Build own NAS

Chris Pickering

Chris Pickering

Chris Pickering

Associate
Joined
22 Jan 2020
Posts
7
Hi all im thinking of building my own NAS rather than buying one.
This is purely so my family can backup photos and videos from various devices.
I suppose my questions are
1 is it cost effective me building one for what im using it for.
2 if it's not, does anyone have a recommendation for a good one under £200 without drives? I'd ideally like it to be upgradable and hold 2 or 3 drives.
 
You can build a NAS with virtually any old PC hardware you have but you have to decide whether it'll be power efficient. The CPUs used in commercial NAS are 6W to 15W so cost very little to run. The other thing to factor in is that you'll have to be comfortable with installing and maintaining the NAS software such as TrueNAS, OpenMediaVault or Unraid.

Looking at commercial NAS, the big three players are Synology, QNAP and Asustor with Terramaster and UGREEN coming up fast. Although Synology has the halo factor and arguably the best OS, people are now avoiding it due to out-of-date hardware and the insistence on using Synology-branded HDDs, etc.

There isn't much recommendable under £200 as it's dominated by low-power ARM CPUs with non-expandable RAM but the UGREEN DH2300 may be worth a look as it at least has 4GB RAM, twice the normal maximum in this class. I would also consider the Terramaster F2-425 which is slightly more expensive but has an Intel CPU and expandable RAM. After 2-bay devices there's a considerable jump in price to 4-bay.
 
Last edited:
Snapshot said:
You can build a NAS with virtually any old PC hardware you have but you have to decide whether it'll be power efficient. The CPUs used in commercial NAS are 6W to 15W so cost very little to run. The other thing to factor in is that you'll have to be comfortable with installing and maintaining the NAS software such as TrueNAS, OpenMediaVault or Unraid.

Looking at commercial NAS, the big three players are Synology, QNAP and Asustor with Terramaster and UGREEN coming up fast. Although Synology has the halo factor and arguably the best OS, people are now avoiding it due to out-of-date hardware and the insistence on using Synology-branded HDDs, etc.

There isn't much recommendable under £200 as it's dominated by low-power ARM CPUs with non-expandable RAM but the UGREEN DH2300 may be worth a look as it at least has 4GB RAM, twice the normal maximum in this class. I would also consider the Terramaster F2-425 which is slightly more expensive but has an Intel CPU and expandable RAM. After 2-bay devices there's a considerable jump in price to 4-bay.
Click to expand...
Hi and big thanks for the reply, I was looking initially at the synology ds223j cos the deal i saw said it came with 2 x seagate hdd's, but you say it can only take synology branded ones.
 
Chris Pickering said:
Hi and big thanks for the reply, I was looking initially at the synology ds223j cos the deal i saw said it came with 2 x seagate hdd's, but you say it can only take synology branded ones.
Click to expand...
It'll do the job but check which drives it comes with. Ideally you want Ironwolf as that's Seagate's family of NAS drives.
ChrisD. said:
Synology have changed their stance on third party HDDs (unsurprisingly after the backlash).
Click to expand...
Oh good.
 
Personally I wouldn't trust anything Asus make or their support.

Synology have gone down IMO with their drive shenanigans but for a turnkey solution which is easy to set up and configure nothing on the market beats it.
 
ChrisD. said:
Personally I wouldn't trust anything Asus make or their support.

Synology have gone down IMO with their drive shenanigans but for a turnkey solution which is easy to set up and configure nothing on the market beats it.
Click to expand...
I have decided to go with this one since I offered £71 and they accepted. Bargain i thought.
 
Chris Pickering said:
I have decided to go with this one since I offered £71 and they accepted. Bargain i thought.
Click to expand...
What are you going to implement to ensure all your families data that they are going to back up is safe? Are you going to make copies of your data?

It's one thing running a NAS but when people put once in a lifetime data on it, you need to be certain that the device itself won't die and take the data with it. Ensure to make manual backups and/or cloud redundancy.
 
Steveocee said:
What are you going to implement to ensure all your families data that they are going to back up is safe? Are you going to make copies of your data?

It's one thing running a NAS but when people put once in a lifetime data on it, you need to be certain that the device itself won't die and take the data with it. Ensure to make manual backups and/or cloud redundancy.
Click to expand...
I can set it to back up to the other drive can't I? I am planning on 2 x 6gb iron wolf drives.
 
ChrisD. said:
Personally I wouldn't trust anything Asus make or their support.

Synology have gone down IMO with their drive shenanigans but for a turnkey solution which is easy to set up and configure nothing on the market beats it.
Click to expand...
Asustor was founded by Asus but is a separate company which should not be tarred with the same brush.
 
Chris Pickering said:
I've just seen an Asustor Drivestor 2 AS1102T for £99. Is this a decent enclosure?
Obviously with no drives.
Click to expand...
It was released 4.5 years ago, is now discontinued (new version due out RSN) but is still supported with the latest version of ADM.
In the unlikely event that you have access to the Members' Market I have some 6TB Ironwolfs....
Find your way to the Asustor forum and some bloke with the same user ID as me might try to help.

As @Steveocee says, you still need an external backup such as a 6TB WD Elements.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom