9 ms·

I always admire the depth and effort people are willing to get into, especially if the chance of messing up means losing actual money, like tweaking guitars or

by wvh 2y ago

I always admire the depth and effort people are willing to get into, especially if the chance of messing up means losing actual money, like tweaking guitars or hardware. I assume you have to gain some experience with soldering irons or woodworking tools elsewhere before taking the proverbial axe to a project like this. I wonder why there isn't much of a market of more hackable small form factor boxes where it's easier to tinker with the hardware or software. I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. Or maybe I'm just too chicken with modifying actual physical objects.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. Are there any good options today? I keep thinking of picking up a NAS, but I really do not want to use a proprietary vendor OS that might feel entitled to scan my data for useless/hostile cloud integrations. Or might have left some hardcoded password backdoors.
- lloydatkinson 2y ago
  From the same site https://codedbearder.com/posts/nixos-terramaster-f2-221/ https://codedbearder.com/posts/nixos-terramaster-f2-221/
- InTheArena 2y ago
  Ugreen NAS - currently on kickstarter for this summer - but it's a reputable company. https://nas.ugreen.com/pages/ugreen-nas-storage-preheat https://nas.ugreen.com/pages/ugreen-nas-storage-preheat Their hardware is dramatically better at the price points then the alternatives - even if they do have some comprimises.
  - tremon 2y ago
    Wow, those hardware specs are nice. What compromises do you refer to, specifically? I think that the 8GB ram and 128GB flash cache are on the small side, but both are user-replaceable so not that big a deal. The only thing I really miss here is ECC ram, but that's entirely due to Intel's market segmentation and not something they can change, save by completely changing their platform vendor.
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    Interesting! Unfortunately no power draw numbers.
- settrans 2y ago
  I ended up downgrading my chunky Supermicro server to a cheap Chinese AOOSTAR with an Intel N100 for $199[0], and slapped in an NVMe drive and extra RAM. Since I only need 8-9TB of storage, a zpool mirror worked perfectly for my use case. The build quality is mediocre but the product is more than adequate for my home NAS use case. [0] https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-mini-pc-with-w11-pro-lpddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-...
- mbirth 2y ago
  Newer TerraMaster models also come with an internal USB port and flash drive that can be replaced. They’re basically an Intel NUC with a storage controller. I’ve got the F4-423 on my shopping list for when my Synology DS-415+ finally dies.
dheera 2y ago
> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. A regular PC will work fine if this is what you want to do. A lot of consumer motherboards these days have at least 2 x NVMe and 6 x SATA ports or more. There are rack-mount cases that allow you to front-mount the SATA hard drives to make it easy to swap them. Or if you want something small, you can get a compact Mini-ITX case with 5.25" drive bays and put hotswap trays in them. Like maybe this case https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193826-REG/istarusa_s_35ex_3_x_5_25_bay.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193826-REG/istarusa_... And put one of these for 4 x 2.5" SSDs: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V5JHOXQ/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V5JHOXQ/ And one of these for USB/SD card reader galore: https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Internal-Reader-Support-Computer/dp/B07ZHBT4S6/ https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Internal-Reader-Support-Com... The reason I often do NOT want a vanilla OS is that I don't want to have to maintain it or risk corruption of the OS partition, and don't want to ever have to wire up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor because some upgrade and reboot caused it to get stuck on some interactive prompt. Most commercial NAS (e.g. Synology) have web-based administration and read-only partitions for the OS fully figured out.
- hobs 2y ago
  I recently stood up a 140TB unraid instance, first time I did any nas stuff. Get manufacturer recertified drives for about 13 dollars a tb. Went with a framework case and a normal am4 processor/mobo with 8 sata connections. 2tb nvme cache + 20TB a drive + parity is 140 useable TB, and unraid makes the NAS stuff really easy, just installed a bunch of "apps" which are basically docker containers + settings, and things are a breeze.
  - dgacmu 2y ago
    Where'd you get the drives? That's a quite reasonable price.
    - hobs 2y ago
      serverpartdeals has a seagate-exos-x20-st20000nm007d-20tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-3-5-recertified-hard-drive that I went with.
bongodongobob 2y ago
A NAS is just a computer that is only used for storage. Any old hardware with drives attached to it will work.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  Just beware of too old hardware that may end up costing more than expected because of their power draw. A NAS usually stays up 24/7 and power saving and reliability become important. I would also avoid anything with a fan, particularly if they expect it to be running constantly. A mini PC with enough internal space to host a long m.2 SATA adapter (0) can become a quite compact solution; many used low performance Celeron based systems considered obsolete for desktop stuff would be more than enough for that task. 0: https://www.ebay.com/itm/256268302567 https://www.ebay.com/itm/256268302567 (no relation with the seller, just found searching "6xsata m.2" and removing those with lower feedback ratings). There are also 5xsata similar cards.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    When people talk about using these cards with the minipc how do they imagine setting these up? shuck the minipc out of its original case and zip tie it (no clue if its standard mobo probably not) to some case that can hold these drives and a psu? hack a hole out of the minipc and run the cabling to some cage of drives, powered by a separate psu?
