Jeez just buy a real computer. Optiplexes are dirt cheap
The Cheapest NAS
291–300 of 308 posts
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#292The cheapest NAS is usually just taking some old desktop PC and repurposing it headless. :-)
Assuming power is free. Even small wattage differences add up quickly for a server running 24/7 and those older CPUs can be very inefficient.
The cost of your sanity also adds up quickly :)
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Answering your questions in order: - On mine I use NFS and SMB which covers most possible clients. - I use an ssh bastion that I expose via Tailscale to connect to mine remotely. So a VPN but it's wireguard based so it's not too intrusive. I have a gig up, though, YMMV. - My NAS has 28TB of space. I'm still working on backup strategy. So far it just has my Dropbox and some ephemera I don't care about losing on it. -…
Even a router can do that these days, GLiNet routers have USB ports and SSH, you can setup such basic stuff Most mid range routers allow SSH, and have decent CPU
glinet routers are amazing, but their file sharing lacks authentication sadly (well, mine does, at least). So anyone getting access to you network also gets access to your files.
It's mostly fine, until one of you devices gets compromised. Then it's not fine at all anymore.
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Home Assistant + plugins/extensions ~might be the easiest. Unsure about the VPN part. If you want to tinker and do some sysadmin work, then go install Proxmox and have separate containers for each as you wish.
Tailscale VPN addon for HomeAssistant is relatively simple to set up. You can use it to access your home network remotely ("site to site networking") or to proxy your network traffic through your home network when you're away ("exit node")
Yeah Tailscale is great. I assumed VPN as in tunneling the whole network external traffic through the machine. I haven't searched for something like that. Might even need a full blown router service/VM.
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it is. PC explodes -> download the cloud copy. Not to be relied on by itself, but it absolutely qualifies as a backup.
Backup solutions usually need to cover more scenarios than "PC explodes". In fact solutions for that are usually called "disaster recovery" instead. A real backup solution ought to cover the case where you deleted the wrong file, and you find out the next day. Or it got corrupted somehow (PCs and disks can explode slowly) and you find out the next time you open it, a week later. If the cloud service happily replicate…
Sure, there are different acceptable levels of restoration and backup but a 'backup' by definition is just a spare copy of data made in case the original is lost or damaged. I was only pointing out that a cloud copy is a backup, albeit a fairly weak one and as you say not useful by itself in every eventuality. It's just absolutist to deride cloud storage as "not a backup" as it can absolutely save data that would otherwise be lost.
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate? What’s the economic way to do this?
Used PCIe HBA cards pulled from retired servers can be found on eBay for ~$50. They have external facing ports and/or internal facing ports. External is the way to go if you're using a small form factor PC like a business class Lenovo. These are almost all low profile cards, so they will fit in any SFF PC with a PCIe slot. There are special cables which will connect one port on the card to four SATA- or SAS-based dis…
A NUC won't have PCIe expansion slots. You are pretty much stuck with the external ports that come with it.
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#297Earlier 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.
Totally. If you enjoy the config and have the time, by all means. If you just want it to work, by a Synology. Mine has been running strong for several years now and has docker images for my unify controller, pi hole and Plex. Took minimal time to setup and none since that day. Love it Edit: And my encrypted cloud backup in Backblaze B2 was equally as easy to setup and costs a whopping $2 a month for every family pic,…
My Synology DS918+ ran for years without an issue.
Then suddenly I woke up and I had the blinking blue light of death, it starts but won't boot. It could be anything from the BIOS battery going dead to parts not being soldered properly.
The only way I could get data off their proprietary SHR system (which is great, except when the HW breaks) would've been to buy a new Synology system, put the drives there and pray it works out of the box.
At that point I decided to move out of a NAS appliance and build one myself, based on Unraid. Now I've got the same 1 drive redundancy BUT every file exists on exactly one drive, that drive has a bog-standard XFS filesystem. So if the HW breaks I can just take the drive(s) out and use them in a cheap USB dock.
The Synology's issue turned out to be a bad PSU - the light turned on but for some reason it didn't provide enough power for the system to POST. I grabbed a 3rd party one off Amazon and now it's running offsite backups for the Unraid system :)
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#298Is there any NAS software that just lets you add disks whenever you want, while using them for redundancy if they aren't full? I wish something was as easy as adding another disk and having the redundancy go up, then removing a disk and having the redundancy go down.
https://www.greyhole.net/
(Not great for many tiny files or file contents changing a lot.)
Re: The Cheapest NAS
#299Its very hard to beat Dell Wyse 3030 LT with USB attached disks. - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2023/04/10/silent-fanless-del... I use that and the costs are about $20-25 for a used Dell Wyse 3030 and $60 for used 5TB 2.5 HDD from Seagate in USB 3.0 case. Then the power bills will also be tiny as it draw about 3.8W when idle and 10.3 W with CPU and disks stressed to maximum. The only limitation is 'only' 2GB RAM -…
Note: S.M.A.R.T. status info can't be read from USB attached drives. You have no idea if they're throwing errors indicating imminent doom.
On FreeBSD getting S.M.A.R.T. status over USB drive works without any problem:
# smartctl -a /dev/da0
smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE-p1 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Elements / My Passport (USB, AF)
Device Model: WDC WD50NDZW-11A8JS1
Serial Number: WD-WXP2EA07UYLA
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2be7aef41
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity: 5,000,947,523,584 bytes [5.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm
Form Factor: 2.5 inches
TRIM Command: Available, deterministic
Device is: In smartctl database 7.3/5528
ATA Version is: ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Sat May 11 10:26:04 2024 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 4680) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x1b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 560) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x30b5) SCT Status supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 253 253 021 Pre-fail Always - 3508
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 4626
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 083 083 000 Old_age Always - 12789
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 139
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 58
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 192 192 000 Old_age Always - 24665
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 086 083 000 Old_age Always - 66
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged. [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]
Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported
The above only provides legacy SMART information - try 'smartctl -x' for moreRe: The Cheapest NAS
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note: S.M.A.R.T. status info can't be read from USB attached drives. You have no idea if they're throwing errors indicating imminent doom.
On FreeBSD getting S.M.A.R.T. status over USB drive works without any problem: # smartctl -a /dev/da0 smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE-p1 amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Western Digital Elements / My Passport (USB, AF) Device Model: WDC WD50NDZW-11A8JS1 Serial Number: WD-WXP2EA07UYLA…
That's interesting, it appears I may have been slightly mistaken.
As per https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/USB:
> To access SMART functionality, smartmontools must be able to send native ATA or NVMe commands directly to the drive. For USB devices, at least the following conditions must be met:
> The USB bridge provides an ATA or NVMe pass-through command.
> This command is supported by smartmontools.
> The operating system provides a SCSI pass-through I/O-control which works through its USB-layer.
> SCSI support is implemented in the operating system interface of smartmontools.
So in some cases, it may work depending on the USB chipset capabilities. I haven't gotten it to work on my old supermicro.. yet :) Cheers.