So far I have been looking at things from the sidelines, trying to learn about self hosting by osmosis just by being part of the community and reading what people are doing. Most of the time though posts are too far for my knowledge or needs and the rest of times they are too simple a solution or directed at people just starting. I guess I’m in a middle uncomfortable ground :)
Pair that with ADHD and the huge amount of options available and I have ended up with a decision paralysis that I’m just trying to finally shake off.
So with that introduction out of the way, I’ll start laying down the details of what I’m looking for, what I have so far and what I wish to get from this post. Hopefully I can make it short enough without lacking in information.
WHAT I HAVE SO FAR
I have a couple of old laptops I’ve been using to play around with self hosting. One is running Endeavour OS (arch based) and I have put a few *arrs there, not even docker based. Also Jellyfin, Calibre, … It was literally the first thing I set up and of course now I’d do things differently but I’ll slowly change that with time.
I got my hands on a second laptop and decided to try some different approach and some new things. Threw some stable Debian at it and installed casaOS. Started installing a few services there, wireguard to try and provide secure remote access to myself (and hoping to get some future access alternative to some others without it, but let’s not get distracted by a different topic), tried putting calibre-web to give myself access to calibre on the other machine (and so far failed at it but barely tried anything to get it to work), some other *arrs are also in casaos, and all the other services in the other laptop are configured in casaOS to provide one access point to all. I have in my mind to set up also immich and some file syncing/editor and self hosted note application. But haven’t done that because I lack a trust worthy storage set up.
Aside of that I got from home assistant one of their green devices to support it and that one is entirely dedicated to home assistant.
Well, hopefully that gives a bit of background on what I have so far and how I am just messing with things and trying different services for better or worse 🙃
WHAT I AM LACKING
Obviously, by the post title and what I have said so far, I’m looking to improve the storage system I have, which is… A simple and starting to be oldish external hard drive with 8TB size. I’m kinda scared of it breaking… Even thinking of going to get a second ext drive to create a copy for now. But well, that’s my fault and my problem. I have been postponing getting a NAS because the options are just so wildly open. I don’t want anything super complex, but I don’t want to end up using some synology and depend on their software or whatever. I want to get some hardware I’m the owner of and set it up with some open source solution. But there are so many options! Plus setting a whole NAS from scratch seems to be quite expensive and about to get more expensive with the storage market situation.
WHAT I HOPE TO GET IN THIS POST
I don’t expect anyone to tell me what to do or what is the perfect solution, but I hope I can get some feedback, some help on choosing what could be a good path to start, and solve my decision paralysis so I can give the first steps which will likely tie me up to what I get first for the foreseeable future.
What I think I need is a 4 bay (at least) device where I can install some trueNAS or alternative that is simpler hopefully, something that is not too expensive. I’m willing to compromise on hard drive speed and format to get a better price. Of course I’d rather get M.2 SSD drives if someone has a cheap alternative :D
I’ve been looking at the different RAID levels to understand which I would need (WIP) but basically I’d hope to have some back up system and more space than now with the option to expand in the future. I have no experience administering such system but I don’t have an issue with learning it on the spot when I need to up the sizes etc. For context, my 8 TB are nearly full (at 7 used), it has taken a looooong time for it to be full, but the size requirements would only increase with immich and files and notes for the whole family. Maybe I would want to have different hard drives for personal data and media storage… Eggs in baskets and so on.
Well, thank you all for coming to my ted talk, I hope I have set up enough of the details that might help you help me help myself without boring you to death or making you give up on reading this :)
Not much from me, but it wasn’t clear to me whether you were successful with WireGuard. I’m not, till today! So I can’t recommend Tailscale more! Others recommend things like Headscale, or others, I plan to migrate to them one day. But so far, Tailscale was really good for me.
I picked up an odroid HC4 a while ago, and it’s been great. Only has two slots, though. I have it set up to do periodic backups to a cloud storage service, so I feel pretty good about it overall.