    - squarefoot 2y ago
      The boards sizes aren't standard, however drilling holes to fix them into a bigger case isn't that hard, same for power supplies. As for the disks, there are backplanes with SATA connectors that can host for example 5x3.5" drives into a 3x5.25" bay (0), so that the NAS can be pretty solid. Unfortunately they aren't cheap but the overall cost would be still lower than buying a new NAS with comparable features and performance. 0: https://www.reichelt.de/de/en/mobile-rack-3x-5-25-for-5x-3-5-sas-sata-icy-ib-565ssk-p303835.html https://www.reichelt.de/de/en/mobile-rack-3x-5-25-for-5x-3-5...
atmosx 2y ago
There are actually, more than a few options if you're willing to tinker. People use RPis as NAS. They're slow but they work as a cheap local backup. Older integrated NAS devices like DNS-320 can be rooted to run a fairly recent debian flavour that comes with security patches, but you have to be familiar with the CLI given that the specs are very low (cpu/ram). You could buy an old HP Proliant server (gen8?) and plug in 4 x 16TB HDDs and boot from the 5th drive.
dgacmu 2y ago
This probably isn't normal consumer price, but supermicro makes some very nice nas-targeted hardware that you can populate with your own drives and choice of OS. I have one with 183 TB running trueNAS (zfs) and it's great. They're just bog standard x86 boxes with a lot of drive slots, a backplane, and a lot of sad or sata ports and controller capacity. There's a pretty healthy used market in these things also. But they are targeting people who want to put 10 or more drives in a single enclosure, which is why I say they might not be consumer.
- ComputerGuru 2y ago
  SuperMicro stuff has gotten so expensive. I remember when they were first getting started and even years afterwards, and it's nothing like today. Honestly, best thing you can do now is just live with a tower server or buy off-lease from eBay. We've passed the hump where the off-lease eBay specials had the energy footprint of a small factory and used turbine jet engines to power the fans and cool things down. I did buy once buy a no-name (ATX?) 2U case/rails only from eBay, but the manufacturing, accessibility, ergonomics, design, and everything else were terrible enough that I would not do it again.
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kjkjadksj 2y ago
> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. You can get a truenas but its a little under powered for what it is especially if you want to use it not as a nas. This is the tradeoff for buying a turnkey product in a niche market. That being said you can just build your own nas. There are nas boards with multiple sata already built in for you as well as cases designed for these sorts of boards and multiple hdds. jonesbo cases are popular for this. at a certain point though it stops making sense to build one of these and starts making sense to rack mount your storage array, of which the options are far more numerous.
transpute 2y ago
NAS dual 3.5" HD, dual M.2 NVME, dual 2.5GbE LAN. BIOS quality unknown. Barebone no RAM, expandable to 32GB. BYO OS. Intel Alder Lake N100, $189, https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-mini-pc-with-w11-pro-lpddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-... Ryzen 5700, $299, https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r7-2-bay-nas-amd-ryzen-7-5700u-mini-pc8c-16t-up-to-4-3ghz-with-w11-pro-ddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-nvme-ssd https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r7-2-bay-nas-amd-ryzen-...
philjohn 2y ago
I built my own NAS for a total cost of £1000. 24TB physical drives, 16TB useable (Raid Z2). It runs Ubuntu LTS server edition and I spin up any containers I need in Docker using Portainer. Is it a point and click GUI that is friendly to all? No ... I have to manually create SMB mounts and the like in the terminal, but it's easy enough to keep running. Hardware wise it's: - Asrock Rack C246 WSI Mini ITX motherboard - 32GB ECC RAM (2x 16GB UDIMMS) - benefit of using the C246 chipset - Intel i3-9100T - 6 IronWolf 4TB NAS drives - 2U Short Depth rackmount chassis (so it fits in my network rack) - 1TB Samsung 850 Evo boot drive Idles at 23W which is low enough for my tastes, ramps up to 65W under load (I spin the disks down after 10 minutes of inactivity, even doing that I'm only seeing about 10k load/unload cycles a year (drive is rated for 600k).
- racked 2y ago
  Ever wrote a build log for that? Would love to read it.
  - philjohn 2y ago
    I didn't I'm afraid, but it was just like building any other computer, except repinning the 24pin ATX connector for the motherboard as it uses a 4 pin connection only (still Molex branded).
- lukevp 2y ago
  Did you build this a while ago? 4TB drives are tiny nowadays. If so, the price isn’t really comparable is it?
  - philjohn 2y ago
    About 2.5-3 years ago, yes.
- nuker 2y ago
  > Asrock Rack C246 WSI Mini ITX Who do I have to kill to get one :)

by wvh 2y ago

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. Are there any good options today? I keep thinking of picking up a NAS, but I really do not want to use a proprietary vendor OS that might feel entitled to scan my data for useless/hostile cloud integrations. Or might have left some hardcoded password backdoors.

