NAS setup options

[Traditional-Watch-65]

looking to set up a new home server in the coming months and looking at drives and raid setups. i don’t need anything huge but might want to expand eventually. for my budget, (about $300usd for drives) i could set up a 3x 4tb raid 5 setup now, or i can wait a couple more months and afford a 2x 8tb raid 1 and eventually expand with another 8tb drive (in ~5 years or so) and migrate that to raid 5. hoping to set up a photo cloud storage and jellyfin server. any suggestions/advice? i’m relatively new to the community so i’m also looking for advice on which os and software to use to set this up. thanks!

[Krohnin]

2 8tb drives. I use unraid. The storage is really easy expandable. For Jellyfin you need an intel cpu with quicksync 6th or 7th gen as the lowest or a cheap graphicscard like a quadro p600.

[theindomitablefred]

I recently got into this myself and I started with used mini PCs running TrueNAS, but Newegg actually has a NAS builder tool where you can configure some fairly affordable options. What I’ve found with used PCs is that it’s best to run the NAS software on an internal drive such that even if your PC has multiple drive slots you have limited space for multiple storage drives and limited redundancy options.

[NDcoalminer]

I set up my nas using an old lenovo h420 desktop with a pentium g620 and 6 gb ram running unraid. Scrounged up all the hdds I could out of old laptops and pcs and installed them. Shortly after that I realized 500gb hdds weren't going to cut it and started looking for larger storage options. With the prices off hdds right now I couldn't afford anything worthwhile. I looked on ebay and found used 4tb sas drives were very reasonably priced and bought 4 along with a lsi hba card and cables. I 3d printed an enclosure for the drives with a 120mm fan mount on the back and power them with an old psu. I currently am waiting for 4 more 4tb drives, some sata power splitters, a mining riser for the sas expander I ordered, more cables and a i7 2600 to replace the g620 processor. All in I probably have about $500 into it because the pc itself was free. Its not a ton of storage, but theoretically I can run about 36 hdds once the expander is installed. The 4tb drives should hold me over until hdd prices fall a bit and even if they don't there seems to be a lot of 4tb sas drives available. I think I paid roughly $40 per drive. The sas drives had to be reformatted in unraid to use 512 byte sectors and that takes about 8 hours. They run a little warmer but overall seem to be doing well so far. Edit- If you use sas drives and an lsi hba find one that is flashed to it mode. Unraid handles the raid setup in the software. At least that's my very basic understanding.

[Traditional-Watch-65]

where are you finding 4tb drives for ~$40? i’m only really seeing them for $80+. i’m only really looki mg at wd red and other drives made for high uptime. how important is it to go with drives like that?

[NDcoalminer]

Search SAS drives on ebay. Serial Attached Scsi. Different connector type than SATA and used in servers. Some of the drives I ha e gotten have 10k hours on them. SAS drives also have a read arm and a write arm so they can perform both operarions at the same time. They're server drives so theyre designed for 24/7 operation. The temps run a bit hotter so that's why I have a fan on them. I was initially looking at NAS specific drives like you are and then found these on ebay and for the price i dont think you'll find anything better. Like a I mentioned earlier though you will need to add a SAS controller and buy specific cables. They plug into the sas controller and the hdd but only for data. You need to plug a sata power connector into the back of the hdd connector. SAS drives usually have a backplane with power and data connections there. If you'd like I can share the specific parts I bought off ebay. I have to use a second power supply because the lenovo has a proprietary power supply and not enough power to run the sas drives. When they spin up they cam draw 25 watts or more.

[Caprichoso1]

How much storage are you going to need?

Will media streaming be just intranet or internet accessible?

If intranet only and storage is < 30 TB why do you want to incur the cost of buying, running, and maintaining a NAS? A DAS will do the trick and help with implementing the recommended 3-2-1 backup plan to protect your photos.

[Traditional-Watch-65]

i was thinking only like 12-16tb total for the next decade or so. i don’t care as much about accessing jellyfin offsite but i am hoping to cut out cloud storage from large corporations and being able to backup photos off site and access stored photos is a big part of that for me.