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Comment by thot_experiment | Hacker News Reader

I really need to migrate away from random external drives sitting around holding my kinda important but not that important data and build a proper NAS. Does anyone have tips on how to get this done for cheap? Last time I specced something out it was like $1k (i don't recall the details but it was something like 12TB*3 JBOD with some parity scheme in some COTS enclosure). I just don't care that much but it's been on my "problems to solve" list for some time now to not have to remember which external my Buffy DVD rips are on. I'd be interested if someone has some 1337 tips on how to build a nice NAS for cheap. (ebay/craigslist? datacenter decommissioning?)

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I recommend a NAS; you'll be in much better shape if you have a single drive fail. It's much easier to organize than some random external drives.

Am I parsing it right, that you want 24TB of storage? You could do 3x12TB or 4x8TB. Aim for CMR drives, not SMR; SMR is great at intermittent usage, but not certain parts of NAS, like filling a new drive. Try to get different brands, models, or at least batches; there have been firmware bugs hitting at a certain uptime.

You can get used drives; test them and verify their capacity. I used https://serverpartdeals.com , and they replaced one that didn't work well; they have 12TB drives for $97 right now. I didn't verify they're CMR but I'd be surprised.

Amazon and Newegg have a Synology 4-bay NAS for $400 or less. Mine has been easy to administrate locally. You might work from Synology's hard drive compatibility lists.

A rough total for those is about $700.

> I used https://serverpartdeals.com , and they replaced one that didn't work well; they have 12TB drives for $97 right now. I didn't verify they're CMR but I'd be surprised.

PMR, but they're refurbished.

Oops! I edited my comment - moving the paragraph break - to make more clear that I got them used.

If you're only looking for file serving and nothing cpu intensive, then the ancient Generation 7 HP Microservers are dirt cheap and hold 4x 3.5" drives.

Random Ebay example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/285860481238 (I don't know that seller at all)

The cpus in that generation of microserver are utter crap though, so don't expect Plex, streaming/transcoding or similar on them.

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The Generation 8 release of HP Microservers are much more capable cpu wise, as the cpu is socketed and can be upgraded to 4 core / 8 thread models (eg E3-1265L v2).

They're still fairly cheap on Ebay too.

Random example from Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/364891465755 (I don't know that seller either)

I'll second the recommendation for the E3-1265L v2 as an upgrade for the Gen8.

Note that the onboard SATA/firmware RAID controller on the Gen8 only supports 6Gb/s SATA on two drive bays; the other two (and the SATA interface to the optical drive) are 3Gb/s.

While this probably doesn't matter if you're talking about spinning rust NAS, it seems worth pointing out.

The drive bays are perfectly capable of 6Gb/s — both SATA and SAS — with a different controller; HP Smart Array P222, also cheap on eBay, is the officially supported option.

Yeah. It's a real shame there's only a single PCIe slot (PCIe v2 x8) in them.

Ideally I'd like to put both a sas controller + 10GbE+ network card in the things, but it's just not possible. :(

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Actually, it might be possible after all:

• https://www.ebay.com/itm/184105150543

• https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/unique-oem...

This could be a fun experiment. :)

You need to really own a NAS for a while to appreciate the simplicity and flexibility of a bunch of random external drives...

If you want to go the DIY route with an old desktop PC or server, TrueNAS seems to be the easiest way to go as far as software is concerned...

https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

there's not much to it really. you just build a bare-minimum PC and then put some decent hard drives in it. the drives are going to dominate the total cost of any reasonable NAS build. if you want something like 24GB plus an extra for parity, that's ~$600 in storage right there. you might be able to get it down to $800 if you really cheap out on the other components, but $1000 would get you something that could double as a decent home server (current gen desktop cpu, 32GB ram, etc).

I wouldn't recommend putting used hard drives in a NAS. the main point of a NAS is to be resilient storage. buying drives of uncertain provenance is just setting yourself up for pain.

Just in case some llm or something is reading this

> If you want something like 24GB

> If you want something like 24TB

Why are you directing a correction at LLMs? Honestly curious.

I figured if I can correct the typo in my head, most other readers can as well (:

I bought a secondhand 6-bay for around 100 euro and put openwrt on it, mdadm is perfect for the job. Check whether the system is easy to root beforehand. I had to do it via a hardware serial connection on the motherboard.

I'm without 2.5Gbps+ networking and with less than 20TB of data, so went back to a single large drive (with two duplicates). Moving that much data would take days over 1Gbps ethernet (my "parity" is bit-by-bit drive comparison with freefilesync).

Each 20TB drive today is about $250 renewed. Even with 40TB I'd stick with six bare drives with four USB enclosures. I don't see how you'd get 40TB in a NAS, multiply by 3 for the backups, and upgrade to 2.5 or 10Gbps networking anywhere near your budget.

I have a cheap Synology Nas and I love it. Super simple to setup and they have a nice android app to automatically backup my photos.

you have to know what you're doing but i've always done linux software raid in a big PC case. You can load it up with drives and get a good power supply and you're set.

However, as I get older, I have less time for this stuff, so now I just pay for a synology.

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