lloydatkinson 2y ago
From the same site https://codedbearder.com/posts/nixos-terramaster-f2-221/ https://codedbearder.com/posts/nixos-terramaster-f2-221/
InTheArena 2y ago
Ugreen NAS - currently on kickstarter for this summer - but it's a reputable company. https://nas.ugreen.com/pages/ugreen-nas-storage-preheat https://nas.ugreen.com/pages/ugreen-nas-storage-preheat Their hardware is dramatically better at the price points then the alternatives - even if they do have some comprimises.
- tremon 2y ago
  Wow, those hardware specs are nice. What compromises do you refer to, specifically? I think that the 8GB ram and 128GB flash cache are on the small side, but both are user-replaceable so not that big a deal. The only thing I really miss here is ECC ram, but that's entirely due to Intel's market segmentation and not something they can change, save by completely changing their platform vendor.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  Interesting! Unfortunately no power draw numbers.
settrans 2y ago
I ended up downgrading my chunky Supermicro server to a cheap Chinese AOOSTAR with an Intel N100 for $199[0], and slapped in an NVMe drive and extra RAM. Since I only need 8-9TB of storage, a zpool mirror worked perfectly for my use case. The build quality is mediocre but the product is more than adequate for my home NAS use case. [0] https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-mini-pc-with-w11-pro-lpddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-...
mbirth 2y ago
Newer TerraMaster models also come with an internal USB port and flash drive that can be replaced. They’re basically an Intel NUC with a storage controller. I’ve got the F4-423 on my shopping list for when my Synology DS-415+ finally dies.

dheera 2y ago

> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. A regular PC will work fine if this is what you want to do. A lot of consumer motherboards these days have at least 2 x NVMe and 6 x SATA ports or more. There are rack-mount cases that allow you to front-mount the SATA hard drives to make it easy to swap them. Or if you want something small, you can get a compact Mini-ITX case with 5.25" drive bays and put hotswap trays in them. Like maybe this case https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193826-REG/istarusa_s_35ex_3_x_5_25_bay.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193826-REG/istarusa_... And put one of these for 4 x 2.5" SSDs: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V5JHOXQ/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V5JHOXQ/ And one of these for USB/SD card reader galore: https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Internal-Reader-Support-Computer/dp/B07ZHBT4S6/ https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Internal-Reader-Support-Com... The reason I often do NOT want a vanilla OS is that I don't want to have to maintain it or risk corruption of the OS partition, and don't want to ever have to wire up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor because some upgrade and reboot caused it to get stuck on some interactive prompt. Most commercial NAS (e.g. Synology) have web-based administration and read-only partitions for the OS fully figured out.

hobs 2y ago
I recently stood up a 140TB unraid instance, first time I did any nas stuff. Get manufacturer recertified drives for about 13 dollars a tb. Went with a framework case and a normal am4 processor/mobo with 8 sata connections. 2tb nvme cache + 20TB a drive + parity is 140 useable TB, and unraid makes the NAS stuff really easy, just installed a bunch of "apps" which are basically docker containers + settings, and things are a breeze.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Where'd you get the drives? That's a quite reasonable price.
  - hobs 2y ago
    serverpartdeals has a seagate-exos-x20-st20000nm007d-20tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-3-5-recertified-hard-drive that I went with.

bongodongobob 2y ago

A NAS is just a computer that is only used for storage. Any old hardware with drives attached to it will work.

squarefoot 2y ago
Just beware of too old hardware that may end up costing more than expected because of their power draw. A NAS usually stays up 24/7 and power saving and reliability become important. I would also avoid anything with a fan, particularly if they expect it to be running constantly. A mini PC with enough internal space to host a long m.2 SATA adapter (0) can become a quite compact solution; many used low performance Celeron based systems considered obsolete for desktop stuff would be more than enough for that task. 0: https://www.ebay.com/itm/256268302567 https://www.ebay.com/itm/256268302567 (no relation with the seller, just found searching "6xsata m.2" and removing those with lower feedback ratings). There are also 5xsata similar cards.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  When people talk about using these cards with the minipc how do they imagine setting these up? shuck the minipc out of its original case and zip tie it (no clue if its standard mobo probably not) to some case that can hold these drives and a psu? hack a hole out of the minipc and run the cabling to some cage of drives, powered by a separate psu?
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    The boards sizes aren't standard, however drilling holes to fix them into a bigger case isn't that hard, same for power supplies. As for the disks, there are backplanes with SATA connectors that can host for example 5x3.5" drives into a 3x5.25" bay (0), so that the NAS can be pretty solid. Unfortunately they aren't cheap but the overall cost would be still lower than buying a new NAS with comparable features and performance. 0: https://www.reichelt.de/de/en/mobile-rack-3x-5-25-for-5x-3-5-sas-sata-icy-ib-565ssk-p303835.html https://www.reichelt.de/de/en/mobile-rack-3x-5-25-for-5x-3-5...

