in it that can change power priority: plugged in adapter or battery priority etc. This makes sure having the adapter in the laptop 24/7 doesn't destroy the battery and only charges to max 80% or whatever I set it to.
and when everything fails you lost everything.. no ecc ram no management port you only can use windows server no truenas unraid you need an hba card for direct access to the drives.. buy a used server and star from the beginning
@@ttropicalgamer6634 yup. That's why I backup daily. Currently looking to automate everything. I have like 5 unused real servers. They are to power hungry for 24/7 usage. 1 really weak media / movie server connected directly to my tv (really quiet one with a old xeon with built in gpu) 1 HPE ML350P G6 with 2x E5649 xeons & 20gb ecc ram used for sim related games. 3x HPE DL585 with 4x amd opterons in them each. All 3 have 488gb or something ram. (Wayyy to power hungry 😂🤦🏻). So I have enough servers I can choose from to backup the laptop dyi nas server. (All those servers have raid cards)
@@ttropicalgamer6634 I am using a netbook with 1GB RAM as a temporary NAS, but why do you say only windows server can be used? I am running Debian on it.
When we renovated the apartment, I've actually considered the spot for the home server - it even includes extra ventilation in order to cool it down. Trouble is, renovation was kind of expensive and kind of ate the server money 😁 Right now, I've got a Dell OEM board that needs verifying if it even runs, and an i3 2100t 35W CPU - if it works, there's my home server base, along with plenty of other used but pretty nice components. Naturally, spare time is the tinkerer's greatest enemy.
DUUUUUDE this is exactly the video I was looking for, and so soon after you posted it! Been thinking about implementing a NAS for game storage, your info was SUPER helpful
Thank you for your comparison and also giving the power levels. I believe in letting the drives sleep, but that is just me. I have two 3TB 7200RPM drives that have been powered almost nonstop since 2013 in a home server, but they sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity. Lots of days it is just nightly backups that wake them up. Yes, it can be annoying to wait the 10-15 seconds when first going to look for a file there, but in my mind it is worth it. I hope to make a proper video on that system someday too.
I have a $0.00 backup server, that I also could use as NAS and I do copy files back to my desktop using Samba. The system is based on the remains of a 2003 HP d530 SFF moved to a Compaq Evo Tower with a Win-98SE activation sticker. It has a Pentium 4 HT (1C2T; 3.0 GHz), 1.5GB DDR (400MHz) and 4 HDDs in total 1.21TB (2x IDE 3.5" and 2x SATA-1 2.5"). The system runs FreeBSD 13.1 on OpenZFS 2.1. Transfer speeds are limited to 200 Mbps of 1 Gbps due to a ~95% load on 1 CPU thread. I use the system since June 2019 for ~1 hour/week for the backup and occasionally also to restore files.
Nicely compared. For myself, I went the DIY route with Xubuntu server a few years back but will likely switch it to TrueNAS sometime soon. But for clients (I do a bit of freelance IT and web stuff), I have recommended the Asustor (their Lockerstor series in particular) because of the warranty and that it's easier for a non-tech person to work with.
Good luck with trueNAS dude, ive finally gotten away from it, don't get me wrong great bit of kit, but when it goes wrong, AND IT WILL, your gonna be bald.
@@AnIdiotAboard_ 3-2-1 backup rule, my friend. No single, or even double, device failure should leave you with any critical data loss. Everything important to me is properly 3-2-1 backed up. The rest would be an annoyance, but not that big of a deal, if I lost it.
@@davidg5898 30 Years of tech, i aint ever lost so much as a BIT of information. Although how we got from freeNAS to Backups is beyond me but there you go. Congrats on liking your own comment
I run a Mac Pro 5,1 as a NAS for my studio. Ive loaded it with 6 18TB drives now and it’s been very stable. My argument for using an old PC case is that it has better air flow, a side effect of all that space it takes up. Keeping drives cooler helps them last longer- that and it seems infinitely upgradable and much more customisable in terms of workflow for backup and sync to Dropbox, where we archive our data.
hey lad! Nice video! I bought a second hand i5 with 16gb of RAM (100 bucks), plus a 8 port sata controler (60 bucks), And Im running the last trunas like a pro! Its bigger (the case) but works perfect at my home network!
I love this man. This dude is an average man messing with computers showing us it's not hard to use technology for your own benefit. I'm still in highschool and because of him I can do things with computers that I otherwise thought would be expensive to do.
Good comparison. I prefer DIY option, but if the only purpose for a NAS is... well, to be a NAS, then the factory version is quite good. Ideally I would like to have both devices. DIY server for 24/7 operation and resource-intensive applications, as well as NAS for offline backups (turned on - copied - turned off; it's just more convenient than USB hard drives). Well, I already have all this in some form, but I don’t have enough hard drives, they are too expensive for me.
I prefer DIY because I can always change my eco system down the road for something better. That and expandability means a lot to me. Prebuilt makes sense for those that want it simple and know they wont need more storage down the road for a while.
I enjoyed building my own NAS, but the days of decent towers are coming to an end. I don’t want a rack mount solution, and a 12 bay prebuilt is too pricey. I’m currently running a e351 in a p100 which is decent enough as a file server/data archive build. I also prefer individual SATA ports as opposed to a backplane.
The fact that good DIY NAS cases are so few and far between now a days makes me sad. I ended up using a 1u but that's mainly because of the number of drives I'm using. Luckily with some modding it doesn't always sound like a jet trying to take off.
love the comparison video, I love to breathe new life into old hardware by making them a storage system but the prebuilt one is a great comparison of the 2.
Nice video, I've used both home made and off the shelf I currently run both in the house , I think it really depends on if your technology savy then DIY or if you just want something that works then go the pre built option.
Good comparison. I'm fully in the DIY camp but totally get that not everyone wants to tinker. My main problem is once yo get past 4 drives prices go up dramatically for most prebuilt solutions making DIY significantly cheapedr if you are a data pack rat like I am.
good comparison, something normally overlooked when comparing DIY with off the shelf nas is the power consumption, mostly because they used whatever computer they found, and you could do better if you selected parts with power consumption in mind. Still I would personally choose to make my own NAS (I already do, from raspberry pi's to UdooX86. The worry I have with an off the shelf nas is you may be very locked into what apps they allow you to install, being stuck in a walled garden. I'm certainly feeling that pinch with home assistant, and what devices allow control over. Ecobee is HA compatible, but the hoops I had to jump through to get the 'official' integration to work, compared to the almost plug-and-play of a 3rd party developed api, added hours of troubleshooting.
