What software for NAS duties?

[phrases]

I've got a few bits of hardware which should be enough for some NAS duties trouble is its in atx form with a rather large HTPC case. But i can hide it out of sight. I've got a spare 4TB drive which should be enough.

I am thinking though is it overkill to run a NAS from it? I can't recall off the top of my head but its one of those older APU AMD Processors with a 610GT Passive cooled GPU and 8Gb DDR2 and 430w PSU.

I've been used to synology in the past but i ditched it because the cpu couldn't keep up with the bandwith coming in (Was using sabnzb at the time)

Just wondering if its a viable idea?

 

[BigT]

Personally I use Unraid but that requires at least two disks. It comes into its own beyond two disks as you only use the largest as a parity drive for protection from one disk failure. The docker ecosystem is makes use of is pretty good for adding features like download clients, Plex etc. and it is efficient. Check out some of SpaceinvaderOne's youtube videos to get an idea of what is possible.

With one drive I once used OMV in the past and other OS are available but I can't comment on them. XPenology I guess is the obvious one if you liked Synology. Others will post with their experiences I'm sure.

For simple NAS file sharing duties then you're probably over provisioned in terms of horsepower and maybe might want to investigate a RaspberryPi, hanging the disk off a router or similar. If you want to start to use the NAS for 'server' like activities then you'll be grateful for the processor and memory. For example my Unraid NAS runs Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, SABnzb, my Unifi controller, home automation stuff, bitwarden, nextcloud and a couple of Windows VMs.

 

[phrases]

Personally I use Unraid but that requires at least two disks. It comes into its own beyond two disks as you only use the largest as a parity drive for protection from one disk failure. The docker ecosystem is makes use of is pretty good for adding features like download clients, Plex etc. and it is efficient. Check out some of SpaceinvaderOne's youtube videos to get an idea of what is possible.

With one drive I once used OMV in the past and other OS are available but I can't comment on them. XPenology I guess is the obvious one if you liked Synology. Others will post with their experiences I'm sure.

For simple NAS file sharing duties then you're probably over provisioned in terms of horsepower and maybe might want to investigate a RaspberryPi, hanging the disk off a router or similar. If you want to start to use the NAS for 'server' like activities then you'll be grateful for the processor and memory. For example my Unraid NAS runs Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, SABnzb, my Unifi controller, home automation stuff, bitwarden, nextcloud and a couple of Windows VMs.

That does sound intersting. I have a ubiquti device just a basic 2.4ghz wireless transmitter. What use would your controller be over the app? Also home automation stuff?

 

[BigT]

That does sound intersting. I have a ubiquti device just a basic 2.4ghz wireless transmitter. What use would your controller be over the app? Also home automation stuff?

Controller running doesn't really offer any advantages other than it is always on and therefore browseable by any device on my network.

Re the automation I run this in a container on Unraid: https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ It lets me combine triggers and smart devices in a more sophisticated way. So for example instead of having my outside lights on a timer via the smart plug's app, the hass server gets a feed from the met office on when sunrise and sunset are each day and it triggers turning them on and off by it. Or when my phone gets within 10 miles of the house and the temperature is below a certain level then it'll put the heating on for my return. Some of it genuinely useful and some of it just because I can and it's fun to experiment.

Other continuers that are genuinely useful are my continuous backup from laptops and every photo I take on the iPhone is backed up onto the NAS when I come back into the house. One I didn't mention was my xTeve container that takes my IPTV feed and also my HDHomeRun feed and manipulates them into something Plex can use so I can watch TV anywhere I have a Plex client in the house. This is useful to me as I don't have an aerial socket in every room and browsing an EPG via Plex is a much better user experience than coming in and out of all the various apps (iPlayer, ITV hub, 4OD etc.) on the smart TVs and amazon fire devices. It also saves money because HDHomeRun clients are not free.

Also if I hadn't already invested in a separate box to do this I would probably run my pfSense router in a container too.

 

[phrases]

Controller running doesn't really offer any advantages other than it is always on and therefore browseable by any device on my network.

Re the automation I run this in a container on Unraid: https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ It lets me combine triggers and smart devices in a more sophisticated way. So for example instead of having my outside lights on a timer via the smart plug's app, the hass server gets a feed from the met office on when sunrise and sunset are each day and it triggers turning them on and off by it. Or when my phone gets within 10 miles of the house and the temperature is below a certain level then it'll put the heating on for my return. Some of it genuinely useful and some of it just because I can and it's fun to experiment. Other continuers that are genuinely useful are my continuous backup from laptops and every photo I take on the iPhone is backed up onto the NAS when I come back into the house. Also if I hadn't already invested in a separate box to do this already I would probably run my pfSense router in a container too.

cheers i'll look into that. I use IFTT for anything related to automation just fire and forget i guess but i would like more control. I'll have a play around tonight going to install ubuntu i think.

 

[BigT]

Just remember that a NAS doesn't replace a proper backup regime. While I have 20TB of storage, the media I don't mind losing, so the remaining couple of TB get periodically backed up onto a USB drive and popped in the safe and also backed up onto my unlimited google drive. Again Unraid has some useful features to facilitate this sort of thing. The unassigned devices plugin lets you make the USB drive accessible without the complication of it being part of the array.

 

[Avalon]

I also love UnRAID, the docker and VM support gives your average home user a lot of flexibility without the complexity of a traditional hypervisor set-up like ESXi or Proxmox and running storage ontop. Resource wise your connection speed generally dictates your CPU as far as SAB etc. is concerned, followed by IO, so for the minimal cost of an SSD, consider using one as a cache drive. As BigT has already pointed out, UnRAID uses your largest drive for parity, it's possible to run single drive + cache drive, but you are not parity protected, you can add a (same size or larger) parity drive later.

 

[Caged]

Unraid is good, moved from Freenas because I mess with computers at work and don't want anything approaching work to become part of my home life as well.