DIY NAS Box with existing HDDs

Relentless81

Relentless81

Relentless81

Soldato
Joined
18 May 2010
Posts
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Hi,

I am downsizing my PC from ATX to ITX and the starting point is to remove the drives and refit them to a basic NAS that my PC's in the house can connect to for storing family photos and music etc

I want this to be as simple and as hassle free as possible, ideally I would buy an enclosure, fit the drives, connect it to network, the drives are mirrored and everything can see each other over the network.

Does this exist? Most I have seen tend to inc HDDs or other features I dont need.

Thanks
 
Synology or QNAP is what most people use. Or build your own and use something like FreeNAS or unRAID.

They're all going to have features you don't care about because they're built into the software.
 
bremen1874 said:
Synology or QNAP is what most people use. Or build your own and use something like FreeNAS or unRAID.

They're all going to have features you don't care about because they're built into the software.
Click to expand...

Thanks, re building your own, what do I need? I dont see enclosures anywhere where I can install two HDDs and connect them to a network. Synology and QNAP are really expensive but might be worth it as I've been considering cloud storage which has a monthly cost. Do Synology or Qnap devices warn you of potential HDD issues? What I mean by that is say you have two drives in a mirror, does it warn you when one of the drives requires replacing and you can hot swap? If so thats invaluable so its worth the cost.
 
To build your own you basically need a PC. You could possibly use the one you're replacing and reconfigure it as a NAS.

You can swap out failed drives and rebuild the mirror. You should be able to configure any decent NAS to send you status notifications.

Anything important that's only stored on the NAS will need to be backed up somewhere else.
 
That's what I don't get about NAS boxes, they are expensive and supposed to be a solution for storage but you're still supposed to back up elsewhere. Where is elsewhere? The cloud? Ludicrously expensive for anything over 50gb. HDD away from home? Pain in the arse retrieving it and making sure you back up the difference in Files

All seems a bit odd, if I could get a TB of cloud storage for a reasonable monthly payment that would be that and woild never need a harddrive again OneDrive you have to pay for office to get it

Ah well
 
CrashPlan PRO is what I'm trialling at the moment. It's $10/month after the trial period. There may be tax on top of that, but that's still under £10/month.

I'm using it to backup my unRAID NAS.

I also have a business 0365 subscription so all of my day-to-day files are backed up anyway.
 
bremen1874 said:
CrashPlan PRO is what I'm trialling at the moment. It's $10/month after the trial period. There may be tax on top of that, but that's still under £10/month.

I'm using it to backup my unRAID NAS.

I also have a business 0365 subscription so all of my day-to-day files are backed up anyway.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks, I'm still undecided, would really like OneDrive for the Windows integration but 50GB just isnt enough. I think I'm going to leave the NAS and just go for cloud storage I might download the Google Drive app and see if I like it as I have an Android phone

Thanks
 
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