I'd say there's still a market for pre-built NAS like the Asustor, but since im a full-time developer and need a server that can also host game servers and other services on the side , DIY is the way to go personally
Loved the comparison. Nice to know that if I can either invest time or money and have a great solution either way. I'll be investing time because its fun for me. I'd be interested in seeing you setup more powerful unraid based systems that also host plex/valheim/mineccraft servers. Right now I'm using my NAS for storage but my gaming PC is the actual plex server because its got the GPU. Would love to see your approach/benchmarks.
My NAS is a Dell Poweredge R810. It uses almost 400W when idle and over 900W under heavy load, it's huge and loud. It doesn't even have a lot of storage. 6x2,5" bays. I mainly use it for games that I don't play very often. So I only turn it on every now and then.
@@vipvip-tf9rw It's 4 Xeon E7 4870 cpu's. 130W TDP each. In it's datacenter days it wasn't used as a nas of course. But that's just what I have ended up using it as. And no games require a NAS. I just have steam games stored on it because the hard drives in my PC are full.
@@stefannilsson2406 you can use celeron for this task if you don't use all ssd array, it will be way efficient, your system is overkill for any nas that doesn't serve hundreads of people
@@vipvip-tf9rw I know. But the server was collecting dust and I didn't have any storage space on my PC so I installed tueNAS on it and put it to use. I still don't use it very often and don't see a reason to get a less power hungry system to use as a NAS. I turn the server on so rarely that the power consumption doesn't matter. I like it a lot though. It has 128 gb of ram. Load times in the games that I have on them are very good once they get cashed in memory.
I imagine that the drives running in your DIY NAS would run noticeably cooler than with that Asustor unit as well. Super small form factors come at the price of less cooling, less airflow, and more cramped parts, afterall. Also, less room for vibration dampening solutions for those who are really picky
last nas I built, I got a terramaster prebuilt, added more memory and replaced the is with truenas scale. Nice and small physical footprint, but with decent software
Started building my own NASes years ago. First with Windows Home Server, then FreeNAS/TrueNAS, then more recently just Windows 10 pro and duplicating important information. Drives have gotten larger, and RAID arrays are making less sense now. Started turning NAS off and using as "cold storage" to worry less about power consumption on the old TrueNAS array. 5 X 3TB drives use a lot more power than one 16TB drive. Old NAS has 10GB LAN, 128GB RAM and 12 3TB drives (11 drives in RAIDZ3 with a hot spare - got a bit paranoid after getting bitten with Seagate 3TB drive failures in my previous build). Keeps the house warm in winter, but powered off most of the time now.
I recently bought an Asustor NAS. It was 1.5 tiers up from a Drivestor (Nimbustor G2). I chose it because Asustor is specifically OK with people installing third-party OSes, and I wanted to use OMV. So some of your point about building your own giving you software options isn’t really valid, although it helps if you at least get one that has an x64 CPU instead of ARM.
Excellent review! I am going through this right now. I have a spare 4th gen I5, 8 GB of DDR3, I found a 4 bay case that's nice and small. I think I will go DIY. One thing I was thinking is to put a timer on the DIY, shut it off 10 hours every day.
Fred! Thanks for the comment, and that sounds like the makings of an awesome little system. I’ve considered making a video on automating power on/off to save power. Maybe I can get around to it at some point
I went with a Phanteks Echo 2 for my home server. It holds around 12-14 hdds. I use Windows to share everything. I am just more comfortable with it. And the system gets used for gaming and watching videos.
The build NAS help you choose the hardware you want, with less price. The prebuilt NAS mostly lacks power in CPU and RAM, and more expensive. I have both types, I had to replace parts of the prebuilt as they fail. But nothing for the 24/7 working prebuilt since about 13 years, except the occasional hard drives.
After doing a bunch of research this week, I want to build a TrueNAS Scale system, but the expense is just too much. I decided to buy an Asustor Drivestor AS1104T and two Seagate Ironwolf 6TB drives (the largest 5400 RPM version). $550 total. For right now, I do not need high performance so much as I need a way to start consolidating all the data on the drives I've been accumulating for years.Eventually, I will build a TrueNAS system for the superior data integrity features of ZFS for long-term archiving.
We appreciate the support! Even if you do put together a TrueNAS system, our NAS will happily talk with it using Rsync and other protocols to keep your data synced, protected and backed up on both devices. Wishing you a NASTastic experience!
One thing I wanted is the option to have 24 bays and that is very expensive if you go prebuilt, so I bought a server case for the same price as a 6~8 bay NAS and I had some components laying around so it was a no brainier. just waiting for the the SAS card now...
I got a synology ds414 with four 4 TB I purchase in 2014 have no problems with it, the reason I purchase the NAS it doesn't take up much space and you can put it in the closet also I was tired of external hard drives. I did tiny mod on it I flipped fan around it blow air into the case I added fan filter the temps is around 35 to 40 °C
I use my old 4th gen I5. I have a 2.5gb nic but I only see the added performance when I upload to it. I am replacing my cat5e cable from my nas to a cat6. I was told that most likly its because of my cpu. I also got 16 gb ram installed.
Pro tip for a network administrator and old computer geek with decades of experience. Don’t use crappy seagate drives and you won’t have as many issues. Wd ftw
You can still find some low powered option, you just might have to do some research. Boards that run modern Intel or AMD imbedded chips can be super efficient
I want to do a nas, i have a pc already that i can use. 3470 i5, if i limit the cpu speed it stay below 50watt and idle around 38 watt. Still playing around with components for best power use. I would like a compact ready unit, at this stage i still need to buy the drive i need. Maybe do the truenas, can always later change the nas and use rhe same drives. Mixed feelings but my low budget tels me true nas. Nice video.
Nice to know about the requiremernt to install software. I have two Linux boxes and a Linux laptop, plus a couple of old Linux machines. So for me, using the Asustore would require installing the software on a VM of Windows.
Hi there! I think that is a mistake. We don't actually require installation of any software to use the NAS. It is completely OS independent if you have a web browser.
I tried a TrueNAS setup but my hardware was way too huge and power hungry (i3 2120 and a CM Elite 360 case). Ended up scrapping it and recently got my hands on a free 5 bay Synology. Ease of setup and form factor are hard to beat.
