The Cheapest NAS • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#191

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:46 AM UTC

maxgashkov wrote: post #171

dudus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synology sure provides an expensive but complete package for home office and enthusiasts. Just buy it and be done with it. It's certainly more expensive than DIY it yourself using off the shelf components and things bought out of online classifieds. But for most people that have no interest in tinkering or don't know what to do, just paying the price of a complete solution might be worth it.

I had a (dis)pleasure of running multiple Synology units in a business setting. They do die out on you like everything else if not more frequent, the QC is generally non-existent.

Synology's biggest reliability issue was when they used the Intel Atom C2000 CPUs. Designs with those CPUs have a 100% failure rate on the longer term (not just Synology, everything with it, Cisco was hit hard too). There's a workaround by soldering on some resistors to pull up some marginal line that will fix dead units.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#192

Post by sandreas » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:46 AM UTC

I would question all these Raspberry PI-ish NAS attempts, especially when it includes some power adapters and milling out cases. It all feels so fiddly and sluggish while still being "not that cheap". Storing my important personal data on an USB-drive somewhat feels risky. It probably wouldn't burn a house down, but still...

The real benefit is the small form factor and the "low" power consumption. Paying 43 bucks for the whole thing - now asking myself if it is worth saving a few bucks and living with 100Mbit network speed, instead of spending 150 bucks and having 2.5Gig.

There are so many (also "used") alternatives out there:

- Fujitsu Futro S920 (used - FriendlyElec NanoPI R6C (https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...)

- FriendlyElec Nas Kit (https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...)

- Dell T20 / T30 (used - Fujitsu Celsius W570 (used My personal NAS / Homeserver:

  Fujitsu D3417-B
  Intel Xeon 1225v5
  64GB ECC RAM
  WD SN850x 2TB NVMe
  Pico PSU 120

More expensive, but reliable, powerful and drawing <10W Idle.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#193

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:53 AM UTC

russdill wrote: post #115

test6554 wrote: post #85

Everyone is an expert at storage as long as everything is working great. It's when stuff fails that you feel like an idiot and wished you had one extra hdd in your RAID array or a secondary NAS you were backing up to or one extra site you offloaded your data to. I don't do cheap any more. But I can see the appeal.

Kids today have no idea just how often drives failed back in the day.

My first 5mb winchester failed every day. So the day began with reformatting it and restoring from last night's floppy disks backup.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#194

Post by jauntywundrkind » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 5:09 AM UTC

gosub100 wrote: post #164

justin_murray wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? What’s the economic way to do this?

they make external HDD chassis that connect via USB. I don't have any experience with them so I can't comment on their reliability, but search for "ORICO 5 Bay USB to SATA Hard Drive Enclosure".

Highpoint has some decent-ish toaster-style drive docks. I have an a couple of the older model with dual drives dual usb-a ports - 5422A - but the Highpoint RocketStor 3112D seems available for $70 with a single 10Gbit usb-c port and dual drives.

There is one deeply troubling flaw to them though, they don't turn back on of the power goes out, until you physically hit the button again. I think this is alas all to common for many of these enclosures!

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#195

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 5:29 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #132

k8sToGo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea to put your backup on the same machine! /s

Or just put drives in all your computers and back-up between instead of buying a limited (potentially proprietary) NAS computer just for the purpose and having it being one central point of failure. I just don't understand the reluctance of people to put storage in their actual computer(s).

HN readers' computers are typically macbooks with extremely expensive and non-upgradable drives.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#196

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 5:43 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #79

The entire concept of network attached storage is kind of cargo-cult in the vast majority of personal use cases. Just put the drives in your computer. Fewer abstraction layers, fewer problems, cheaper, faster, less fragile, easier to debug and fix if problems do happen. It's just not as hip or cool sounding as "NAS".

The majority of users have laptops, not desktops.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#197

Post by k8sToGo » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 5:52 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #132

k8sToGo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea to put your backup on the same machine! /s

Or just put drives in all your computers and back-up between instead of buying a limited (potentially proprietary) NAS computer just for the purpose and having it being one central point of failure. I just don't understand the reluctance of people to put storage in their actual computer(s).

Because one of the reasons I got my NAS so I don't need to tinker.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#198

Post by Simon_ORourke » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 5:54 AM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

Depending on the make and model - I've got a Synology NAS box and can't recommend them enough.

RAID support, NFS/SFTP/Samba support, a nice Web UI to set up access and configure sharing, and even the ability to enable sharing outside your own NAT.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#199

Post by oynqr » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 5:59 AM UTC

mech422 wrote: post #137

iforgotpassword wrote: post #27

My secret protip: old Fujitsu desktop/nuc PCs. At least in Germany (Europe?) they are cheap on ebay since a lot of businesses use them and upgrade on a regular schedule. If you care about power consumption like I do, you can Google "$model energy consumption white paper" which contains very accurate data about idle usage, for example https://sp.ts.fujitsu.com/dmsp/Publications/public/wp-energy... In one case I had a…

ODroid H-series SBC's are standard Intel CPUs with (at least for the H2+) Linux supported hardware for pretty much everything (haven't tried running X on them though :-P ) they are my favorite 'home server' currently...cheap, standard, and expandable - oh! And SILENT! :-)

They also have this magic feature where they can use ECC with non-ECC RAM, at the cost of some capacity.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#200

Post by themoonisachees » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 6:22 AM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #27

My secret protip: old Fujitsu desktop/nuc PCs. At least in Germany (Europe?) they are cheap on ebay since a lot of businesses use them and upgrade on a regular schedule. If you care about power consumption like I do, you can Google "$model energy consumption white paper" which contains very accurate data about idle usage, for example https://sp.ts.fujitsu.com/dmsp/Publications/public/wp-energy... In one case I had a…

These boxes are also great for running a k8s cluster if you want to experiment.