I currently have a number of external drives and am about to buy another one after one recently failed. However, I'm wondering if there is a way to build a cheap NAS at all? The ideal scenario would be to buy an old, crappy tower with something like 10 HDD slots that I can put all the hard drives in and then somehow connect that tower to my main machine? Is that possible? Anyone got any guides on instructions on howto achieve something like this?

 

Is that possible? Yes. Just make another pc. with no monitor. Share it on your LAN. Use a software like voidtools Everything for insanely fast search. Enjoy

 

Cheers for the starting point! Does the second tower need to be decent spec at all, or can it be low spec as it's essentially just file storage?

 

If you're not a complete klutz, use an old case and install debian minimal server:
https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/debian-minimal-server/
after installation, you can detach you monitor and keyboard, it doesn't need to be rebooted ever again.

 

No. Anything made last decade would work. More ram is better for giant file copy pastes. Thats it. Use Teracopy for reliable fast speeds.

 

The cheapest way would be with a Raspberry Pi or other capable SBCs.

Despite the price, a NAS solution based on the Pi is far from ridiculous AFAIK:

www.windowscentral.com/how-build-raspberry-pi-powered-nas%3famp

 

freeNas OS, question is if use some sort of RAID or two separate machines (computers) mirrored 1:1 for maximum backup

 

Watch this, thank me later. I always enjoy this build..

 

Blue is my new favorite color...nice build.

 

Get a tera master 4 bay pretty cheap these days. It was on sale about a moth ago for 199.99. No hard drives included.
If you want a little cheaper get a buffalo 2 bay link station and set it up as a mirror raid.
Both are really good.

 

I think that we need more pornstars to explain some technical stuffs.

 

Last edited: May 31, 2018

Totally with you, got this at home and even put one at work

https://www.nas4free.org/

It’s BSD based, rock solid.

 

Purpose is everything.
If redundancy is not important then RAID is completely unnecessary.

If data access is the only concern, you can buy a cheap ex-lease computer and stack HDD's inside it purely as a file server and share on your local broadband network. That is the simplest and cheapest option without having to install anything other than putting the HDD's in the box.
All the above options are good, but you did mention "cheap", unless of course you still haven't bought the HDD's.
If you have not bought the HDD's, then there is no cheap and the above ideas are better.

 

To obtain a cheap Nas, one must acquire a cheap Premiere. The problem lies in the complexity of Premieres.

Most premieres have an abudence of layers and great depths. Only a small sample field known to be functioning still at a high level.

Once aquired, one also must be wary of having chains that can excite the feds. Location is also the last key factor. Most common mistakes are in apples, but true location is in a bigger apple. Mapped across 5 sections.

This leads to the question: How are we gonna ever get up? If all we do is get down.

Anyways, with these tips, i believe you might be able to create a cheap NAS.

Good luck!

 

Exactly, or Debian minimal server if you know how to set it up. FreeNAS is easier to set up. Then you need a fast network card, and a cheap [but reliable] computer with not much RAM, actually, but enough SATA ports to accommodate all your HDs, but that many of them will need some quality "juice". I'd use a quality power supply with not many Watts, 350-450W will do, but quality Watts like Seasonic, Corsair, Enermax, EVGA PSUs. Onboard VGA doesn't draw much power, nor are HDs. I'd go with chepest Intel i3 with an onboard VGA, or even better an AMD A4 or A8 as they are incredibly cheap. What's harder to find is a good quality, but cheap motherboard with 8 SATA ports. There are some micro-ATX ones that would fill the bill nicely, but I cannot remember the model at the moment. Sorry. Look for the ones with all solid capacitors, of course. It's getting harder to find ones that don't have those these days, but the ones that do should be avoided as solid capacitors last much longer and are more reliable.

If you're using more computers, you will need a network switch, or install more network cards into the NAS.

If you can't find a motherboard with that many SATA ports, you will have to use a couple of PCIe SATA cards.

Cheers!

 

The goose has nisted, repeat, the goose has nisted.

 

worth noting is,
you can save LOTS of money and time in the long run if you just buy some decent (Synology) NAS,
although I consider myself advanced IT specialist, I decided to get Synology DS918+ some time ago, because everything just works out of the box, I can honestly say its price justifies its purpose,
despite my experience, the time I would invest in setting up freeNAS and all the things could be used elsewhere

 

+1 to this, using a prebuilt NAS box and putting your own drives in it saves hassle and time

Reliability: Safe even with drive failures
I used a Netgear 2-bay NAS for 6 years in a mirror drive configuration. Yes I had two drive failures in that time, but I put in a new drive and the data was restored for me every time. No data loss and my data is still safe. But its limit is two 2GB drives, which in a mirrored setup is only 2GB of safe storage. Newer models from Netgear allow larger sized drives, but my older model is capped at 2GB each bay. A couple weeks ago I decided to upgrade...

I just bought a Synology DS918j 4-bay NAS box and two 4GB Seagate Ironwolf HDs. The two drives will initially be setup to mirror each other. I had the new NAS running in about 15 minutes. I moved all my data off the old NAS across the Ethernet overnight. I will add another drive or two to the Synology NAS in a couple months to boost my storage amount even more. There is a RAID storage calculator on the Synology site that allows you to select drive sizes and raid type to see what your capacity will be.

Ease of use: Web based interface
The management interface for the NAS is intuitive and features an all graphical interface, no command line required.

BONUS: Media Server and Cloud features
There are two USB 3.0 ports on the back of Synology NAS. I used an Anker USB 3.0 hub and connected two external powered HDs (NTFS and exFAT formatted), as well as a third USB powered drive. The NAS saw them all and while they do not add to my RAID configuration, I CAN make their contents shared to my network. All my media player devices can see the music and video I store on the NAS drives and on the external drives. The built in DLNA media server feature can read and serve up the files to my LG TV, my xbox or my playstation machines.

There are additional cloud features that I have not even dipped into yet, allowing access to the NAS from across the internet from my portable devices.

Amortize cost over lifespan
It really has been a very painless process to setup and use. The end result is I spend more time enjoying the content than thinking/worrying about how to store or protect it. Pick a brand you like and go for it. Think about the cost of the unit over the years that you will use it. You really will wonder how you got along without it.

 

If money wasn't an issue, then yes, a Synology would be the preferred option. Redundancy isn't important though as I have multiple copies of my important stuff in various locations (cloud, on-site and off-site).

At the moment I just want to rationalise my external hard drives down to one united ideally. I've manage to acquire a Cooler Master HAF 912 case with a Corsair 500W PSU for free, as well as a Gigabyte motherboard, which has a Q6600 quad core and 8GB RAM in it. Unfortunately, it only has 4 SATA ports on the motherboard though, so I would need to pick up a PCIe card(s) to fill the case up with drives.

Does it seem viable for me to use this machine to run FreeNAS? And using FreeNAS, I assume it doesn't force RAID or the formatting of disks and you can just use disks that already have data on them and run as JBOD?

 

What about Odroid HC2, XU4 or similar SOB?