What NAS for a beginner?

Off the shelf pretty much anything will do, Sinology, QNAP or even Netgear are the more well known options, there are also less known cheaper options if you just want some form of backup, smb share, dlna etc.
 
Ch3m1c4L said:
Budget? Number of drives? Self build (reusing parts or new?) or pre built?
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Pre built and probably 4 drives for future proof. Not sure about budget but I suppose I don't need to spend loads as a begginer?
SupraWez said:
Off the shelf pretty much anything will do, Sinology, QNAP or even Netgear are the more well known options, there are also less known cheaper options if you just want some form of backup, smb share, dlna etc.
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Cheers yes it will be off the shelf I wasn't sure what's good and what's not. I thought I might self host bitwarden.
 
Literally one reply from op in, and now we're not talking about a NAS any more, but a home server hosting services. I would suggest you're better off looking at self build, it's cheaper, more customisable and can grow as much or as little as you need and can be pretty economical. We live in a world where 'old' hardware is both cheap, plentiful and reasonably efficient/capable in terms of performance. 8th gen kit is for nothing, a modern iGPU and plenty of low power/higher performance options. If you buy a Synology or similar, you are buying a dead end, you are stuck with whatever support cycle Synology/DSM or whoever dictates, also unless you are absolutely sure you won't outgrow a consumer 2/4/6/8 bay set-up, it's going to limit options down the road. The first rule of storage is whatever you think you'll need is never enough. Ever.
 
Avalon said:
Literally one reply from op in, and now we're not talking about a NAS any more, but a home server hosting services. I would suggest you're better off looking at self build, it's cheaper, more customisable and can grow as much or as little as you need and can be pretty economical. We live in a world where 'old' hardware is both cheap, plentiful and reasonably efficient/capable in terms of performance. 8th gen kit is for nothing, a modern iGPU and plenty of low power/higher performance options. If you buy a Synology or similar, you are buying a dead end, you are stuck with whatever support cycle Synology/DSM or whoever dictates, also unless you are absolutely sure you won't outgrow a consumer 2/4/6/8 bay set-up, it's going to limit options down the road. The first rule of storage is whatever you think you'll need is never enough. Ever.
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Well my first thought was to have my own cloud, then my next thought was what about bitwarden lol Self build I wouldn't know where to start.
 
Yep, Nextcloud is a common solution for that. If you want cheap/easy, ebay etc. is awash with inexpensive prebuilt systems that you can put a few drives in, software options range from free like TrueNAS to paid like UnRAID, the learning curve isn't much different to Synology for the basic's and the hardware will generally cost you a lot less upfront and can grow as your needs change - you may even have something suitable already to give it a go?
 
Avalon said:
Yep, Nextcloud is a common solution for that. If you want cheap/easy, ebay etc. is awash with inexpensive prebuilt systems that you can put a few drives in, software options range from free like TrueNAS to paid like UnRAID, the learning curve isn't much different to Synology for the basic's and the hardware will generally cost you a lot less upfront and can grow as your needs change - you may even have something suitable already to give it a go?
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I will definitely look into it cheers
 
Avalon said:
Yep, Nextcloud is a common solution for that. If you want cheap/easy, ebay etc. is awash with inexpensive prebuilt systems that you can put a few drives in, software options range from free like TrueNAS to paid like UnRAID, the learning curve isn't much different to Synology for the basic's and the hardware will generally cost you a lot less upfront and can grow as your needs change - you may even have something suitable already to give it a go?
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I have been watching some videos doesn't seem to bad at a self build, the only thing I might struggle with is the software side.

So could you or anyone else point me in the right direction for parts using OC parts, probably looking at midrange stuff. I appreciate the help.
 
I wouldn't buy new components for this, the used 8th gen Intel stuff or newer is for next to nothing. Lets start with the basics, how much storage do you think you'll need? You'll likely vastly underestimate, but that's just the way it works. Do you have anything you'd like to use? Eg drives you already have or other hardware. What's your budget and how much protection do you want? One of the things that usually leaves me shaking my head, is people who are concerned about data resilience and will spend the money on ECC - without understanding the entire data pathway from creation to writing needs to be ECC - but then cheap out and don't run a UPS. In terms of size, a self build (or repurposing a cheap pre-built) will often take up slightly more space than a standalone off the shelf NAS, they may even be slightly louder and sip slightly more power, but you won't wake up one day and find out it's a paperweight because someone somewhere decided it was time to stop providing basic updates and as/when you feel the need to do new things, upgrades are cheap/easy.