I'm personnaly using a Lenovo motherboard in an atx case. It has an i5-6400 with 16gigs of Ram (got all for free, i'm working in IT, and a lot of computers are going to trash every 5 years ...) I'm running DSM 7.1 on it, thanks to redpill bootloader, and it works like a charm ... having Synology's system with a pretty powerfull cpu and loads of ram is awesome (I can virtualize, docker, plex, etc ...)
Hi , hardware heaven ,excellent review, question: can be synology software run, on regular diy nas? Can the compare be expanded , i mean same diy nas, with different software (ie: open media vault) to see which can squeeze more performance of the same hardware. Also just my thought, but after freenas fuse with truenas, found it a little complicated 😅, i miss the old freenas.
You can install whatever software you want on something like the NAS I built. (OMV, unraid, easynas, etc..). You could look into something called xpenology, which is an open source version of the Synology OS, but I’ve never tried it.
@@ASUSTOR_YT I'm just glad u didn't have any thing shoved down or throats, thanks guys :) also why do u not put more powerful CPUs in ur Nas and not just you like every Nas manufacturer puts weak CPUs why?
@@tigeroats913 Well. To be honest, for 90% of the features, if we put powerful desktop CPUs in there, the speed would just simply go unused in a home/enthusiast/business NAS. Those CPUs also cost more. We do have NAS devices that do use more powerful CPUs for more demanding environments. It's true, if you put something together, you can get cheaper hardware, but we, for obvious reasons cannot use used hardware, and while on paper, the hardware we use would be cheaper, the added cost goes directly into software and hardware development so that you receive a holistic solution that is easy to use and performs as promised. For example, if all the NAS has is 2.5-Gigabit, no amount of CPU is going to make that go faster. It's not a gaming machine with an unlimited performance ceiling. Networking has fixed speeds. More speed = more money on all fronts. We choose to be holistic.
@@tigeroats913 Nope. With the amount of investment we put into our NAS's software development, we're able to do things general purpose PCs can't do. This mainly takes the form of efficiency. Our operating system takes up less than 512 MB of space. Our AS1002T/AS1004T NAS devices, which is the predecessor to the NAS Hardware Haven took a look at have 512 MB of RAM and many people continue to use theirs without issue. Keeping this efficient and optimised makes for a better, faster, smoother experience, otherwise we'd need to use more expensive hardware and that would lock out people on a budget. Our NASes, while they are computers, are not PCs. Using our NAS is not like opening up apps until the RAM is used up in Windows and slows down. Many of the processes are incredibly lightweight and are already running 24/7. Even right now as I set up an older NAS for an experiment at work, my AS-302T with 1 GB of RAM from 2013 is only using 94 MB of RAM. This is WITH the latest updates from 2022. There are very few use cases that require large amounts of RAM. Also, more RAM/hardware means more electricity and cost. In the video, the electricity costs are almost half the DIY TrueNAS build, and that's a low powered CPU in that build. The RAM applications that we'd think customers would use would include, but are not limited to, SSD caching with huge SSDs, which the Drivestor series do not have M.2 NVMe slots, and virtual machines, which are not available on our ARM NAS devices....and the CPU definitely isn't up to the task for that either. We also ensure ADM intelligently uses RAM by putting some processes that aren't being used to sleep, only waking up _when they're actually needed,_ and with many of our processes going down to 0 MB when sleeping. Because we're able to control the process, we can make sure we're at our best. For TrueNAS or other NAS operating systems designed for general-purpose hardware....They have to contend with different hardware configs and drivers and compatibility. It's not a bad thing, but it's the tradeoff. We can get our software onto devices that barely sip power where general purpose server/NAS OS might not run well on. Let me give you an example of usages just from what I see right now. smbd - The process that controls network transfers using SMB. 6 MB of RAM nginx - Our reverse proxy server. 1.5 MB of RAM OpenVPN - VPN server. 2.6 MB of RAM
Hey, first of all, thank you for unblocking me in discord, I don't know what is happening with my discord lately but now it's fine. Next, just as always, amazing content and you are one of the youtubers that not only cares about personal content and reputation, but also cares about his viewers and if anyone asks for something, you most of the time do what they were asking for. Good luck with making content, and continue making it because you have the talent to make it.
I actually didn’t block or unblock you haha. I don’t know what happened. And sorry I’ve been not on discord much at all. Just really busy. Thanks for the comment!
@@HardwareHaven Also I would like to warn you and everyone else about these different hacking things going around in discord lately. Basically you will receive a message from a friend who already has been infected, that you have been exposed in a server that they will send you, and will tell you that you need to do some explaining. But actually that is just a way of leading you into the server and making you verify there, which will lead someone logging into your discord account and sending these messages forward.
I was struggling with this EXACT dilemma. DIY or store bought. Thanks for clearing it up. I'm will just buy one and Asustor Drivestor will be my choice here.
169.254. is meant for autoconfig, it's not private address space that should be used. 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16 are what you should use. Or at least were, I seem to remember something about changes coming.
@@HardwareHaven You should have configured a static ip in the nas (the same or in the same range of your local net) before removing the network cable, this will make the nas always available on router or in direct network cable.
Any other idea for using old PCs? We have 3 old PCs just laying around and I decided to revive one for my MIL so that she could watch Netflix. I already have a D-Link DNS-323 NAS with custom firmware. Would love to hear on what should I do with old PC.
Really depends on the specs and what you enjoy/need, but some ideas could include hosting game/web servers, tinkering and learning enterprise IT software and concepts, using it as a retro game emulator, home automation, trying out other operating systems, a retro pc build, a backup for your NAS, or maybe just experiment with other NAS OSs and see if there’s something else you like more than what you have. There’s probably a lot more ideas, but those are a few I could think of off the top of my head
Long time ago our doctor asked me what he could do with his old 286 computer. I told him the best thing he could do with it was carry it out to the dumpster.
