Is a NAS worth it for a single user?

[whispercat]

For a single user, are there any advantages to a NAS over an external hard drive? I don't play (or store) games or movies, and I don't expect to have much more than about 4 TB of accumulated data in my lifetime.

Is it worth getting a NAS?

[Vicotnik]

Apples and oranges I'd say. What you need only you can discover. Myself I want a server running 24/7, not just a simple NAS. But I'd say that's a big difference between the two; a disk is just a disk, a NAS is a computer of some sort and can do tasks.

[Abula]

I'm a single user, built a 140TB WHS2011 and now building an unRaid server (probably around 45tb), different purposes, overall i say really depends on your needs.

For a single user, are there any advantages to a NAS over an external hard drive?

Automatic backups, automatic upload to 3rd party clouds, restore of backups, surveillance/cameras, plex , torrents, out of the hearing range storage, vitalization... there are tons of applications, but you are probably not in need of any.

[whispercat]

Thanks. Can you boot from a NAS?

Also, can the bays in a NAS be set to different RAIDs?

[Olle P]

You most probably can't boot your computer through the network port.

What kind(s) of RAID can be used is up to the specific NAS.

In my view the primary advantage with a NAS over external HDD (connected by USB or eSATA) for you could be placing it in another room. That way you won't hear it and it can provide some reduced risk that both the computer and NAS will be destroyed/damaged at the same time.

[whispercat]

testing

[whispercat]

Open to suggestions for an affordable NAS (under $600. US).

I'd prefer a small form factor 2 bay (or 4 bay) with ECC RAM and a self healing file system like Btrfs or ZFS.

[NeilBlanchard]

The best thing about a NAS, for a single user, in my opinion - is that malware can't make the NAS unbootable. I don't know about ransomware, but I think that would also be prevented.

And to tie this into the quiet aspect - you can use an SSD in your computer, and keep all the storage on the spinning drives on the NAS - in another room?

[Abula]

I'd prefer a small form factor 2 bay (or 4 bay) with ECC RAM and a self healing file system like Btrfs or ZFS.

Well 2 bay for ZFS dont seem practical, usually the RaidZ are done with multiple drives, more common around 8 but can be done with less just it becomes less efficient. That said only premade that i know that can do BTRFS is Synology, but IIRC they dont come with ECC.

Now remember ZFS is a memory hog, its recommended around 1gb per 1tb of storage, so for example 4x 8tb = 32tb = 32gb of memory. This is one of the main reasons i wont build on ZFS atm, and decide to go with unraid. Second reason is that with ZFS you need to plan your arrays ahead of time, you cant simply add drives as your need increases, like unRaid.

Open to suggestions for an affordable NAS (under $600. US).

If you truly want to try ZFS, then build your own sever, check FREENAS forums, you will find ton of info there, and lots of builds that you can take into account to build your own.

Or simply go with 4 bay Synology NAS with hybrid raid, this would allow you to grow your array as you need increases, similar to unraid. At some point im going to build a ZFS server, but to me it would be in case a i need a very big throughput on my network and very likely when i migrate to 10ge, for now WHS and unRaid are fine for my purposes.

[whispercat]

Thanks. The only small NAS I've been able to find that has both Btrfs and ECC RAM is the Netgear ReadyNAS 524 series. But It's too pricey. https://www.amazon.ca/Netgear-ReadyNAS- ... adyNAS+524

Then there is this HP Proliant small server. It has ECC RAM, but comes with it's own file system (ClearOS).
https://www.pc-canada.com/item/873830%2DS01.html

Some of the affordable Synology NAS have Btrfs, but no ECC RAM. So, it's somewhat frustrating finding these two things together in a prebuilt.

If I built my own, is it possible to get Btrfs separately?

