DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

Post by meindnoch » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 10:52 AM UTC

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…

Post by aetherspawn » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 10:54 AM UTC

imiric wrote: post #62

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…

What makes you think that Synology hardware is special in that sense? Most quality hardware will easily last decades. I have servers in my homelab from 2012 that are still humming along just fine. Some might need a change of fans, but every other component is built to last.

Post by Glemkloksdjf » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 10:57 AM UTC

Helmut10001 wrote: post #73

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…

I wouldn't say that being new is an absolute requirement. I recently upgraded my ZFS pool from SATA to SAS HDDs. Since SAS HDDs have much better firmware for early error detection and monitoring, I decided to buy 50% refurbished. Even if I lost half of them, I would still be safe. I also have offsite backups. This setup worked really well for me, and I feel completely confident that my data is safe while not wasting…

Post by gorbachev » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 10:59 AM UTC

Post by gorbachev » Thu, Nov 27, 2025, 11:02 AM UTC

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…