First NAS built help

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1

Hi everyone,

I am looking for some help building my first very simple NAS. Here are some requirements and questions:

Requirements:

Summary:

I want a very simple NAS to backup all my family pictures (I will have another backup as well) and make all my media (MKVs, MP4s, MP3s) available to other PCs in the house.

  • < 600$
  • Minimum of 2x 1TB HDD for a total of 1TB usable storage since I want to mirror my data (Raid 1 ?)

Questions:

  1. Linux or Windows ? (I do have some Linux experience and I would prefer Linux simply to gain more knowledge)
  2. Is Raid 1 the best/only way of mirroring hardrives ?
  3. If one drive fails, can I simply replace it with a new drive and it will "automatically" mirror the other drive with the data?
  4. If drive #1 fails, could I possibly take drive #2 (the working one) out of the NAS if I wanted to and use it in another PC not using RAID ?
  5. I want to be able to easily access the NAS remotely, inside my own network is fine, what is the best way of doing this if going linux and my other PCs are windows ?
2

I would suggest using linux with btrfs as the file system. It will do a RAID1 style mirror but with integrity checking and other cool stuff like being able to add more disks or change to a RAID5/6 later.

You could set it up manually on pretty much any linux distro or you could use something like rockstor which is preconfigured and has a web interface.

If a disk fails and you add a new disk you will probaby have to tell it to use that new disk to replace the old one.

If you take the disk out and put it in another system it should be fine. If it's a RAID1 disk then it should work independently, if it's btrfs then you will have to configure it on the other system but it will work fine.

You can set up samba on the NAS which is what windows uses for network shares, all your computers (windows, linux, mac) will be able to access it.

3

If it was my build that small.

2x N3150 motherboards ($80 ea)
1x 16GB SoDIMM ($55 ea)
2x PicoPSUs ($25 ea)
2x 3TB WD Red ($100 ea)
2x 60GB SSD ($35 ea)
2x 12v 6A brick PSU ($7 ea)

Build 2 machines from parts, and copy the working data to the 2nd machine over the network as your backup.

4

Thanks for the reply. Simply to inform other posters, I would want to avoid 2 machines since the goal of this project is to also gain experience with Raid and NAS setup.

5

Unless ur a linux master I would just stick to windows 10 and storage spaces. I don't know how many nerds can help u when your BTFS crashes cuz u don't have ECC memory or a VA power backup. I have yet to see anyone restore a linux raid device on video or live.