Converting to NAS

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I know that NAS is a pretty awesome solution for storage, well I was wondering, would there be any issue in removing drives from my existing computer and placing them into a NAS enclosure, I'll be doing this at some point, regardless, simply due to the fact that I'll be upgrading my setup within the next couple of months, I plan on going to a mini ITX build. I'll even make a PC Part Picker list if any of you are interested?

Either way, I plan to upgrade just about everything other than my storage and graphics card, I'll also be keeping my peripherals for some time, as they're fine for now, however I should consider upgrading my keyboard more than anything out of my peripherals, simply because it's a bit funny every once in a while, some keys don't work on the first press, etc.

But to get back to the point, when I upgrade my system, I'll be placing my 3.5" HDD's into a NAS enclosure, and then my system will probably run off of 2 x SSD's, maybe 2 x 500GB SSD's, simply because I don't need a TONNE of storage in my system, I could even consider a M.2, but maybe that will be an upgrade for another date. I simply wanted to know, that if you place drives into a NAS enclosure, do they automatically get assigned different drive letters? Or do they no longer keep partitions, etc? - I'm not 100% sure on how NAS works down the the detail, I mean I know enough to know that it'll be good enough to store a lot of data and maybe run some less demanding games, etc.

Also, would you guys say it's a good idea to install compilers on my NAS solution or not? - I'd also like to mention, I don't think I'll need to get WD Red drives as I won't be leaving my NAS on 24/7, I'll only be turning it on when I wan to make use o my PC, even then, if I'm doing some basic stuff, then I guess I won't need my NAS at all, so sometimes I won't be using my NAS solution at all.

My final question, can you hook your NAS solution directly to your PC, i.e. via Ethernet or USB 3.0? - If so then that's great, I plan on trying to get some pretty good performance out of my NAS enclosure, if not then I don't mind using a wireless solution, but I'd assume that you can connect it directly to the PC? If so, I may also want to consider investing into a really small networking switch, just so I have enough ports available, as I currently connect my PC to my router by using a wired connection.

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NAS as the name implies is Network Attached Storage so you don't hook it up to your computer but rather to your router and connect to it via your Network. If all you were looking to do is use your hard drive as a backup solution then it might be easier to get an external hard drive caddie and plug it in via usb when you need to back up. NAS for the most part are backup solutions that you leave always on for one so you can access the data at any time and 2 some raid solutions don't do well if not shut down properly and can take hours to rebuild.

I don't believe drive letters are assigned to hard drive in a NAS rather there set up in different raid arrays. Raid 0 for striping, Raid 1 for mirroring, Raid 5 for mirroring different sections over multiple disk and Raid 10 for striping and Mirroring. There are meany more but those are the basics and if you just have 2 disks that are the same size you will usually use raid 1 for the best redundancy. But if you have multiple disks that are different sizes you might want to check out a Raid solution called JBOD(Just a Bunch of Disks).

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Oh no, I have multiple computers in the house, including my relatives devices, I just thought it may be easier to manage everyone's storage in one area, that's another reason why I've gone for the NAS solution, I wouldn't bother getting NAS if I were going the be the only one to make use of it. Seems a little bit overkill for a single user. I should've said this in the first place, I do apologies, I've also decided to use external storage as the mini ITX case that I'm looking at only supports 2x 2.5" HDD's/SSD's. I also plan on making a fair chunk of the space for myself, then have programs stored on the NAS so that everyone can access them whenever they like.

I also know that there are tonnes of different raid solutions, and each have their bonus points and drawbacks. I'm more of the kinda guy who'd go for Raid 1 probably, but for now, I'm just trying to figure out what's the best solution(s) to external storage so that multiple machines can access 'z' storage.

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I'm biased here- at work I've been dealing more and more with enterprise storage, so that said- DIY a NAS, its good learning, and just cool haha.

Something so appealing about having plenty of storage, redundancy and options like Plex, Kodi, Owncloud, backups, protect against bit rot (lost some old files, I'm assuming due to bit rot -became corrupted).

I got a 5 bay 3.5" enclosure that slides into the 3 blanks often found in a lot of towers, and played with Rockstor, then ZFS on Ubuntu server 16.04, and now using FreeNAS 10 Beta > FreeNAS's UI is very nice, but if you want to build a good resume, do everything via CLI, be it FreeNAS (freeBSD) or Ubuntu. *should be noted my NAS setup has ECC RAM.

A NAS is a great way to give access to a lot of people on your home network (or beyond) and to also setup access controls. Just do it!!

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It depends on the OS you intend to use on your NAS.

If you have a bunch of different drives of different capacities and manufacturers, a good solution might be LimeTech's Unraid. Unlike a normal raid solution, it will accept varying drive types easily and your array can be expanded later with fewer headaches.

Unraid also supports virtual machines and GPU passthrough so you can set up a game system in a windows environment on top if you want to. You can also add Dockers and other VM OSes such as your favorite Linux distribution for development work and many other services if you like.

I have one running with a Game VM, Plex media server, owncloud, and various games servers.

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Funny enough, I saw a video based around that today, just showing you the basics, etc.

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I almost went unRaid, but am so used to free software I couldn't find myself paying for a license even though it isn't much money at all. That said it was super appealing, very neat package they came up with. I think for most personal use cases its more than plenty- I ended up (and use for current and future choices) going with some advice from a co-worker-- to use whatever solution is likely found in the enterprise (if your trying to build up/maintain an IT resume), so I try to stick to things like ESXi, Windows Server, CentOS (in place of RHEL), ZFS etc.

Another option is BTRFS / Rockstor as far as having more HDD flexibility than ZFS, but I got burned and learned the hard way what so many were saying, BTRFS is not ready for prime time, and lost 3 TB of data- thankfully it was all backed up.

Due to that, I decided to go to a good ole' staple, ZFS. Ultimately whey I say DIY a NAS is keeping in mind the forum in which this was asked-- I automatically throw out what is most practical or easiest, and something more inline with making one google and read A LOT of info- we are here in this forum because we watch videos of Wendell spinning up servers, websites etc right? haha. Its one thing being told an external drive is better for x and y use cases, and JBOD for a bunch of random disks, RAID 0, 1, 5 etc for a, b, c reasons, RAID Z, Z2 etc for x, y, z reasons, and its a whole nother thing to be able to come up with the decision and reasons yourself because you went to town on the homework. I didn't even know the difference between hardware RAID, software RAID etc until watching Wendell's stuff, then eventually got to the point of knowing how to flash the MBs on board LSI RAID chip to IT mode, pass-through in ESXi and successfully use software RAID in a VM.

I've found, personally, that if I wait for the absolute right advice and game plan before taking action, often I don't take any action as I never get a warm fuzzy enough to do so-- I learn a lot more by just jumping in- sink or swim, makes me put in the 'work' to learn my way around, learn my way out of situations haha- of course with this mindset you need to prepare for contingencies, hence when I went with Rockstor I made sure I had a backup of all the data I was putting on the Samba and NFS shares, and it may also not be the most cost effective (have some ebay hardware just laying around that I ended up not using or needing)-- but end result is I actually do something and learn.