I’ve been in a similar situation looking for a NAS setup that would work for me, and with my current limited knowledge. I settled on the HomePiNAS. It’s a custom PCB they make that mounts a CM5, up to 6 drives, 2.5G NIC, and x2 m.2 slots all in a 3D printable case they can ship for you too. Put on Open Media Vault or whatever else you want and it’s good to go. I was interested because it’s not a complicated setup, allows for AI chips to be added or whatever else you want to use, has a 2.5G nic, and is low power.
Ok, so I’m going to weigh in here because I have first-hand experience, but keep in mind I am a relative novice at self hosting.
I’ve been using a machine that has evolved over the years from primary gaming PC, to backup server, to Bitcoin rig, to Plex server, etc. Well I finally got tired of complex raid backup solutions and bought a 4 drive Synology nas. I figured I might as well just go with the name brand because I’d probably pay a bit more, but everything would work right away.
Everything did not work right away.
I fought so hard to get incremental backup working… So hard. But it just refuses to copy some files. It actually struggles with filenames! It can’t handle names that have too many characters or use certain characters. (Filenames that Windows and the MacOS have no problem with). So if I want that backup to work, it appears I have to rename hundreds of files on that PC and hope nothing breaks… While their hardware seems fine, I am thoroughly unimpressed with Synology’s software.
Huh… I thought Synology had a cap of 143 characters. Are you writing a book? LOL
So if I want that backup to work, it appears I have to rename hundreds of files on that PC
You could zip or tar the offending files. Inconvenient but would work. You could use VeraCrypt or Cryptomator containers which would give you 255 character cap. Using a VeraCrypt or Cryptomator container will let you store files with longer names inside the encrypted volume, but it won’t change the 143‑character limit for the container filename itself on the Synology NAS.
Others have mentioned backup, I’m going to reiterate that.
I have an (old) NAS that frankly I don’t trust to not die. Then again, anything can die, so it’s just one component of my data duplication.
I also have my server which is authoritative for all data, which is then duplicated (on schedules) to the NAS and 2 external drives, so I have 4 local copies.
All mobile devices sync important data to my server.
Power
My NAS idles about 15w. It’s 5 drives, so honestly that’s quite low and tells us it spins down drives.
My server idles at 20w, using NVME as the boot drive, a large data drive, and an SSD for virtual machines. It’s power supply maxes at 80w (which it approaches when I’m converting videos with handbrake).
Before this my server was an old gaming desktop that idled around 100w.
So my server today is a 5 year old Small-Form-Factor Desktop that I picked up for $50. I paid more for the RAM I added. It has enough room internally for one 3.5" drive and the 2.5" SSD…
It’s also quiet - the CPU and power supply fans double as case fans.
Look, if you were looking to have more options handed to you, you are in the right place!
TrueNAS is a great diy option. I have it running on an old box of mine. The one real caveat is that you will need enough hard drive slots (don’t just hang them unless you go full SSD), 4+ SATA ports or add in a SAS card, enough PSU to handle all your drives, and enough memory.
I am running one SAS card and 16 GB of DDR 3. Since the attached image I have taken pics of the serial numbers and labeled the drives.
A NAS is any computer with space/connectors for drives and an ethernet port… it doesn’t need to be powerful or state-of-the-art, and there’s really no reason it should be expensive (besides the drives).
Of course companies will be more than happy to sell you an outdated J4125-based computer with 4 disk bays for over 500EUR, but that doesn’t mean you have to bite.
As for RAID, if you want to use it, just setup mirrored drives (ZFS, BTRFS or even LVM) and be done with it: you’ll need backups anyway so don’t overthink it. Unless you want to avoid downtime (which isn’t probably a big issue for most of your data?), you can do without RAID and just restore from backup if a drive happens to break.
