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DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

blog.briancmoses.com

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Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#301

Post by archagon »

bhouston wrote: post #262

Nice design! I recently switched my TrueNAS setup from a bunch of HDDs to a 8 NVMes (with an HHD volume now as only long-term "offline" archiving.) No more trying to optimize the system to get 10G speeds, it just is crazy fast, no matter what type of tasks I do. I haven't yet switched from my massive case yet though - I am not sure there is DYI cases that can handle 8 NVMes yet, but it is the future.

It would appear that flash storage loses data when left unpowered for extended periods of time, however. Maybe not an issue if your NAS is powered 24/7, but it makes me nervous for archival storage.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#302

Post by exmadscientist »

rktdno wrote: post #268
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…

I have the Terramaster F8 SSD Plus with 8x4TB NVME SSDs as the drives. It's definitely not the most cost effective way to build a NAS vs spinning disks, but I wanted small and quiet, which this is. It would probably fit in a wall enclosure, so depending on budget/how badly you wanted it to fit/drive space required this would probably work as a solution.

I'm about to fill up 8TB and on a rather limited budget so that seems like a no go :(

I am starting to seriously consider taking a thin 2.5" or M.2 form factor machine and running SATA cables out to an external drive cage though....

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#303

Post by exmadscientist »

cyberax wrote: post #207
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.

I concluded that was not possible with this particular model last time I looked, though I should try again (sadly I didn't take notes). It may well have been that the required part was simply out of stock everywhere.

Or it might have been that the lovely, lovely human beings who installed this thing somehow screwed it up so that no extender would ever fit. They had a habit of doing that. Unfortunately, the best way to summarize the electrical in this new-construction house is that Mistakes Were Made™.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#304

Post by StillBored »

ECC! I don't care what BS people say about ZFS/Btrfs/whatever, if a bit flips on your router hopefully the checksum fails and nothing bad happens.

If you flip a bit in memory, on the way to the disk, then its corrupt at rest, and future reads will likely propagate the error.

Sure, who cares, a glitch here/there in your kids first birthday video. Better hope the glitch is there, rather than in say the bit of code computing the sector offsets/whatever.

Stories like this hit the media every couple years, so if it can happen on the big fancy EMC/whatever then it can happen on your little NAS in the closet.

So, just pay the little extra for the CPU+MB+RAM that protects your data from the NIC all the way to the HD.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#305

Post by bhouston »

archagon wrote: post #301
bhouston wrote: post #262

Nice design! I recently switched my TrueNAS setup from a bunch of HDDs to a 8 NVMes (with an HHD volume now as only long-term "offline" archiving.) No more trying to optimize the system to get 10G speeds, it just is crazy fast, no matter what type of tasks I do. I haven't yet switched from my massive case yet though - I am not sure there is DYI cases that can handle 8 NVMes yet, but it is the future.

It would appear that flash storage loses data when left unpowered for extended periods of time, however. Maybe not an issue if your NAS is powered 24/7, but it makes me nervous for archival storage.

NAS should be powered on all the time.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#306

Post by archagon »

bhouston wrote: post #305
archagon wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would appear that flash storage loses data when left unpowered for extended periods of time, however. Maybe not an issue if your NAS is powered 24/7, but it makes me nervous for archival storage.

NAS should be powered on all the time.

Personally, that's not how I use my NAS. It lives on my LAN and its only purpose is to provide bulk ZFS storage for my work machines while keeping the noise in a separate room. When I'm not using it, it's off.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#307

Post by dbalatero »

no_time wrote: post #35
dbalatero wrote: post #15

I researched a bunch of cases recently and the Jonsbo, while it looked good, came up as having a ton of issues with airflow to cool the drives. Because of this, I ended up buying the Fractal Node 804 case, which seemed to have a better overall quality level and didn't require digging around AliExpress for a vendor.

lol same. All my parts arrived except the 804. The supply chain for these cases appears to be imploding where I live (Hungary). The day after I ordered it either went out of stock or went up by +50% in all webshops that are reputable here. I’m still a bit torn on whether I made the good call of getting 804 or the 304 wouldve been a enough for a significantly smaller footprint and -2 bays. Hard to tell without seeing…

Ah I haven't built yet, I am still waiting on some parts to arrive.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#308

Post by tbyehl »

aetherspawn wrote: post #41

Obligatory comment every time one of these threads comes up that Synology, sure, the hardware is a bit dated but… as far as set and forget goes: I’ve run multiple Synology NAS at home, business, etc. and you can literally forget that it’s not someone else’s cloud. It auto updates on Sundays, always comes online again, and you can go for years (in one case, nearly a decade) without even logging into the admin and it j…

I started a new job a couple months ago and a week hasn't gone by where I haven't said "For less than we're paying annually for [some software / SaaS], we could buy three Synologys sized to do that thing, at least as good if not significantly better, with a high-availability cluster on-prem plus a remote replica, with no more administration overhead than we have now."

And invariably the conversation turns to hardware specs. SMDH.

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#309

Post by sundar28 »

zeroq wrote: post #258

I wanted to join the NAS club for so long but it was always either bang for buck for prebuilts ($1k for 4 bays, with 4Gb RAM and the CPU is slower than my previous phone?!) or lack of availability for 4+ SATA boards. Last year I had aha moment when I learned about SAS boards. My final build was: - Jonsbo N3 case - ITX PSU - ASRock B550M/ITX - Ryzen 5500GT - LSI 9207-8i - 16GB DDR4 Result - for ~$1k I have 8 bay NAS t…

Great point. What drives did you end up getting.. and any issues w/ fans on the N3? (I'm considering something similar given the LSI 9300 with IT :)

Re: DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

#310

Post by mtlynch »

machomaster wrote: post #295
mtlynch wrote: post #95

I appreciate Brian's posts and they've helped me learn to build my own NAS systems, but there's a scammy angle to his articles. All of the merchant links are affiliate links, which he (illegally) does not disclose.[0] He's effectively acting as a sales rep for these brands, but he's presenting himself as an unbiased consumer. The affiliate relationship incentivizes Brian to recommend more expensive equipment and push…

> which he (illegally) does not disclose.[0] "The Guides are intended to give insight into what the FTC thinks about various marketing activities involving endorsements and how Section 5 might apply to those activities. The Guides themselves don’t have the force of law ."

That's useful context, thanks!

Though I think the sentence immediately after the one you quoted is also relevant:

> However, practices inconsistent with the Guides may result in law enforcement actions alleging Section 5 violations.

My understanding is that there's no law that says, "You have to disclose if you're an affiliate earning commissions on a recommendation," but the FTC is saying that they interpret Section 5 of the FTC act to imply that, and they may prosecute people under that interpretation, which they have done.[0, 1]

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/160523lordt...

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/1...

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