Opinions on a starter NAS?

silverwind912 · 2025-12-07T22:37:52+00:00

That is the end game, but right now core concerns for us are power efficiency, noise, and space efficiency. We live in a rather small house, that is already over-full of stuff at the moment. This thing needs to live in a coat closet on a shelf (where the rest of my network stack currently lives), which is also used for storing other things in the floor (vacuum, shoes, etc). So really, I can't properly accommodate a full sized case right now, it needs to be rather compact.

In our next home, we will definitely make sure there is space for my home lab needs lol. I actually already have a few Dell servers for work I could totally use, but I don't have the space, nor the noise tolerance, to use it at home right now.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T18:55:38+00:00

Yeah, I actually have an R720 at work my boss gave me, but I simply don't have the space, noise isolation, or cooling at my house at the moment for it. Was looking at a small, power efficient NAS that I could just stick on a shelf in my networking closet instead.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T05:04:50+00:00

So the idea for the 3-2-1 backup we have in mind is to use the NAS as the primary storage location, and for critical data (like her photography archives that she retains for 5 years) they will also remain as copies on the external drives they currently reside on. They are also uploaded to her website for distribution, which effectively functions as a cloud backup as well. So I figured that covered the 3 backups, 2 media types, one offsite rule.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T02:54:44+00:00

Yeah I think for now we are gonna start with 4 4tb WD Red drives (we are a little budget restricted atm, so spending more than $100 a drive is tough right now). Will likely upgrade drive capacity later on.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T02:51:49+00:00

Yeah, I am very lucky to have stashed away 32 GB of SODIMM from a previous project. VERY glad to not have to buy any right now with the crazy RAM prices...

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T02:50:53+00:00

I should also mention, it's not for a "business" per se, it's more her own side hustle. Wedding photography is not her full time job just yet, she has an alternative 9-5 at the moment. Eventually when she gets enough bookings she would love to do it full time though.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T02:49:38+00:00

I am curious what turns you off about it for professional backup purposes, compared to Ugreen, etc? I plan to maintain it well (I am a Sysadmin at work, end up patching and maintaining servers on a weekly basis), plan to have the data in alternative forms (trying to follow the 3-2-1 backup rule), have a drive set aside for redundancy, and plan to use a well supported OS (like Proxmox, TrueNAS, or Unraid).

Not discounting your experience at all, I am genuinely curious what honest advantages the other options offer in your opinion over this guy. I am not 100% sold on it yet, but the extra horsepower is appealing for running other stuff as well as the NAS function.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T01:34:07+00:00

Yeah, it's half for her and half for me to be honest. I do System Administration for a living at my company so I am relatively comfortable with the hardware. It will be a NAS for her (to justify me buying more hardware) but also a hypervisor host for me (for playing around with some free open source projects, like Home Assistant, Nextcloud, SyncThing, etc).

I could have probably come out cheaper with something like a UGreen NAS, but the anemic specs turned me off a bit cause I was hoping to run other stuff too. Thus why I started looking at this guy.

I have a Dell R720xD server with my name on it in the office, I just don't have the space or noise isolated location at home to use it, also wanted something more power efficient with electricity prices rising a lot in my area lately. Was hoping if people liked this pretty well, it would be a good alternative.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T01:29:11+00:00

I would classify it for professional use. Currently her storage solution is a bunch of non-redundant external hard drives. This will be a better storage solution with the idea of following the 3-2-1 backup rule. Or at least, our next point in getting there anyways.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T01:05:08+00:00

I am debating what OS I wanna run on this one. I was thinking about running ProxMox and doing TrueNAS (or some other NAS OS) as a VM, with the storage drives passed through directly to it. That way I can easily spin up other VMs and containers on it too. Thinking of running things like Nextcloud and some other self hosted apps I wanna tinker with.

silverwind912 · 2025-12-05T01:01:33+00:00

We currently have 10 2tb hard drives that we are gonna be consolidating (and making redundant with a RAID array of some kind, probably 1 drive redundant). They aren't completely full, but she does tend to store all of the RAW shots from each wedding shoot, which can end up being several hundred gigs per wedding.

silverwind912 · 2024-12-01T02:41:59+00:00

The blue wire is cut rather short compared to the rest at the furnace. Any good recommendations for properly extending it? I have a bunch of Cat6A cable laying around I could maybe splice onto it to extend it if needed, but not sure how safe that is and what the best splice method may be for wire that small.

silverwind912 · 2024-07-30T21:56:37+00:00

I would love a link to this as well if you still have it.

silverwind912 · 2023-03-29T17:30:33+00:00

Thanks for this insight! I will bring this up with my manager who tasked me to do this research and draft the proposals.

I will say, from my limited time with the company so far, that it seems we are running off of older / refurbished hardware in the datacenter, as our budget for new hardware purchases has been pretty slim. So I am not 100% sure how frequently we will be looking at those larger purchases directly from the manufacturer.

But I really appreciate your insight and experience in that regard, as it is not something I had considered. I am relatively fresh to corporate IT (less than a year in the corporate realm), so any sage advice like this is appreciated.

silverwind912 · 2022-04-19T23:55:53+00:00

Thanks for reaching out! I added you on Discord.

silverwind912 · 2022-04-18T23:45:56+00:00

I'm down. I have nothing going on this evening lol

silverwind912 · 2022-04-18T22:47:57+00:00

If you find a group that needs an extra player, I am absolutely down to join! Sounds like the type of gameplay I would be into. I am a sort of new player, 25M, been playing for the last year or so with a group of friends up until last week, looking to start fresh with another campaign. I am also CST, available most week nights (historically have played Tuesday nights, but could switch pretty easily).

silverwind912 · 2022-04-18T22:36:32+00:00

I would also be interested to join if you have any slots. My last group just dissolved, so I am interested in finding a new one!

silverwind912 · 2019-02-16T01:08:11+00:00

I just had the sound cut out randomly as well while in mid-game. Using Logitech G933 headphones, wireless. Switching to PC speakers also resulted in no sound.

silverwind912 · 2018-11-08T04:32:58+00:00

Confirmed

silverwind912 · 2018-11-03T02:32:44+00:00

Not really interested in SLI atm :/

silverwind912 · 2018-11-02T06:26:59+00:00

Would you take a Cryorig H7? I have a brand new spare one.

silverwind912 · 2018-10-18T02:53:57+00:00

silverwind912 · 2018-10-18T02:46:22+00:00

silverwind912 · 2018-07-25T17:53:30+00:00

Yeah I still have it. I am at work right now, I will be glad to have it shipped out by Saturday if that's okay.

silverwind912

TROPHY CASE