Just build a pi module cluster like a chad EDIT: I recommend doing that because its going to be stronger and efficient use of electricity and a lot of RAM and cores and i use casa os personally on my quad pi module 4 cluster and it runs great which just cost me 150$ (no drive)
i was curious, do you have to use any raid options when using the nas or can you just put it in your hard drives without formatting and use them individually? i am just trying to free up space in my pc case and have games installed on one of the hard drives and movies on another ect. and would like to watch movies from my collection to my apple tv without having my pc running all day and night to do so hence getting a nas network storage device
The issue there is finding a mini itx case with 4+ drive bays that doesn’t break the bank. And I didn’t explain it here, but I went with the Antec case because I didn’t need it to be small, I wanted plenty of room for drives, and I got it for $20
What about getting NAS when I have spre hdd bays in my big tower? Can I somehow utilise that space to make nas out of it somehow? Can I use my everyday windows PC to run NAS system or I need separate hardware dedicated fir nas?
from a tinkerer’s standpoint, i feel like a pre built nas would be a good backup server, whether it be on site or off site. you really only need to store files and you’re likely going to be limited by gigabit speeds anyways. you don’t need it to be fast, just reliable. and let’s be honest, diy nases (especially from old parts) will be less reliable.
I just wanna Windows Home Server 2012 back again....TrueNAS is very complicated for me...i don't really understand nothing about network and stuf like that...Sory but i had to build a PC NAS with Windows 10 because i don't understand nothing about Linux or UNIX...and TRUENAS has so many configure options that i really doesn't wanna care because my main job is making videos and not wasting time searching on the foruns...Is that any NAS OS just like ASUSTOR or Synology or QNAP that i can install in my computer? That software that opens the router ports automatly for me? Thanks but i am a dummy!
Thanks for the shout out! I'm with you, I think both are great options, and at the end of the day, having a storage device with a warranty and a vendor to handle the nitty gritty can be nice, if you don't need certain features or the price that you can only get with DIY.
WHAT!? Is that THE Jeff Geerling???
Haha, in all seriousness, thanks for the comment man! You were such a huge inspiration with getting into this hobby. I specifically remember watching one of your pi cluster videos having absolutely no idea what this kubernetes thing you were talking about was, but I loved it. Also, hope you’re feeling better. Crohns is a really sucky thing.
@@HardwareHaven Indeed :(
You got a subscribe here, love seeing what can be done with older hardware besides throwing it in the landfill!
@@JeffGeerling haha agreed
I swear I see you everywhere I go nearly lmao
Yeah, but if ur in the EU it would cost a lot of energy for a 2nd hand pc and for a pre made one it is quite expensive, so the best would be to get a 2nd hand premade.
@@BenCos2018fr this guy is awesome
Hello Everyone! Marco here! Thank you for watching and thank you Hardware Haven for taking a look at our NAS! We love all comments, whether they are praise, questions or criticism. We're happy to reply!
Thanks again!
sus
@@luhgarlicbread Sus...tainable!
Your product has a legitimate use case. Not everybody has the tech know how to build and configure their own NAS.
Nah Marco is legit
@@corvoattano9303 Thank you! We try to make it easy. As an enthusiast myself, I do my tinkering on the machines that are not important and not holding important data. We have tonnes of backup options and our products happily talk with competing products like Synology and TrueNAS to keep your data safely backed up.
honest from my personal experience given a choice i will always build my own nas since the control i can have over it and it can be much more than a nas ie: actual linux running docker container or stuff like that but i am a nerd and not normal people so yea
Prebuilt nas is not that different from just a prebuilt computer, you can install Linux on those too. And since it is basically a RPi you can most likely easily install a custom Linux rom on it
@@garnerfishy you are absolutely right on that one i just like the control the diy option give me
I repurposed an old nas and it turned out fantastic. If anyone remembers, HP made a storage unit called the HP Mediasmart Server. It's a 4 bay micro server they made back around 2010 that ran Windows home server (Extremely outdated and basically unusable today). It's original specs were intel pentium dual core, 2 gigs of ddr2 ram, and 1gigabit ethernet. You can upgrade these machines without a bios update which is surprising. I swapped the pentium out for a Core 2 Quad 8200s (4c/4t) cpu and upgraded the 2gb ram to 4gb of ddr2 which is the max this machine can handle. Cpu is dirt cheap like $18. DDR2 ram on the other hand is a bit expensive. I paid $60 for my 4gb stick. I paid $150 for my EX495. I don't require a large amount of storage space but the biggest drive it'll recognize is 2TB per bay. So 8TB total. I have it set up running open media vault in raid 5. I quit all streaming services and decided to become my own service using Jellyfin and buying my dvds. I have spent more money paying for my entertainment up front, but in the long run I'm saving money big time. Screw streaming services. No more monthly fees, 5 different subscriptions, altered/changed media, or shows getting removed due to licensing issues. I'm in control of my content and I love it.
I used a laptop with broken screen as a nas (screen removed). The laptop had lots of usb 3 ports where I connected HDDs. Also put 2 SSD's inside the laptop for files that are regularly used. Only downside is little less raid options. 🤦🏻♂️ The power draw is really low and energy efficient because it's a laptop and it has a build in battery in case a power outage happens. My dell laptop has a bios option in it that can change power priority: plugged in adapter or battery priority etc. This makes sure having the adapter in the laptop 24/7 doesn't destroy the battery and only charges to max 80% or whatever I set it to.
and when everything fails you lost everything.. no ecc ram no management port you only can use windows server no truenas unraid you need an hba card for direct access to the drives.. buy a used server and star from the beginning
@@ttropicalgamer6634 yup. That's why I backup daily. Currently looking to automate everything.
I have like 5 unused real servers. They are to power hungry for 24/7 usage.
1 really weak media / movie server connected directly to my tv (really quiet one with a old xeon with built in gpu)
1 HPE ML350P G6 with 2x E5649 xeons & 20gb ecc ram used for sim related games.
3x HPE DL585 with 4x amd opterons in them each. All 3 have 488gb or something ram. (Wayyy to power hungry 😂🤦🏻).
So I have enough servers I can choose from to backup the laptop dyi nas server.
(All those servers have raid cards)
@@ttropicalgamer6634 I am using a netbook with 1GB RAM as a temporary NAS, but why do you say only windows server can be used? I am running Debian on it.
@@ttropicalgamer6634 to be fair most of these prebuilt NAS solutions don't come with ECC ram themselves
Very nice.
When we renovated the apartment, I've actually considered the spot for the home server - it even includes extra ventilation in order to cool it down. Trouble is, renovation was kind of expensive and kind of ate the server money 😁
Right now, I've got a Dell OEM board that needs verifying if it even runs, and an i3 2100t 35W CPU - if it works, there's my home server base, along with plenty of other used but pretty nice components. Naturally, spare time is the tinkerer's greatest enemy.
