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Home NAS

MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
in Hardware
I was thinking about getting a home NAS, but am not sure if I want to build one.  It seems like they have come down enough in price that you can get one cheaper.  What are peoples thoughts on buy vs build? 

Also if I get one, I would be looking at 4 bay+ and RAID options beside 0. 

I am still in the early stages of research on these so useful information from people who know more about them would be helpful. 

“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

--John Ruskin







Comments

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,412
    Build. You probably have a ton of HDDs lying around. NAS tend to be expensive since they are mostly used in a professional setting.
    Gdemami
  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,888
    I'd go for buy if you need to buy everything new anyway, buying hardware made for the purpose makes more sense.

    Whereas if you have a lot of old hardware lying around then you can get more freedom to re-use it if you build your own.
     
  • CoticCotic Member UncommonPosts: 268
    If you build your own look into FreeNAS. Having ZFS for your filesystem is a certainly worth it. 
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    edited August 2018
    Hard to really beat a Synology or Qnap for a basic NAS, and you can buy them bare and add your own drives

    I have several of each brand - both have been fantastic.
    [Deleted User]
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Ridelynn said:
    Hard to really beat a Synology or Qnap for a basic NAS, and you can buy them bare and add your own drives

    I have several of each brand - both have been fantastic.
    This is what I was thinking.  You can get them for 250-400 pretty regularly, and it seems like it would be easier, smaller and cheaper.  The main issues I see with building is size and cost.  I don't think I can make it is smaller. 

    What models do you have and what ones do you think work the best.  Also are any of them wireless.  I have not seen wireless yet. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    Why would you want a wireless NAS?  What's wrong with setting it next to your router and plugging it into your router with an Ethernet cable?  That would be simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than a wireless NAS, and not waste any of your WiFi router's bandwidth.  And it doesn't have any drawbacks unless you've put your router in a dumb spot that makes it impossible to put anything else next to it.
    GdemamiVrika
  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919
    Ridelynn said:
    Hard to really beat a Synology or Qnap for a basic NAS, and you can buy them bare and add your own drives

    I have several of each brand - both have been fantastic.
    I can only speak about Synology but have used them for years. Proved to be very reliable and the software has been updated on a regular basis for years.

    OP mentioned 4 bay so guessing a fair amount of storage is being considered but if not there is always what you get with e.g. Amazon Fire tablets etc.  
    Iselin[Deleted User]
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Quizzical said:
    Why would you want a wireless NAS?  What's wrong with setting it next to your router and plugging it into your router with an Ethernet cable?  That would be simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than a wireless NAS, and not waste any of your WiFi router's bandwidth.  And it doesn't have any drawbacks unless you've put your router in a dumb spot that makes it impossible to put anything else next to it.
    My wireless network is faster than my 10 cat5 cabling.  I also have my ubiquiti on the wall and not in a great spot for an actual NAS.  Great for covering the house.  If I put it where the router is, I will never see it and that means that any flashing LEDs will go unnoticed.  I am not sure if there is some sort of reporting that you can set up on them. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    MMOman101 said:
    Quizzical said:
    Why would you want a wireless NAS?  What's wrong with setting it next to your router and plugging it into your router with an Ethernet cable?  That would be simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than a wireless NAS, and not waste any of your WiFi router's bandwidth.  And it doesn't have any drawbacks unless you've put your router in a dumb spot that makes it impossible to put anything else next to it.
    My wireless network is faster than my 10 cat5 cabling.  I also have my ubiquiti on the wall and not in a great spot for an actual NAS.  Great for covering the house.  If I put it where the router is, I will never see it and that means that any flashing LEDs will go unnoticed.  I am not sure if there is some sort of reporting that you can set up on them. 

    If you need to buy a new Ethernet cable to have something appropriate to connect the router to the NAS, it only costs a few dollars, if that.  If it's a wireless connection from the router to the NAS, then the NAS could eat up a good chunk of your router's WiFi bandwidth, leaving less for everything else you use.

    An extra device might also add interference with the other devices on your network, leaving less aggregate bandwidth even before the NAS takes its share.  I'm not sufficiently familiar with the fine details of how WiFi works to know whether that will or will not be the case.