atmosx 2y ago

There are actually, more than a few options if you're willing to tinker. People use RPis as NAS. They're slow but they work as a cheap local backup. Older integrated NAS devices like DNS-320 can be rooted to run a fairly recent debian flavour that comes with security patches, but you have to be familiar with the CLI given that the specs are very low (cpu/ram). You could buy an old HP Proliant server (gen8?) and plug in 4 x 16TB HDDs and boot from the 5th drive.

dgacmu 2y ago

This probably isn't normal consumer price, but supermicro makes some very nice nas-targeted hardware that you can populate with your own drives and choice of OS. I have one with 183 TB running trueNAS (zfs) and it's great. They're just bog standard x86 boxes with a lot of drive slots, a backplane, and a lot of sad or sata ports and controller capacity. There's a pretty healthy used market in these things also. But they are targeting people who want to put 10 or more drives in a single enclosure, which is why I say they might not be consumer.

ComputerGuru 2y ago
SuperMicro stuff has gotten so expensive. I remember when they were first getting started and even years afterwards, and it's nothing like today. Honestly, best thing you can do now is just live with a tower server or buy off-lease from eBay. We've passed the hump where the off-lease eBay specials had the energy footprint of a small factory and used turbine jet engines to power the fans and cool things down. I did buy once buy a no-name (ATX?) 2U case/rails only from eBay, but the manufacturing, accessibility, ergonomics, design, and everything else were terrible enough that I would not do it again.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

kjkjadksj 2y ago

> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. You can get a truenas but its a little under powered for what it is especially if you want to use it not as a nas. This is the tradeoff for buying a turnkey product in a niche market. That being said you can just build your own nas. There are nas boards with multiple sata already built in for you as well as cases designed for these sorts of boards and multiple hdds. jonesbo cases are popular for this. at a certain point though it stops making sense to build one of these and starts making sense to rack mount your storage array, of which the options are far more numerous.

transpute 2y ago

NAS dual 3.5" HD, dual M.2 NVME, dual 2.5GbE LAN. BIOS quality unknown. Barebone no RAM, expandable to 32GB. BYO OS. Intel Alder Lake N100, $189, https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-mini-pc-with-w11-pro-lpddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r1-2bay-nas-intel-n100-... Ryzen 5700, $299, https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r7-2-bay-nas-amd-ryzen-7-5700u-mini-pc8c-16t-up-to-4-3ghz-with-w11-pro-ddr4-16gb-ram-512gb-nvme-ssd https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-r7-2-bay-nas-amd-ryzen-...

philjohn 2y ago

I built my own NAS for a total cost of £1000. 24TB physical drives, 16TB useable (Raid Z2). It runs Ubuntu LTS server edition and I spin up any containers I need in Docker using Portainer. Is it a point and click GUI that is friendly to all? No ... I have to manually create SMB mounts and the like in the terminal, but it's easy enough to keep running. Hardware wise it's: - Asrock Rack C246 WSI Mini ITX motherboard - 32GB ECC RAM (2x 16GB UDIMMS) - benefit of using the C246 chipset - Intel i3-9100T - 6 IronWolf 4TB NAS drives - 2U Short Depth rackmount chassis (so it fits in my network rack) - 1TB Samsung 850 Evo boot drive Idles at 23W which is low enough for my tastes, ramps up to 65W under load (I spin the disks down after 10 minutes of inactivity, even doing that I'm only seeing about 10k load/unload cycles a year (drive is rated for 600k).

racked 2y ago
Ever wrote a build log for that? Would love to read it.
- philjohn 2y ago
  I didn't I'm afraid, but it was just like building any other computer, except repinning the 24pin ATX connector for the motherboard as it uses a 4 pin connection only (still Molex branded).
lukevp 2y ago
Did you build this a while ago? 4TB drives are tiny nowadays. If so, the price isn’t really comparable is it?
- philjohn 2y ago
  About 2.5-3 years ago, yes.
nuker 2y ago
> Asrock Rack C246 WSI Mini ITX Who do I have to kill to get one :)