DUUUUUDE this is exactly the video I was looking for, and so soon after you posted it! Been thinking about implementing a NAS for game storage, your info was SUPER helpful
Glad I could help! And thanks for sharing!
This was a nice video and fair comparison. Looking forward to seeing the upgrades to your diy nas.
Thank you for your comparison and also giving the power levels. I believe in letting the drives sleep, but that is just me. I have two 3TB 7200RPM drives that have been powered almost nonstop since 2013 in a home server, but they sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity. Lots of days it is just nightly backups that wake them up. Yes, it can be annoying to wait the 10-15 seconds when first going to look for a file there, but in my mind it is worth it. I hope to make a proper video on that system someday too.
I have a $0.00 backup server, that I also could use as NAS and I do copy files back to my desktop using Samba. The system is based on the remains of a 2003 HP d530 SFF moved to a Compaq Evo Tower with a Win-98SE activation sticker. It has a Pentium 4 HT (1C2T; 3.0 GHz), 1.5GB DDR (400MHz) and 4 HDDs in total 1.21TB (2x IDE 3.5" and 2x SATA-1 2.5"). The system runs FreeBSD 13.1 on OpenZFS 2.1. Transfer speeds are limited to 200 Mbps of 1 Gbps due to a ~95% load on 1 CPU thread. I use the system since June 2019 for ~1 hour/week for the backup and occasionally also to restore files.
Nicely compared.
For myself, I went the DIY route with Xubuntu server a few years back but will likely switch it to TrueNAS sometime soon.
But for clients (I do a bit of freelance IT and web stuff), I have recommended the Asustor (their Lockerstor series in particular) because of the warranty and that it's easier for a non-tech person to work with.
Thank you for your support!
Good luck with trueNAS dude, ive finally gotten away from it, don't get me wrong great bit of kit, but when it goes wrong, AND IT WILL, your gonna be bald.
@@AnIdiotAboard_ 3-2-1 backup rule, my friend. No single, or even double, device failure should leave you with any critical data loss.
Everything important to me is properly 3-2-1 backed up. The rest would be an annoyance, but not that big of a deal, if I lost it.
@@davidg5898 30 Years of tech, i aint ever lost so much as a BIT of information. Although how we got from freeNAS to Backups is beyond me but there you go. Congrats on liking your own comment
@@AnIdiotAboard_ You're the one who brought up data loss. 🤷
I run a Mac Pro 5,1 as a NAS for my studio. Ive loaded it with 6 18TB drives now and it’s been very stable.
My argument for using an old PC case is that it has better air flow, a side effect of all that space it takes up. Keeping drives cooler helps them last longer- that and it seems infinitely upgradable and much more customisable in terms of workflow for backup and sync to Dropbox, where we archive our data.
hey lad! Nice video! I bought a second hand i5 with 16gb of RAM (100 bucks), plus a 8 port sata controler (60 bucks), And Im running the last trunas like a pro! Its bigger (the case) but works perfect at my home network!
I love this man. This dude is an average man messing with computers showing us it's not hard to use technology for your own benefit. I'm still in highschool and because of him I can do things with computers that I otherwise thought would be expensive to do.
Good comparison. I prefer DIY option, but if the only purpose for a NAS is... well, to be a NAS, then the factory version is quite good. Ideally I would like to have both devices. DIY server for 24/7 operation and resource-intensive applications, as well as NAS for offline backups (turned on - copied - turned off; it's just more convenient than USB hard drives). Well, I already have all this in some form, but I don’t have enough hard drives, they are too expensive for me.
I prefer DIY because I can always change my eco system down the road for something better. That and expandability means a lot to me. Prebuilt makes sense for those that want it simple and know they wont need more storage down the road for a while.
I enjoyed building my own NAS, but the days of decent towers are coming to an end. I don’t want a rack mount solution, and a 12 bay prebuilt is too pricey. I’m currently running a e351 in a p100 which is decent enough as a file server/data archive build.
I also prefer individual SATA ports as opposed to a backplane.
The fact that good DIY NAS cases are so few and far between now a days makes me sad. I ended up using a 1u but that's mainly because of the number of drives I'm using. Luckily with some modding it doesn't always sound like a jet trying to take off.
love the comparison video, I love to breathe new life into old hardware by making them a storage system but the prebuilt one is a great comparison of the 2.
Very good content! You MUSTN'T stop this!!
Nice video, I've used both home made and off the shelf I currently run both in the house , I think it really depends on if your technology savy then DIY or if you just want something that works then go the pre built option.
thank you so much. I have had this question for a while. Also love to see how big your channel got. I subbed at like 28 subs or something like that
Good comparison. I'm fully in the DIY camp but totally get that not everyone wants to tinker. My main problem is once yo get past 4 drives prices go up dramatically for most prebuilt solutions making DIY significantly cheapedr if you are a data pack rat like I am.
Yeah that's a pretty good point
Nice video, as usual. Interesting to see a NAS that wasn’t synology (I’ve never heard of asustor before)
We're an ASUS joint venture! Happy to answer any questions you may have.
I had never heard of it either.
Great vid! You should do one about SAS drives to see if there are real world benefits to using SAS drives on a small scale operation!
good comparison, something normally overlooked when comparing DIY with off the shelf nas is the power consumption, mostly because they used whatever computer they found, and you could do better if you selected parts with power consumption in mind. Still I would personally choose to make my own NAS (I already do, from raspberry pi's to UdooX86.
The worry I have with an off the shelf nas is you may be very locked into what apps they allow you to install, being stuck in a walled garden. I'm certainly feeling that pinch with home assistant, and what devices allow control over. Ecobee is HA compatible, but the hoops I had to jump through to get the 'official' integration to work, compared to the almost plug-and-play of a 3rd party developed api, added hours of troubleshooting.
No walled garden here! We provide the tools to let anyone package any open source linux app they want as well as the open garden of Docker.
Love that the company gives you the freedom to make honest review. And you made a good one. kudos
I'd say there's still a market for pre-built NAS like the Asustor, but since im a full-time developer and need a server that can also host game servers and other services on the side , DIY is the way to go personally
The "typewriter"'-typefaced notes on the screen were helpful, and were carefully placed outside the focus of interest.
* Was the $270 price NAS-only?
Oh nice to hear! And yes
Price is NAS Only.
