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DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

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Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#21

Post by Lammy »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #20
mewse-hn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZFS uses a large amount of ram, i think the old rule of thumb was 1GB ram per 1TB of storage

That's only for deduplication. https://superuser.com/a/993019

I do like to deduplicate my BitTorrent downloads/seeding directory with my media directories so I can edit metadata to my heart's content while still seeding forever without having to incur 2x storage usage. I tune the `recordsize` to 1MiB so it has vastly fewer blocks to keep track of compared to the default 128K, at the cost of any modification wasting very slightly more space. Really not a big deal though when talking about multi-gibibyte media containers, multi-megapixel art embeds, etc.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#22

Post by butvacuum »

ac29 wrote: post #17
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caching files in ram means they can be moved to the network faster - right?

Depends on the network speed. At 1Gbps a single HDD can easily saturate the network with sequential reads. A pair of HDD could do the same at 2.5Gbps. At 10Gbps or more, you would definitely see the benefits of caching in memory.

Not as much as expected. I have several toy ZFS pools out of ancient 3tb wd reds, and anything remotely home-grade (stripped mirrors, 4,6,8 wide raidz1/2) saturates the disks before 10gig networking. As long as it's sequential, 8gb or 128gb doesn't matter.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#23

Post by exmadscientist »

Are there any NAS solutions for 3.5" drives, homebrew or purchased, that are slim enough to stash away in a wall enclosure? (This sort of thing: https://www.legrand.us/audio-visual/racks-and-enclosures/in-... , though not that particular model or height.) I'd like to really stash something away and forget about it. Height is the major constraint, you can only be ~3.5" tall. And before anyone says anything about 19" rack stuff, don't bother. It's close but just doesn't go, especially if it's not the only thing in the enclosure.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#24

Post by butvacuum »

exmadscientist wrote: post #23

Are there any NAS solutions for 3.5" drives, homebrew or purchased, that are slim enough to stash away in a wall enclosure? (This sort of thing: https://www.legrand.us/audio-visual/racks-and-enclosures/in-... , though not that particular model or height.) I'd like to really stash something away and forget about it. Height is the major constraint, you can only be ~3.5" tall. And before anyone says anything about 19" r…

1 liter PC's (tiny/mini/micro), or some N100 type build + external bay is likely your best bet. If it's really that small, you might have heat issues.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#25

Post by disambiguation »

I too was in the market recently for a NAS, downgrading from a 12 bay server because of yagni - it's far too big, too loud, runs hot, and uses way too much energy. I was also tempted by the jonsbo (it's a very nice case) but prices being what they are it was actually better to get a premade 4 bay model for under $500 (batteries included, hdds are not). It's small, quiet, power efficient, and didnt break the bank in the process. Historically DIY has always been cheaper, but that's no longer the case (no pun intended)

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#26

Post by jmb99 »

exmadscientist wrote: post #23

Are there any NAS solutions for 3.5" drives, homebrew or purchased, that are slim enough to stash away in a wall enclosure? (This sort of thing: https://www.legrand.us/audio-visual/racks-and-enclosures/in-... , though not that particular model or height.) I'd like to really stash something away and forget about it. Height is the major constraint, you can only be ~3.5" tall. And before anyone says anything about 19" r…

> And before anyone says anything about 19" rack stuff, don't bother. It's close but just doesn't go, especially if it's not the only thing in the enclosure.

Do you have to use that particular wall enclosure thing? A 1U chassis at 1.7” of height fits 4 drives (and a 2U at ~3.45” fits 12), and something like a QNAP is low-enough power to not need to worry about cooling too much. If you’re willing to DIY it would not be hard at all to rig up a mounting mechanism to a stud, and then it’s just a matter of designing some kind of nice-looking cover panel (wood? glass in a laser-cut metal door? lots of possibilities).

I guess my main question is, what/who is this for? I can’t picture any environment that you have literally 0 available space to put a NAS other than inside a wall. A 2-bay synology/qnap/etc is small enough to sit underneath a router/AP combo for instance.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#27

Post by zdw »

The Jonsbo N3 case which is 8x 3.5" drives has a smaller footprint than this, which might be better for most folks. Needs a SFX PSU though, which is kind of annoying.

If you get an enterprise grade ITX board that has a 16x PCIe slot which can be bifurcated into 4 M.2 form factor PCIx4 connections, it really opens up options for storage:

* A 6x SATA card in M.2 form factor from Asmedia or others will let you fill all the drive slots even if the logic board only has 2/4/6 ports on it.

* The other ports can be used for conventional M.2 nVME drives.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#28

Post by ehnto »

zdw wrote: post #27

The Jonsbo N3 case which is 8x 3.5" drives has a smaller footprint than this, which might be better for most folks. Needs a SFX PSU though, which is kind of annoying. If you get an enterprise grade ITX board that has a 16x PCIe slot which can be bifurcated into 4 M.2 form factor PCIx4 connections, it really opens up options for storage: * A 6x SATA card in M.2 form factor from Asmedia or others will let you fill all…

That's what I built! It's a great case, the only components I didn't already have lying around were the motherboard and PSU.

It's very well made, not as tight on space as I expected either.

The only issue is as you noted, you have to be really careful with your motherboard choice if you want to use all 8 bays for a storage array.

Another gotchas was making sure to get a CPU with integrated graphics, otherwise you will have to waste your pcie slot on a graphics card and have no space for the extra SATA ports.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#29

Post by p1mrx »

I recently got a used QNAP TS-131P for cheap, that holds one 3.5" drive for offsite backup at a friend's house. It's compact and runs off a common 12V 3A power supply.

There is no third-party firmware available, but at least it runs Linux, so I wrote an autorun.sh script that kills 99% of the processes and phones home using ssh+rsync instead of depending on QNAP's cloud: https://github.com/pmarks-net/qnap-minlin

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