If you don’t want to build your own PC, I’ve heard good things about these: https://aoostar.com/collections/nas-series (beware: I didn’t try any of them - my N3150-based NAS is not old enough to need replacement yet)
To be honest, even if you say you want to have your own Hardware: I think you would be better of with an off-the-shelf solution from QNAP, Synology or Asustor. They are easy to use and hard to break if you only need them for basic things like file sharing. And it does not look like you require it to do more. Because all your services are already running on a different system/Hardware.
A 4 Bay solution might be overkill for you if currently an 8TB drive looks like enough storage (otherwise you would have already replaced it if you where soon running out of space). So a “cheap” 2-Bay (with 2x12TB drives in RAID1) based solution would be a good starting point to break procrastination. Imho it is always cheaper to go with larger but lesser drives. AS long as you do not plan to use secondhand drives (large drives are hard to get in the secondhand market).
Maybe Asustor is an Option. Their Software is imho good enough for basic file sharing. And with the possibility to run TrueNAS on them you have an “update” Option for the future.
I’m a +1 on this. A secondhand Synology set up with some RAID will delay this decision for a few years and give you time to build your expertise on the other aspects without worrying much about data security. It’s a pity that you’re nearly at the limit of 8TB - otherwise I would have suggested a two bay NAS with 2x8TB, but if you’re going to use second hand drives (I do because I’m confident of my backup systems) maybe 4x6TB is better. Bigger drives are harder to come by 2nd hand - and plenty of people will not be comfortable with secondhand spinning rust anyway - if that’s you, then a 2 bay with 2x12TB might be a good choice.
The main downside (according to me) of a Synology is no ZFS, but that didn’t bother me until I was two years in and the owner of three of them.
I’m new to NAS hardware and how it works.
If I buy a NAS, say from Synology, would I be able to just chuck my existing EXT4 HDDs full of data in there and it’ll work? Maybe even one or two with different file systems? I’m not too worried about backups or RAID yet.
What are the limitations of dedicated NAS hardware? Can I also… “store” stuff on there? Like, say, have a “schmorrent” 🏴☠️ client save “data” directly to the drives from another computer on the network? Or do all services interacting with the data storage need to run on the NAS hardware?
You cannot use drives that already have data on them in a Synology. They will be “Wiped” during the installation/initialization process. If you can save the data somewhere else you can put it back on the NAS after Installation. I don’t know if this is also the case for QNAP or Asustor.
you can definetly store data, from a Service running on a different machine, to the NAS. This is the whole point of having a NAS. Limitation is network latency and bandwith. But this is no problem for the typical home user use case. If you habe a special use case you propably already know what you need and how to do it.
A big point of a NAS in my mind is to run some sort of redundancy, which means you will want to setup a RAID on the drives in the NAS, and that in turn means that my recommendation wouldn’t be to chuck existing drives into the NAS solution but to setup the NAS drives and then copy your data to it.
Dedicated NAS hardware storage is usually accessed over SMB, NFS or SFTP and most software has support for one of those protocols.
Some services can have hiccups when running against networked storage, f.e. Jellyfin might lose library metadata if the Jellyfin service’s library scan is started and the networked storage is unavailable.Thanks for the notes on network storage access protocols!
A big point of a NAS in my mind is to run some sort of redundancy, which means you will want to setup a RAID on the drives in the NAS
Cool, thank you for that as well, and I was aware of that so I thought I would mention that in my previous comment. But I was specifically wondering if I could in fact just chuck them in as-is and it would be able to access the drives? Because like, they’re separate drives, right? How would that work in a non-RAID setup when accessing from another computer? Would they show up as separate drives? Is it at all possible?
I was specifically wondering if I could in fact just chuck them in as-is and it would be able to access the drives? Because like, they’re separate drives, right? How would that work in a non-RAID setup when accessing from another computer? Would they show up as separate drives? Is it at all possible?
