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DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

blog.briancmoses.com

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Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#201

Post by cm2187 »

pmontra wrote: post #80
cm2187 wrote: post #71

HDD have to be bought new, as well as anything mechanical (eg fans). But for motherboards, CPU, RAM and SSD, there is great value in buying used enterprise hardware on ebay. It is generally durable hardware that spent a quiet life in a temperature controlled datacentre, server motherboards from 5 years ago are absolute aircraft carriers in term of PCIe lanes and functionalities. Used enterprise SSDs are probably more…

Maybe 75 W without disk is not terrible but it's not good. My unoptimized ARM servers idle at about 3 or 4 W and add another 1 or 10 W when their SSDs or HDDs are switched on. 75 W probably need active cooling. 4 W do not. Anyway you can probably do many more things with that 75 W server.

A raspberry pi will go even lower. But as you say, not really comparable in term of functionality. I am comparing this to high end consumer NAS, which will idle at 30-40w minimum.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#202

Post by Rebelgecko »

ls612 wrote: post #169
Glemkloksdjf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

260 Euros in Germany. And this heat also has to be moved out

Well that’s on you for living in the failed state of Germany, where power is 3-4x as expensive as it is in sensible countries like the US.

It's frustrating when a comment is both needlessly belligerent flamebait AND wrong about electricity prices in the US. I guess that's what makes effective flamebait

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#203

Post by embedding-shape »

Gud wrote: post #197

My advice, skip the TrueNAS and go straight to FreeBSD. It's a simple operating system to maintain and it requires minimal setup to use as a NAS.

As someone who tried TrueNAS at first, but prefers declarative reproducible configuration, do give NixOS a try. Best NAS base-OS I've tried so far, and when it was time to migrate to new hardware, I just switched the disks, re-ran the config and was up and running in no-time.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#204

Post by Gud »

embedding-shape wrote: post #203
Gud wrote: post #197

My advice, skip the TrueNAS and go straight to FreeBSD. It's a simple operating system to maintain and it requires minimal setup to use as a NAS.

As someone who tried TrueNAS at first, but prefers declarative reproducible configuration, do give NixOS a try. Best NAS base-OS I've tried so far, and when it was time to migrate to new hardware, I just switched the disks, re-ran the config and was up and running in no-time.

Ok, sounds complicated compared to a basic FreeBSD install.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#205

Post by ls612 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #202
ls612 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that’s on you for living in the failed state of Germany, where power is 3-4x as expensive as it is in sensible countries like the US.

It's frustrating when a comment is both needlessly belligerent flamebait AND wrong about electricity prices in the US. I guess that's what makes effective flamebait

German electricity prices are around €0.38/kwh based on my quick googling which is roughly $0.44/kwh. I pay $0.12-0.13/kwh in the US so I’m at least right factually up to rounding.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#206

Post by briancmoses »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #185
briancmoses wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody else shared this, but I'm the blog's author. I think you're asking good questions, but they're not from the point-of-view of the people who actually benefit from these blogs. I've answered the "You build one every year?" question quite a few times over the years. These blogs have a shelf life. After about a year, newer hardware is available that's a better a better value. And after 2-3 years, it starts to ge…

> One guy on the Internet is--and always will be--an anecdote That's true of course. The problem, in my view, is that this is how everyone on the internet acts especially the "reviewers" or "builders" or "DIYers". It's not just you, so don't take this as a personal attack. Almost all articles and videos about tech (and other things now too) do the equivalent of "unboxing review". When it's not strictly an unboxing, i…

You're entirely right about this kind of content and the people who create it festers cynicism. But in the end, I am powerless to do anything to counter said cynics. Unfortunately anything that I write otherwise will just invoke more cynicism and I'm sure in the eyes of the cynics, it's justified.

These DIY NAS build blogs have a bit of formula: Here's my criteria, here are the parts that I chose to meet that criteria, and here's what I think after I've built and tested it to the best of my ability.

If I had my choice, my blog would inspire people to understand their own criteria and give them the confidence to go build something unique that meets that same criteria. This absolutely happens, but it's the exception rather than the rule. The rule is that people choose to replicate these DIY NAS builds part-for-part.

I'm as confident in this DIY NAS as I've been for the ones I created in the past. The times there were issues with these builds (eg: the defective C255X/C275X CPUs from Intel), I've updated those blogs with all the details I can muster about those issues.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#207

Post by cyberax »

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…

Check if your enclosure has an extension bracket, like this one: https://www.legrand.us/audio-visual/structured-wiring-enclos...

It adds enough depth to fit plenty of regular-sized components.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#208

Post by femiagbabiaka »

Havoc wrote: post #195

I was looking at N class CPU builds and very quickly realized they're not for me. For storage only over LAN, low power prioritized use they're a valid play, but there are some tradeoffs that are not obvious at first glance. See those NVMEs he stuck in there? They're running at 1/8th their rated link speed. Yeah...12.5%. (PCIe 4.0 x4 vs PCIe 3.0 x1). This board is one of the better ones on pcie layouts [0], but 9 gen3…

Hmm good point. But to make sure I understand you completely, this only really matters for compute-heavy workloads, right?

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#209

Post by Strom »

hamdingers wrote: post #190
cube00 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the commission from the undisclosed Amazon affiliate links in the post. They're tagged for the post and year so must be worth it to go to that trouble rather then using generic tag for the whole blog. tag=diyans2024-20, tag=diynas2025-20,tag=diynas2026-20

I don't understand why this is a problem for some people. It doesn't increase the price or impact your buyer experience in any way, so why do you care? If this blog post introduced you to a product you wanted to buy, why should you have a problem with the author getting a finders fee from the seller ? Just seems mean-spirited.

It impacts the buyer experience.

These two statements have a very different impact:

1. I love product X and I won't get paid if you buy it too.

2. I love product X and I will get paid if you buy it too.

Money motivates people to claim they love a product or that a product is good, even if not true. It's a problem that has plagued the internet for decades.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#210

Post by quasigod »

Gud wrote: post #204
embedding-shape wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who tried TrueNAS at first, but prefers declarative reproducible configuration, do give NixOS a try. Best NAS base-OS I've tried so far, and when it was time to migrate to new hardware, I just switched the disks, re-ran the config and was up and running in no-time.

Ok, sounds complicated compared to a basic FreeBSD install.

I dont think its much more or less complicated, just depends on which one you're more familiar with.
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