Loved the comparison. Nice to know that if I can either invest time or money and have a great solution either way. I'll be investing time because its fun for me. I'd be interested in seeing you setup more powerful unraid based systems that also host plex/valheim/mineccraft servers. Right now I'm using my NAS for storage but my gaming PC is the actual plex server because its got the GPU. Would love to see your approach/benchmarks.
My NAS is a Dell Poweredge R810. It uses almost 400W when idle and over 900W under heavy load, it's huge and loud. It doesn't even have a lot of storage. 6x2,5" bays. I mainly use it for games that I don't play very often. So I only turn it on every now and then.
what games requires NAS, and 400 w is alot for nas what cpu do you have
@@vipvip-tf9rw It's 4 Xeon E7 4870 cpu's. 130W TDP each. In it's datacenter days it wasn't used as a nas of course. But that's just what I have ended up using it as.
And no games require a NAS. I just have steam games stored on it because the hard drives in my PC are full.
@@stefannilsson2406 you can use celeron for this task if you don't use all ssd array, it will be way efficient, your system is overkill for any nas that doesn't serve hundreads of people
@@vipvip-tf9rw I know. But the server was collecting dust and I didn't have any storage space on my PC so I installed tueNAS on it and put it to use. I still don't use it very often and don't see a reason to get a less power hungry system to use as a NAS. I turn the server on so rarely that the power consumption doesn't matter.
I like it a lot though. It has 128 gb of ram.
Load times in the games that I have on them are very good once they get cashed in memory.
@@stefannilsson2406 you're lucky to have this kind of machine, it probably costed more than 5000usd when it was new
Hey I'm not a regular viewer of your channel. But I thought this video was well done and helpful!
I have the old CM Storm Enforcer case. Holds 8 drives plus any M.2 drives on the MB. No NAS required.
Old CM HAF X is a solid NAS option as well. Tons of drive storage and plenty of cooling.
Oh man, using a WiFi dongle as a backup network connection is a really smart idea. I will steal that!
I imagine that the drives running in your DIY NAS would run noticeably cooler than with that Asustor unit as well.
Super small form factors come at the price of less cooling, less airflow, and more cramped parts, afterall.
Also, less room for vibration dampening solutions for those who are really picky
Love your content, keep it up man!
the thumb screws being tight enough for a screw driver out of box is probably so they have no chance of rattling loose in shipping.
New vs DIY is a good lane to be in. Keep up the good work.
last nas I built, I got a terramaster prebuilt, added more memory and replaced the is with truenas scale. Nice and small physical footprint, but with decent software
Started building my own NASes years ago. First with Windows Home Server, then FreeNAS/TrueNAS, then more recently just Windows 10 pro and duplicating important information.
Drives have gotten larger, and RAID arrays are making less sense now.
Started turning NAS off and using as "cold storage" to worry less about power consumption on the old TrueNAS array.
5 X 3TB drives use a lot more power than one 16TB drive.
Old NAS has 10GB LAN, 128GB RAM and 12 3TB drives (11 drives in RAIDZ3 with a hot spare - got a bit paranoid after getting bitten with Seagate 3TB drive failures in my previous build). Keeps the house warm in winter, but powered off most of the time now.
With only 11.6W (Operation) and 5.97W (Disk Hibernation) it can be used on the go with an car inverter.
I’d love to see some content on other electronics / smaller electronics! Speakers phones Bluetooth devices etc!
I recently bought an Asustor NAS. It was 1.5 tiers up from a Drivestor (Nimbustor G2). I chose it because Asustor is specifically OK with people installing third-party OSes, and I wanted to use OMV. So some of your point about building your own giving you software options isn’t really valid, although it helps if you at least get one that has an x64 CPU instead of ARM.
Excellent review! I am going through this right now. I have a spare 4th gen I5, 8 GB of DDR3, I found a 4 bay case that's nice and small. I think I will go DIY. One thing I was thinking is to put a timer on the DIY, shut it off 10 hours every day.
Fred! Thanks for the comment, and that sounds like the makings of an awesome little system.
I’ve considered making a video on automating power on/off to save power. Maybe I can get around to it at some point
I went with a Phanteks Echo 2 for my home server. It holds around 12-14 hdds. I use Windows to share everything. I am just more comfortable with it. And the system gets used for gaming and watching videos.
It's good to see what a pre-built NAS can do so you're not wasting your effort building one. Then if you build one you can enhance it's advantages.
The build NAS help you choose the hardware you want, with less price. The prebuilt NAS mostly lacks power in CPU and RAM, and more expensive. I have both types, I had to replace parts of the prebuilt as they fail. But nothing for the 24/7 working prebuilt since about 13 years, except the occasional hard drives.
Looks like Asustor are reaching out to all the vintage PC guys, lol.
Great video !
Thanks!
Good job man, I'm sure you will grow big one day! keep up
After doing a bunch of research this week, I want to build a TrueNAS Scale system, but the expense is just too much. I decided to buy an Asustor Drivestor AS1104T and two Seagate Ironwolf 6TB drives (the largest 5400 RPM version). $550 total. For right now, I do not need high performance so much as I need a way to start consolidating all the data on the drives I've been accumulating for years.Eventually, I will build a TrueNAS system for the superior data integrity features of ZFS for long-term archiving.
We appreciate the support! Even if you do put together a TrueNAS system, our NAS will happily talk with it using Rsync and other protocols to keep your data synced, protected and backed up on both devices. Wishing you a NASTastic experience!
I will take any 2.5GB NAS over any brand with only 1GB nics, thanks for the video.
One thing I wanted is the option to have 24 bays and that is very expensive if you go prebuilt, so I bought a server case for the same price as a 6~8 bay NAS and I had some components laying around so it was a no brainier.
just waiting for the the SAS card now...
I plan to get the discard chia casing for NAS
I got a synology ds414 with four 4 TB I purchase in 2014 have no problems with it, the reason I purchase the NAS it doesn't take up much space and you can put it in the closet also I was tired of external hard drives. I did tiny mod on it I flipped fan around it blow air into the case I added fan filter the temps is around 35 to 40 °C
I use my old 4th gen I5. I have a 2.5gb nic but I only see the added performance when I upload to it. I am replacing my cat5e cable from my nas to a cat6. I was told that most likly its because of my cpu. I also got 16 gb ram installed.
Well done on the review
Thanks Kyle!
It's an awesome day when hh uploads!!!
I'll stick to using used desktop with OMV. I use NAS mostly for storage so only turn it only a few time in a week just to run backups.
