What do you have, what do you recommend, and why?

Asking as I’ve got a lot of spare components lying around that I’m planning on turning into a NAS. If it doesn’t work out I’ll buy a pre-built enclosure and reuse the drives.

  • frymanEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    Understand that this is a rabbit hole where you’ll hear a million opinions. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend keeping it simple. It’s been a while since I looked at what’s new, but I’d look at truenas scale or unraid first.

    I personally use truenas core (based on freebsd) but truenas scale (based on debian) opens up more options like docker that might be useful in the future.

    I recommend sticking to hardware you already own until you run into something that you can’t do. Then you’ll have a better idea of what to look for and how everything works.

    • PiatroOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Thanks, the flexibility and closed source (I assume) of turn key solutions puts me off them. I’ve already got a raspberry pi running a few containers and I work with docker and Linux in my day job so I know a decent amount. The form factor of the turnkey solutions is the big draw for me at the moment to them as I’ve just got a spare ATX mid size tower handy. Would ideally replace with smaller case but then I’d need a smaller motherboard and that’s just raising costs for starting out. Potential upgrade path anyway.

      • frymanEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        I have a node 304 case with an itx board and I wish I’d have gone with something bigger with more expansion slots. Some sata ports died on me so I installed an hba card to give me more. That means I can’t add a 10g nic or a video card for hardware acceleration or…you get the idea. Ideally spend less money now and experiment, then in the future you’ll hopefully learn what suits your needs.