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It sounds like you know... very little on the topic. My NAS requires no maintenance, it makes no sound while running, and costs maybe pennies to run. Meanwhile

It sounds like you know... very little on the topic. My NAS requires no maintenance, it makes no sound while running, and costs maybe pennies to run. Meanwhile, there hasn't been a cloud provider without massive reliability or data loss issues. My NAS has better uptime than Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.

SECProto 4y ago
Their estimate of £10/month seems reasonable to me – that's basically 1 or 2 kWh of electricity per day (can't find current UK electricity rates). Is your NAS under 40W power draw? > costs maybe pennies to run. Pennies per hour, per day, or per month?
- tpxl 4y ago
  My RPi 4b runs on a 18W power supply, which would put it at 432Wh per day if running at max load (It doesn't, it idles at <3W most of the time). Any arm NAS is going to have a similar power draw, and you really should pay attention to the power draw when choosing a NAS.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    What about the storage devices (the S in NAS)? My external HDD (just for reference) has an AC adaptor that outputs 12V at 1.5A, so that's another 18W. And most people who care enough about storage to have a NAS have multiple disks... I'm not saying it isn't under 40W - as you note, if it's idling properly, it's pretty easy to have a NAS including disks under 10W idle. But the electricity cost is not negligible when you are running something 24/7. Even 10W24hr30day is 7.2kWh per month, and most places cant count on 8c/kWh electricity anymore. > My RPi 4b runs on a 18W power supply, which would put it at 432Wh per day Which would be 13 kWh per month. If we're comparing to monthly fees for cloud storage, it's important to look at the same time frame.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      > What about the storage devices (the S in NAS)? I have two SSDs on it that are powered by the RPi itself, so the whole package is < 18W. Also, SSDs use way less power than HDDs. > Which would be 13 kWh per month. If we're comparing to monthly fees for cloud storage, it's important to look at the same time frame. Yes, running at max load. A more realistic load will be 3W/hr -> 72W/day -> 2kWh/month. That would put it at ~0.3€/month at a realistic load and ~1€/month at max load (0.15€/kWh where I live). You also have to take into account there's other stuff running on such "NASes", like the PiHole, a git server, a plex server, which are going to cost you separately if you need them. On the other hand, my setup cost me ~300€ (RPi, charger, drives, USB-SATA adapters), which buys a whole lot of VPS and a whole lot of online storage.
      - SECProto 4y ago
        Yes, SSDs would certainly help cut your power load down significantly! My system has 3 HDDs and it's a fairly small NAS compared to many - SSDs are prohibitively expensive once your storage needs get above a couple TBs.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> My NAS requires no maintenance So you took it out of the shipping box, plugged it to power, and pressed the power button, and everything was up and running? And since then you haven't had to update any software on it, reboot it, unplug and replug an ethernet cable, shut it down and opened it to add storage, etc.? > it makes no sound while running Looking at a basic NAS on Synology shows that it's around 20 dB, which is admittedly very little, but is not 0. > and costs maybe pennies to run Again, looking at the same NAS and using my actual price per kWH, it's around $10 a month. > there hasn't been a cloud provider without massive reliability or data loss issues My searches haven't turned up any article about a data loss from any of the 3 big cloud providers. Even the story here, while scary, is just about compressed files, not originals. --- I'm not denying that a NAS has advantages (the fact that it's a lot more than just a data backup), but in the context of backing up files, it's not at all convenient compared to using online solutions.
- tagawa 4y ago
  It’s not big three but Canon announced cloud image/video loss a couple of years ago: https://www.canonrumors.com/canon-updates-on-the-status-of-image-canon/ https://www.canonrumors.com/canon-updates-on-the-status-of-i...

SECProto 4y ago

Their estimate of £10/month seems reasonable to me – that's basically 1 or 2 kWh of electricity per day (can't find current UK electricity rates). Is your NAS under 40W power draw? > costs maybe pennies to run. Pennies per hour, per day, or per month?

tpxl 4y ago
My RPi 4b runs on a 18W power supply, which would put it at 432Wh per day if running at max load (It doesn't, it idles at <3W most of the time). Any arm NAS is going to have a similar power draw, and you really should pay attention to the power draw when choosing a NAS.
- SECProto 4y ago
  What about the storage devices (the S in NAS)? My external HDD (just for reference) has an AC adaptor that outputs 12V at 1.5A, so that's another 18W. And most people who care enough about storage to have a NAS have multiple disks... I'm not saying it isn't under 40W - as you note, if it's idling properly, it's pretty easy to have a NAS including disks under 10W idle. But the electricity cost is not negligible when you are running something 24/7. Even 10W24hr30day is 7.2kWh per month, and most places cant count on 8c/kWh electricity anymore. > My RPi 4b runs on a 18W power supply, which would put it at 432Wh per day Which would be 13 kWh per month. If we're comparing to monthly fees for cloud storage, it's important to look at the same time frame.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    > What about the storage devices (the S in NAS)? I have two SSDs on it that are powered by the RPi itself, so the whole package is < 18W. Also, SSDs use way less power than HDDs. > Which would be 13 kWh per month. If we're comparing to monthly fees for cloud storage, it's important to look at the same time frame. Yes, running at max load. A more realistic load will be 3W/hr -> 72W/day -> 2kWh/month. That would put it at ~0.3€/month at a realistic load and ~1€/month at max load (0.15€/kWh where I live). You also have to take into account there's other stuff running on such "NASes", like the PiHole, a git server, a plex server, which are going to cost you separately if you need them. On the other hand, my setup cost me ~300€ (RPi, charger, drives, USB-SATA adapters), which buys a whole lot of VPS and a whole lot of online storage.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      Yes, SSDs would certainly help cut your power load down significantly! My system has 3 HDDs and it's a fairly small NAS compared to many - SSDs are prohibitively expensive once your storage needs get above a couple TBs.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

> My NAS requires no maintenance So you took it out of the shipping box, plugged it to power, and pressed the power button, and everything was up and running? And since then you haven't had to update any software on it, reboot it, unplug and replug an ethernet cable, shut it down and opened it to add storage, etc.? > it makes no sound while running Looking at a basic NAS on Synology shows that it's around 20 dB, which is admittedly very little, but is not 0. > and costs maybe pennies to run Again, looking at the same NAS and using my actual price per kWH, it's around $10 a month. > there hasn't been a cloud provider without massive reliability or data loss issues My searches haven't turned up any article about a data loss from any of the 3 big cloud providers. Even the story here, while scary, is just about compressed files, not originals. --- I'm not denying that a NAS has advantages (the fact that it's a lot more than just a data backup), but in the context of backing up files, it's not at all convenient compared to using online solutions.

tagawa 4y ago
It’s not big three but Canon announced cloud image/video loss a couple of years ago: https://www.canonrumors.com/canon-updates-on-the-status-of-image-canon/ https://www.canonrumors.com/canon-updates-on-the-status-of-i...