This was cool and I appreciate it
i dont like they use raid 0 in one of the 1 click options
Pro tip for a network administrator and old computer geek with decades of experience.
Don’t use crappy seagate drives and you won’t have as many issues. Wd ftw
Hey there. I want a homemade NAS, but I worry it will use a lot of power vs the pre-made NAS.
You can still find some low powered option, you just might have to do some research. Boards that run modern Intel or AMD imbedded chips can be super efficient
I want to do a nas, i have a pc already that i can use. 3470 i5, if i limit the cpu speed it stay below 50watt and idle around 38 watt. Still playing around with components for best power use. I would like a compact ready unit, at this stage i still need to buy the drive i need. Maybe do the truenas, can always later change the nas and use rhe same drives. Mixed feelings but my low budget tels me true nas. Nice video.
Nice to know about the requiremernt to install software. I have two Linux boxes and a Linux laptop, plus a couple of old Linux machines. So for me, using the Asustore would require installing the software on a VM of Windows.
Hi there! I think that is a mistake. We don't actually require installation of any software to use the NAS. It is completely OS independent if you have a web browser.
If you want it to "just work" the perbuilt sounds great. I want to DIY.
It can be frustrating, but a ton of fun. I get it haha
i buy a 20tb external usb 3.2 gen 1 drive, so yeah...
nice video!
Asustor's x86 NAS can be reconfigured with other OS support, too bad they didn't sent you their x86 model so you can tinker with it!
Yeah that would be cool for sure. I like the arm lineup though. It’s great for the money. Maybe I can checkout something like that later on
What if you DIYed your own nas at the 300-400 dollars you spending buying a store bought one. Seems like that would be way more powerful
I tried a TrueNAS setup but my hardware was way too huge and power hungry (i3 2120 and a CM Elite 360 case). Ended up scrapping it and recently got my hands on a free 5 bay Synology. Ease of setup and form factor are hard to beat.
Thats odd that a 2nd gen Core i3 was power hungry. Whats the story on that?
I'm personnaly using a Lenovo motherboard in an atx case. It has an i5-6400 with 16gigs of Ram (got all for free, i'm working in IT, and a lot of computers are going to trash every 5 years ...)
I'm running DSM 7.1 on it, thanks to redpill bootloader, and it works like a charm ... having Synology's system with a pretty powerfull cpu and loads of ram is awesome (I can virtualize, docker, plex, etc ...)
Sounds like a really sweet setup!
0.12 $/kWh is crazy creap. greetings from ~0.33-0.36 €/kWh in germany
Yeah, The power costs are 30p in the UK (€0.35 or $0.36 USD) crazyyy
Yeah it’s a little higher than that here as well. I just tried to find some sort of reference point. I feel for you guys
@@HardwareHaven thanks :)
If you're running Home Assistant, then you're best off using the OS install, either in a VM or bare metal, to get the benefit of the supervisor.
Hi , hardware heaven ,excellent review, question: can be synology software run, on regular diy nas?
Can the compare be expanded , i mean same diy nas, with different software (ie: open media vault) to see which can squeeze more performance of the same hardware. Also just my thought, but after freenas fuse with truenas, found it a little complicated 😅, i miss the old freenas.
You can install whatever software you want on something like the NAS I built. (OMV, unraid, easynas, etc..). You could look into something called xpenology, which is an open source version of the Synology OS, but I’ve never tried it.
I got an i7 4790k, 16gb ram, rx 460, 4tb hdd, 800 watt psu. $100. All I gotta do is remove the gpu, and it's a purrfect server !
This guy only has 34k subs, and yet his videos look like what you would find from 500k+ in terms of production quality.
Good job dude.
Thanks!
Glad they didn't put some bs requirements they seem like a good company, also those harddrives are sweet
Thanks! We do love feedback as well. If something we do is perceived as BS, lemme know! I'll try to do my best to improve!
@@ASUSTOR_YT I'm just glad u didn't have any thing shoved down or throats, thanks guys :) also why do u not put more powerful CPUs in ur Nas and not just you like every Nas manufacturer puts weak CPUs why?
@@tigeroats913 Well. To be honest, for 90% of the features, if we put powerful desktop CPUs in there, the speed would just simply go unused in a home/enthusiast/business NAS. Those CPUs also cost more.
We do have NAS devices that do use more powerful CPUs for more demanding environments. It's true, if you put something together, you can get cheaper hardware, but we, for obvious reasons cannot use used hardware, and while on paper, the hardware we use would be cheaper, the added cost goes directly into software and hardware development so that you receive a holistic solution that is easy to use and performs as promised.
For example, if all the NAS has is 2.5-Gigabit, no amount of CPU is going to make that go faster. It's not a gaming machine with an unlimited performance ceiling. Networking has fixed speeds. More speed = more money on all fronts. We choose to be holistic.
@@ASUSTOR_YT that explains a lot but things like 1gb of ram isn't that like a bit too little?
@@tigeroats913 Nope. With the amount of investment we put into our NAS's software development, we're able to do things general purpose PCs can't do. This mainly takes the form of efficiency. Our operating system takes up less than 512 MB of space. Our AS1002T/AS1004T NAS devices, which is the predecessor to the NAS Hardware Haven took a look at have 512 MB of RAM and many people continue to use theirs without issue. Keeping this efficient and optimised makes for a better, faster, smoother experience, otherwise we'd need to use more expensive hardware and that would lock out people on a budget. Our NASes, while they are computers, are not PCs. Using our NAS is not like opening up apps until the RAM is used up in Windows and slows down. Many of the processes are incredibly lightweight and are already running 24/7. Even right now as I set up an older NAS for an experiment at work, my AS-302T with 1 GB of RAM from 2013 is only using 94 MB of RAM. This is WITH the latest updates from 2022. There are very few use cases that require large amounts of RAM. Also, more RAM/hardware means more electricity and cost. In the video, the electricity costs are almost half the DIY TrueNAS build, and that's a low powered CPU in that build. The RAM applications that we'd think customers would use would include, but are not limited to, SSD caching with huge SSDs, which the Drivestor series do not have M.2 NVMe slots, and virtual machines, which are not available on our ARM NAS devices....and the CPU definitely isn't up to the task for that either. We also ensure ADM intelligently uses RAM by putting some processes that aren't being used to sleep, only waking up _when they're actually needed,_ and with many of our processes going down to 0 MB when sleeping. Because we're able to control the process, we can make sure we're at our best. For TrueNAS or other NAS operating systems designed for general-purpose hardware....They have to contend with different hardware configs and drivers and compatibility. It's not a bad thing, but it's the tradeoff. We can get our software onto devices that barely sip power where general purpose server/NAS OS might not run well on.
