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DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

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Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#111

Post by uniqueuid »

embedding-shape wrote: post #105
mm0lqf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tape drives are generally SAS so you will need a controller card I've got a HP StorageWorks Ultrium 3000 drive (It's LTO-5 format) connected to one (LSI SAS SAS9300-4i), in my NAS/file server (HP Z420 workstation chassis). Don't go lower than LTO-5 as you will want LTFS support. About £150 all in for the card and drive (including SFF-8643 to SFF-8482 cables etc..) on EBay Tapes are 1.5TB uncompressed, and about £10/e…

Not OP, but similar situation, trying to figure out tape archiving, already using SAS. However, is there no open formats? The whole LTO ecosystem of course reeks of enterprise, and I'd expect by now at least one hardware hacker had picked together some off-the-shelf components to build something that is magnitude cheaper to acquire, maintain and upgrade.

Short answer: no

Tape is really complicated and physically challenging, and there are no incentives for people investing insane amounts of time for something that has almost no fan base. See the blog post about why you don’t want tape from some time ago.

Edit: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/lto-tape-backups-for-linux-n...

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#112

Post by execution »

meindnoch wrote: post #81
dllu wrote: post #10

Very sad that HDDs, SSDs, and RAM are all increasing in price now, but I just made a 4 x 24 TB ZFS pool with Seagate Barracudas on sale at $10 / TB [1]. This seems like a pretty decent price even though the Barracudas are rated for 2400 hours per year [2] but this is the same spec that the refurbished Exos drives are rated for. By the way, interesting to see that OP has no qualms about buying cheap Chinese motherboar…

>I just made a 4 x 24 TB ZFS pool How much RAM did you install? Did you follow the 1GB per 1TB recommendation for ZFS? (i.e. 96GB of RAM)

I think you should be fine with 64GB (4x16GB ECC), I have 8x10TB RAID-Z2 and it uses around 34GB.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#113

Post by execution »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #13
dllu wrote: post #10

Very sad that HDDs, SSDs, and RAM are all increasing in price now, but I just made a 4 x 24 TB ZFS pool with Seagate Barracudas on sale at $10 / TB [1]. This seems like a pretty decent price even though the Barracudas are rated for 2400 hours per year [2] but this is the same spec that the refurbished Exos drives are rated for. By the way, interesting to see that OP has no qualms about buying cheap Chinese motherboar…

> $10 / TB That's a remarkably good price. If I had $1.5k handy I'd be sorely tempted (even tho it's Seagate).

I was tempted by 4 x 28TB (Recertified Seagate ST28000NM000C) but could not work out what I would use it for.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#114

Post by execution »

starky wrote: post #54

I think the worry about power consumption is a bit overblown in the article. My NAS has an i5-12600 + Quadro P4000 and uses maybe 50% more power than the one in this article under normal conditions. That works out to maybe $4/month more cost. Given the relatively small delta, I'd encourage picking hardware based on what services you want to run.

Indeed, I always compare it with what I get if I ran it via cloud services and the electricity cost pales in comparison.

My NAS is around 100W (6-year old parts: i3 9100 and C246M) which comes to $25/£18 per month (electricity is expensive), but I can justify it as I use many services on the machine and it has been super reliable (running 24/7 for nearly 6 years).

I will try to see if I can build a more performant/efficient NAS from a mix of spare parts and new parts this coming month (still only Zen 3: 5950X and X570), but it is more of a fun project than a replacement.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#115

Post by hexbin010 »

imiric wrote: post #63
pSYoniK wrote: post #61

TL;DR - please stop wasting tons of resources putting together new servers every year and turning this into yet another outlet for "I have more money than sense and hopefully I can buy myself into happiness". Just get old random hardware and play around with it and you'll learn so much that you will be able to truly appreciate the difference between consumer and enterprise hardware. This seems awfully wasteful. One o…