I have a shelf of NetGear ReadyNas-4 bay enclosures. They are old as the hills ReadyNas 214 with OS 6.10.3. The first 2 of them are set up as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) 8 bays x 10 tb drives . They have no RAID setups on them. They all show up as separate drives. Now, you may need to set up permissions to access the drives, but they all act independently of each other. However, in that setup, if a drive fails, well you’re SOL. Some caveats would be that the drives to be inserted into the JBOD NAS setup need to be formatted in a compatible file system such as EXT4 or NTFS
The other 2 ReadyNas-4 bay enclosures are set up as RAID 5. So using RAID 5, you have ~30 tb usable space and 1 10tb drive for redundancy per each ReadyNas unit.
Depends on the operating system of the NAS, but generally the NAS will want to format the drive. Even if you can somehow get it running without a disk format you’re generally in an unsupported configuration.
Yeesh, okay, I see.
Then maybe some kind of compact drive bay would suit my needs better for now, that I would just connect to a mini PC of some sort.
Thanks for all the info!
I agree.
Separate NAS/storage from server for some redundancy, and flexibility. SMB or NFS for access to files.
It’s also nice paying a premium but letting someone else be responsible for keeping it running.If you have a distaste for Synology after their recent antics, then go with someone else.
I’d say go with a 4-bay and put two disks in, then you have loads of room to expand in the future. This is mainly because of Jellyfin and how these libraries have a tendency to grow a lot with time.
To add to your decision paralysis, a USB 6 bay DAS is cheap and power efficient solution.
Personally, I have a SSD with a 4-3-1 backup for important files and a 16 TB hdd with a 2-2-0 backup for unimportant files.
Regardless of what you go with, I’d recommend buying less quantity of higher capacity drives (14+ TB) instead of more smaller capacity drives. I’d also make sure you have a backup strategy in place first, and then worry about RAID.
As a NAS owner of 5 years now, I’d definitely go with a DAS + a MiniPC, preferably with UnRaid on it.
And when buying high capacity HDDs check video reviews for their loudnesses. Some aren’t quite fit for Living Room usage as they often ROAR AND TREMBLE.
First up… backups…
You’ve got all your data on a single 8TB external drive?
If you get lots of hardware, or stay the same, you’ll still
wantneed to get your data off that system and preferably out of the house for the 3 F’s: fire / flood / feft (😉)At this point it might just be simpler to get online storage and upload it all… or a 2nd drive and just clone it.
Now, you can breath as you change your system and oops, accidentally wipe the wrong drive… it’s all offline elsewhere
Next up, to help with decision paralisis; the software and hardware you choose are going to be related… TrueNAS is going to want a new mobo with loads of RAM for the ZFS on the drives… OpenMediaVault will work on small hardware (as well as bigger too…), so decide with your wallet on hardware first.
Everything (worth considering) supports RAID - you’ll want RAID1 if you only have 2 drives, RAID5 or 6 for many drives. If you use ZFS they modify the naming convention, but learn standard terminology first.
I’ve tried it all, over the years, so expect to try something for a while, then ditch it for something else - another reason to have your data offline somewhere.
I came back to a simple Arch linux box with 4 drives running btrfs 🙂
You might be able to help me also, I have a heap of old 500gb drives - is there a way to create a single server out of them as a trial home server? I can only find Synology etc. bays and people telling me I can’t daisy chain drives
First up… backups…
You’ve got all your data on a single 8TB external drive?
This. RAID IS NOT A BACKUP !!! Sorry for shouting, but it’s that important. It’s a main storage tolerant of disk failure, you still need backups or you’re one bad ‘rm -rf’ away from losing data.
First get that second 8Tb, or better yet a 16+Tb (see serverpartdeals.com or your local equivalent for good prices on manufacturer recertified drives) so you have room to grow. Now copy that 8Tb onto it and disconnect it from your computer. Congratulations, you have a cold backup and are pretty well protected from data loss, much better than a RAID.
You can now think about a NAS with confidence, but preferably before that get another drive copy your data again and take it to a friend / relative / safety deposit box (even bury it in the back yard in something waterproof). Now you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy and you’re pretty damn well insulated against data loss.
TLDR: Backup first, NAS later.