Let me give you an example of usages just from what I see right now.
smbd - The process that controls network transfers using SMB. 6 MB of RAM
nginx - Our reverse proxy server. 1.5 MB of RAM
OpenVPN - VPN server. 2.6 MB of RAM
I'm crying seeing your electricity is around 0,12$ per Kw/h. In Germany we have to pay 0,32€ - 0,60€ per kw/h.
If you're gonna buy a new motherboard, move to a xeon system. Because you NEED ECC memory of you're gonna use ZFS in TrueNas
This is exactly what I was referencing haha
And I did 👍🏻
@@HardwareHaven That's great to hear!
Hey, first of all, thank you for unblocking me in discord, I don't know what is happening with my discord lately but now it's fine. Next, just as always, amazing content and you are one of the youtubers that not only cares about personal content and reputation, but also cares about his viewers and if anyone asks for something, you most of the time do what they were asking for. Good luck with making content, and continue making it because you have the talent to make it.
I actually didn’t block or unblock you haha. I don’t know what happened. And sorry I’ve been not on discord much at all. Just really busy. Thanks for the comment!
@@HardwareHaven Weird, because before you had me blocked. Anyway good that everything is back in place.
@@HardwareHaven Also I would like to warn you and everyone else about these different hacking things going around in discord lately. Basically you will receive a message from a friend who already has been infected, that you have been exposed in a server that they will send you, and will tell you that you need to do some explaining. But actually that is just a way of leading you into the server and making you verify there, which will lead someone logging into your discord account and sending these messages forward.
Either way the biggest pain point is the frikken price of the blooming drives.
great videos, do you mind sharing how you check the power draw when being used and in idle please?
Thanks! Currently I just use a device called a kill a watt, but I’d like to get something better in the future
@@HardwareHaven thanks a lot! you actually inspired me to turn my dell optiplex 755 pc to set it for nas use!
That’s awesome!!
I was struggling with this EXACT dilemma. DIY or store bought. Thanks for clearing it up.
I'm will just buy one and Asustor Drivestor will be my choice here.
Thank you for your support!
169.254. is meant for autoconfig, it's not private address space that should be used. 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16 are what you should use. Or at least were, I seem to remember something about changes coming.
That sounds right. I’m a noob at networking, and just followed a quick guide and it worked so I stuck with it haha
@@HardwareHaven You should have configured a static ip in the nas (the same or in the same range of your local net) before removing the network cable, this will make the nas always available on router or in direct network cable.
Synology thinks it's OK to charge twice as much for some extra harddrive slots
Any other idea for using old PCs? We have 3 old PCs just laying around and I decided to revive one for my MIL so that she could watch Netflix. I already have a D-Link DNS-323 NAS with custom firmware. Would love to hear on what should I do with old PC.
Really depends on the specs and what you enjoy/need, but some ideas could include hosting game/web servers, tinkering and learning enterprise IT software and concepts, using it as a retro game emulator, home automation, trying out other operating systems, a retro pc build, a backup for your NAS, or maybe just experiment with other NAS OSs and see if there’s something else you like more than what you have. There’s probably a lot more ideas, but those are a few I could think of off the top of my head
Long time ago our doctor asked me what he could do with his old 286 computer. I told him the best thing he could do with it was carry it out to the dumpster.
Just build a pi module cluster like a chad
EDIT: I recommend doing that because its going to be stronger and efficient use of electricity and a lot of RAM and cores and i use casa os personally on my quad pi module 4 cluster and it runs great which just cost me 150$ (no drive)
Lol
As if you can buy a pi these days.
@@Fred2-123 well considering i bought a pi 400 at 50 bucks its good
i was curious, do you have to use any raid options when using the nas or can you just put it in your hard drives without formatting and use them individually? i am just trying to free up space in my pc case and have games installed on one of the hard drives and movies on another ect. and would like to watch movies from my collection to my apple tv without having my pc running all day and night to do so hence getting a nas network storage device
its only smaller cause you put a mircro ATX into a EATX case, lol. I recommend getting a mini itx
The issue there is finding a mini itx case with 4+ drive bays that doesn’t break the bank.
And I didn’t explain it here, but I went with the Antec case because I didn’t need it to be small, I wanted plenty of room for drives, and I got it for $20
@@HardwareHaven True, wasnt thinking about storage for the NAS. What would of been your budget for one that had 4 or more drive slots?
I love diy nas, but the space need to place that big tower is another chalenge
Everybody is complaining about plastic that's a "fingerprint magnet" but after setting this up you don't have to pet it anymore , stupid complaint!
What about getting NAS when I have spre hdd bays in my big tower? Can I somehow utilise that space to make nas out of it somehow? Can I use my everyday windows PC to run NAS system or I need separate hardware dedicated fir nas?
from a tinkerer’s standpoint, i feel like a pre built nas would be a good backup server, whether it be on site or off site. you really only need to store files and you’re likely going to be limited by gigabit speeds anyways. you don’t need it to be fast, just reliable. and let’s be honest, diy nases (especially from old parts) will be less reliable.
For sure!
Wish we could have these energy prices... Germany 0,35€/kWh
How can I convert my DVD duplicator to a storage server?
For how much Synology is charging, you should be getting Asustor hardware.
To bad its not the Intel btrfs supported version (as the arm one doesn't support btrfs so no checksum or snapshoting limited transcoding capacity )
Rebuilt your Tower NAS with Hot swappable drive bays.
I turned an old Pentium Dual Core E5300 sff into a nas.
I just wanna Windows Home Server 2012 back again....TrueNAS is very complicated for me...i don't really understand nothing about network and stuf like that...Sory but i had to build a PC NAS with Windows 10 because i don't understand nothing about Linux or UNIX...and TRUENAS has so many configure options that i really doesn't wanna care because my main job is making videos and not wasting time searching on the foruns...Is that any NAS OS just like ASUSTOR or Synology or QNAP that i can install in my computer? That software that opens the router ports automatly for me? Thanks but i am a dummy!
i think its kinda funny that im using a core 2 duo e7400 with a gtx 750 and it somehow is "good" together
The interface looks very similar to the Synology OS...