It's a bit patronizing to tell people what to do with their money. If you care more about the environment than enjoying technology, then go ahead and do what you suggest. If you want to be really green, how about giving up technology altogether? Go full vegan, abandon all possessions, and all that? Or if you really want to help the planet, have you considered suicide? There's always more you can do. I'd rather enjoy…

> have you considered suicide

How uncouth, even just as rhetoric.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#116

Post by embedding-shape »

uniqueuid wrote: post #111
embedding-shape wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but similar situation, trying to figure out tape archiving, already using SAS. However, is there no open formats? The whole LTO ecosystem of course reeks of enterprise, and I'd expect by now at least one hardware hacker had picked together some off-the-shelf components to build something that is magnitude cheaper to acquire, maintain and upgrade.

Short answer: no Tape is really complicated and physically challenging, and there are no incentives for people investing insane amounts of time for something that has almost no fan base. See the blog post about why you don’t want tape from some time ago. Edit: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/lto-tape-backups-for-linux-n...

> there are no incentives for people investing insane amounts of time for something that has almost no fan base

Like that has stopped anyone before? :p Probably explain why we haven't seen anything FOSS in that ecosystem yet though.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#117

Post by citrin_ru »

embedding-shape wrote: post #106
VTimofeenko wrote: post #19

Built a NAS last winter using the same case. Temps for HDDs used to be in mid-50s C with no fan and about 40 with the stock fan. The case-native backplane thingamajig does not provide any sort of pwm control if the fan is plugged in, so it's either full blast or nothing. I swapped the fan for a Thermalright TL-B12 and the HDDs are now happily chugging along at about 37 with the fan barely perceptible. Hddfancontrol r…

> any sort of pwm control if the fan is plugged in, so it's either full blast or nothing Got a new network switch that runs somewhat hot (TP-Link) and it's behaving the same way, built-in fan runs either not at all, or at 100% (and noisy at that). Installed OpenWRT on it briefly, before discovering 10Gbe NIC didn't work with OpenWRT, and it had much better fan control. Why is it so hard to just place a basic curve on…

I have an impression that both noise level and power consumption are not a priority for home network equipment manufactures. After moving to a new house and connecting to another ISP I've got an ISP modem-router which: 1. has a fan and while it's quiet it's not silent 2. consumes around 20 Wt, not much but working 24x7 it would cost around £45/year at current electricity rates.

I think it's technically possible to make a modem which will consume less power and use passive coiling but I don't think they (ISP and device manufacturer) care.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#118

Post by zfs-myths »

meindnoch wrote: post #81
dllu wrote: post #10

Very sad that HDDs, SSDs, and RAM are all increasing in price now, but I just made a 4 x 24 TB ZFS pool with Seagate Barracudas on sale at $10 / TB [1]. This seems like a pretty decent price even though the Barracudas are rated for 2400 hours per year [2] but this is the same spec that the refurbished Exos drives are rated for. By the way, interesting to see that OP has no qualms about buying cheap Chinese motherboar…

>I just made a 4 x 24 TB ZFS pool How much RAM did you install? Did you follow the 1GB per 1TB recommendation for ZFS? (i.e. 96GB of RAM)

Some myths never die, I guess..

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#119

Post by rr808 »

starky wrote: post #54

I think the worry about power consumption is a bit overblown in the article. My NAS has an i5-12600 + Quadro P4000 and uses maybe 50% more power than the one in this article under normal conditions. That works out to maybe $4/month more cost. Given the relatively small delta, I'd encourage picking hardware based on what services you want to run.

$4/mo is more than I expected. I always compare to cloud storage and $50/yr is significant.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#120

Post by aynyc »

zdragnar wrote: post #97
adastra22 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MB and other elements are more concerning than the drives.

For system failure, yes, but not if data retention and recovery is your primary concern. When building a device primarily used for storing personal things, I'd much prefer to save money on the motherboard and risk that failing than skimping on the drives themselves

You actually want reliable MB & RAM to ensure data doesn't get corrupted in memory first. Since you have various ways of writing data to disks that offer you resiliency.
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