If you do want to go new, for a micro build, something like an ASROCK N100 board would be highly efficient, you can buy NAS specific cases for 4-8 drives, the N100 packs enough of a punch that it can run services easily and if you go down the media server route, it's got enough grunt to unpack/transcode files easily, drives you'd need to tell us what you need, shove 16GB in (yes, I know Intel claim it only supports 8GB, they officially do, but unofficially it's 16GB). Be warned, if you outgrow it's capabilities, the N100 boards will be a proverbial albatross around your neck very quickly. Software comes down to two basic choices, UNRAID or TrueNAS. Personally i'd go UNRAID for media as IOPS aren't that important, they've changed the pricing model recently, so you can either buy xx devices and lifetime updates or xx devices with annual subscription for updates, you still get basic security updates within the version you pay for, but major version updates won't be a thing. Use an NVMe cache drive to handle data landing/processing (prefer TLC over QLC, realistically 1TB is probably a minimum at this point, but buy whatever is best value), then move it to the mechanical drives once it hits x% full, docker and VM's run off the SSD. I tend to prefer my drives to be HGST He drives as the longevity is simply insane, I have a 'few' 10TB SATA and SAS drives running for quite a few years at this point without a single failure, they just keep going. Recently, the optimum point has tended to be 14-16TB drives. If you need more IOPS and don't mind a full VDEV being spun up for any R/W operation, then ZFS and TrueNAS has the edge here, before going ZFS please make sure you understand the limitations it brings in terms of expansion, those are changing, but they've been changing for years, and an exit strategy can be horrifically time-consuming/inefficient or expensive if you get it wrong.
 
Avalon said:
I wouldn't buy new components for this, the used 8th gen Intel stuff or newer is for next to nothing. Lets start with the basics, how much storage do you think you'll need? You'll likely vastly underestimate, but that's just the way it works. Do you have anything you'd like to use? Eg drives you already have or other hardware. What's your budget and how much protection do you want? One of the things that usually leaves me shaking my head, is people who are concerned about data resilience and will spend the money on ECC - without understanding the entire data pathway from creation to writing needs to be ECC - but then cheap out and don't run a UPS. In terms of size, a self build (or repurposing a cheap pre-built) will often take up slightly more space than a standalone off the shelf NAS, they may even be slightly louder and sip slightly more power, but you won't wake up one day and find out it's a paperweight because someone somewhere decided it was time to stop providing basic updates and as/when you feel the need to do new things, upgrades are cheap/easy.

If you do want to go new, for a micro build, something like an ASROCK N100 board would be highly efficient, you can buy NAS specific cases for 4-8 drives, the N100 packs enough of a punch that it can run services easily and if you go down the media server route, it's got enough grunt to unpack/transcode files easily, drives you'd need to tell us what you need, shove 16GB in (yes, I know Intel claim it only supports 8GB, they officially do, but unofficially it's 16GB). Be warned, if you outgrow it's capabilities, the N100 boards will be a proverbial albatross around your neck very quickly. Software comes down to two basic choices, UNRAID or TrueNAS. Personally i'd go UNRAID for media as IOPS aren't that important, they've changed the pricing model recently, so you can either buy xx devices and lifetime updates or xx devices with annual subscription for updates, you still get basic security updates within the version you pay for, but major version updates won't be a thing. Use an NVMe cache drive to handle data landing/processing (prefer TLC over QLC, realistically 1TB is probably a minimum at this point, but buy whatever is best value), then move it to the mechanical drives once it hits x% full, docker and VM's run off the SSD. I tend to prefer my drives to be HGST He drives as longevity is simply insane, I have a 'few' 10TB SATA and SAS drives running for quite a few years at this point without a single failure, they just keep going. Recently, the optimum point has tended to be 14-16TB drives. If you need more IOPS and don't mind a full VDEV being spun up for any R/W operation, then ZFS and TrueNAS has the edge here, before going ZFS please make sure you understand the limitations it brings in terms of expansion, those are changing, but they've been changing for years, and an exit strategy can be horrifically time-consuming/inefficient or expensive if you get it wrong.
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Cheers for the advice. Something I shall think about.
 
Rather than start a new thread I might as well ask here. I've seen N100 mini PCs for ~£90 and my needs are pretty basic for a NAS, I was thinking of using one of them + an additional NVME drive to stick next to the router and that would probably be enough for me.

I realise using a mini PC with 2 x NVME drives probably isn't great NAS etiquette but It'd cost just over £100, be low power and require minimal effort.

Am I crazy to go with it?
 
Your requirements are vague, so understandably so will the answer. Yes, it'll work, but you're limited to network port speed, and PCIe lanes for NVMe, and it's a very limited option expansion wise, but low power/cheap.
 
I'm also vague on what i want to be fair, I'm more looking to hook it up and figure out what I'll use it for later, I just want something to tinker with.
 
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If you want "fit and forget" then Synology/QNAP etc are fine. I have the skill and funds to do anything (within reason), but I have better things to do with my time than mess about with this kind of thing, so I use an off-the-shelf solution
 
There is no wrong answer here, but people need to make informed choices. The issue with OTS options is that you are in effect buying a period of support where your hardware will be given updates, beyond that, it’s EOL and then e-waste, the quality and length of that support varies wildly from vendor to vendor. Look at the recent EOL of DLink NAS’s here and what followed, it’s a good job they don’t do that with the routers… oh they do. Well what about QNAP? Not much better at handling disclosures and patching, especially when they think this is OK, because they certainly didn't find 24 CVE’s on a Friday afternoon, but at least they fixed them. Remember the great Synology encryption debacle where EOL NAS’ were targeted? Yea, thats not a great selling point either. TruNAS, UnRAID and Open Media Vault etc. may not be quite as simple to set-up, but they at least receive timely patching and you can choose what hardware you run on/change it as you need.
 
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