    I've never really looked into a NAS, as I don't have any use for one myself.  But making one wireless strikes me as a strange thing to do, as that adds cost for a feature that most people shouldn't use, even if you mostly use WiFi for your network.
    GdemamiOzmodan
  • FlyByKnightFlyByKnight Member EpicPosts: 3,967
    I'm dropping in to +1 QNAP TS-XXX. I'm not an expert, but out of box it didn't give me much of a headache. I had some involved editors and VFX guys using it to store footage and raw files. No complaints.

    I agree with Quizzical, definitely get a straight up NAS and talk to it through your router, if anything goes wrong you can have it send you a text alert. Wi-Fi out of the box is going to cause you more grief than setting up alerts.
    [Deleted User]Ozmodan
    "As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*" 

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    It’s easy to add a WiFi bridge to a wired model, and conversely easy to just plug in the Ethernet to a model that has WiFi

    i wouldn’t necessarily require WiFi built into the NAS given how easy it is to add a bridge, and upgrade that bridge as WiFi standards evolve
    [Deleted User]
  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,888
    MMOman101 said:
    Quizzical said:
    Why would you want a wireless NAS?  What's wrong with setting it next to your router and plugging it into your router with an Ethernet cable?  That would be simpler, cheaper, and more reliable than a wireless NAS, and not waste any of your WiFi router's bandwidth.  And it doesn't have any drawbacks unless you've put your router in a dumb spot that makes it impossible to put anything else next to it.
    My wireless network is faster than my 10 cat5 cabling.  I also have my ubiquiti on the wall and not in a great spot for an actual NAS.  Great for covering the house.  If I put it where the router is, I will never see it and that means that any flashing LEDs will go unnoticed.  I am not sure if there is some sort of reporting that you can set up on them. 
    Don't worry about those LEDs, you'll want to check them less often than your router's status lights. Management is done through your PC, or other device you use to connect to the NAS, and the LEDs are there just to help for diagnostic when you're plugging new stuff in or something has failed.
     
  • wandericawanderica Member UncommonPosts: 370
    edited August 2018
    I built one out of old hardware lying around using a 6700K that I recently replaced.  All I needed to buy was a few HDDs.  You can run one on practically anything as long as the board supports the storage you need.  If I was building from scratch, though, I would just buy one as Ridelynn suggests. 

    I love it.  FreeNAS makes it fairly simple to setup and use.  I can stream all of my movies anywhere using Plex (even to friends outside my network without having to open ports), and everyone in the house has a private storage folder in case their PC goes belly up.


  • RenoakuRenoaku Member EpicPosts: 3,157
    edited August 2018
    You can really buy a bunch of WD Hard Drives used that have been recycled from "Dell Conputers" just make sure they are "WD" not Seagate, and these usually sell for like $20-$25 or less for 1TB drive.

    ^ They are not the best but it depends what you are doing with it, as far as "NAS" just buy the enclosure and use your own drives.
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Ridelynn said:
    It’s easy to add a WiFi bridge to a wired model, and conversely easy to just plug in the Ethernet to a model that has WiFi

    i wouldn’t necessarily require WiFi built into the NAS given how easy it is to add a bridge, and upgrade that bridge as WiFi standards evolve
    Back to the topic at hand.  What one do you think works the best.  We are a SMB workload primarily.  Also most if it will be used to back up data from PCs that are not mine (wife and kids). 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    My NAS sits in my home office. 

    My computer, my wife’s computer, my laptop, a small email server, and the NAS are all hardwired into a 1Gb switch.

    Also on that switch is a 802.11 AC WiFi bridge that connects back to my router for internet for all of those devices.

    Access to my NAS is really fast to my computers, where I need it. And I can get to my NAS remotely if I have to.

    I run Plex on my Synology as well. It streams over AC to my TVs at 1080 with no issues. Transcoding can get a bit dicey because of the limited CPU power in the NAS but I very rarely have a need to do that while streaming

    Now, I have really slow internet - even B/G is much faster than my ISP, so having all my devices connect to the internet over one WiFi bridge isn’t a bottleneck for me, but if someone had fiber that may be a different situation. 
    [Deleted User]
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