[Abula]

If you truly want Synology for Btrfs and you want ECC, upgrade it, check The Synology DiskStation DS1618+: When The Great Gets An Upgrade

The DS1618+ also upgrades the base RAM to a single 4GB DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM. At first glance some readers will quickly note it is non-ECC and dismiss the NAS. But for consumers or businesses that require ECC, the DS1618+ does allow the use of ECC RAM, as well as provide two SO-DIMM slots to populate with up to 32GB of memory. The C3538 is a dual-channel memory processor that will benefit from populating both RAM slots, but just don’t attempt to mix ECC and non-ECC RAM together when optimizing the NAS performance!

Going to Synology DDR4 Memory Module - RAMEC2133DDR4SO-16G

Applied Models
Synology DiskStation: DS3018xs, DS3617xs, DS1618+

That will give you ECC with Synology, but its expensive, my suggestion is build your own around FREENAS + ZFS, there is a semi compact case coming from Silverstone CS381, boards like AsRock Rack or SuperMicro makes very nice micro atx that are well supported for a server.

[whispercat]

After some more thought I've decided I don't need a NAS.

All I'm trying to accomplish is simple backup. What I want to do is back up my internal desktop drive(s) to an external drive(s), and then have a copy of the external drive located off-site.

What is the simplest, cheapest way to accomplish this? (Cloud storage is too expensive)

And should I use some kind of RAID or JBOD configuration? I want to be able to update/backup the off-site drive about once a week/month. Can I rotate my off-site drive in and out of a RAID configuration? Or would I need to copy the data from the RAID to the off-site drive?

Currently I'm looking at an external drive something like this: https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1 It can do single disk, JBOD, RAID 0 and 1

I'm open to other suggestions.

[Ragnite_Powered]

Okay, I've got a question regarding the purchase of a NAS for a limited dedicated use as well.
The thing is that I'm planning to get a holiday house this summer, and I'd like to have a NAS there, one that I'd have an access to from my "main" residence as to send tons of content there to have all the movies, music etc I need for the holidays. Plus, since it'd be for a holiday house, we wouldn't use it as much as in my main residence, where my wife and I use it for media, for work, not to mention that my son and I both store games on that NAS as well.

The trick is that I don't want "just" a NAS. I'd like to have, if possible, this computer become the core of a domotics system that would, of course, allow me to access all of that media from all computers, TVs, phones etc that would be connected to the network, but that's not all. I'd like to be able to regulate air conditioning, electricity consumption, control the rolling blinds and the brightness of the lightning from that computer as well.

Initially, I wanted to do like everyone else and have a cheap Raspberry Pi as the core of the domotics network, but there's going to be one hell of a workload on the thing, so, on other forums, I've been recommended to ditch the Raspberry and have a bona fide computer as the "brain" of the system. Which led me to the idea of having this computer work both as the domotics network's center and as a NAS, which would make "digital logistics" easier in terms of providing movies, music, games etc to all appropriate devices in the house.

And of course, there's a little catch. I'm planning to buy this house... in Greece. The issue is that of course, I want it to be silent, but it's a computer that will constantly be under a rather heavy workload in a warm country in summer, so it will need one hell of a powerful cooling system if I don't want it to overheat.

Is there a way to have the NAS be at the same time silent and appropriately cooled? I thought about installing a liquid cooling system on it, it's expensive, but will be worth it. In terms of location, I thought about hanging the thing from the ceiling of the kitchen, in the corner above the fridge you can see in pics 3 and 5 of the page of the house, for 2 reasons:
-Noise. It will be far enough from bedrooms etc as not to disturb people, and if someone's in the kitchen for a long time, it's going to be noisy anyways because that person will be cooking.
-Wi-Fi availability. That corner is close to the middle of the house, so that there's going to be a decent access to the NAS from every room of the house, both upstairs and downstairs.


tl;dr ambitious NAS project, both NAS and domotics in one computer, 2 questions:
-Is it possible to do that?
-Warm country. Is liquid cooling appropriate and silent enough?
Thanks!

[mingv7v]

Is there a way to have the NAS be at the same time silent and appropriately cooled?

Sure it's possible, operating max temp for many WD NAS drives is 65C and for Seagate 70C. And usually the only thing that'll drive up the CPU load/temp in a media/home automation server is video transcoding and that can be managed. But if you require it to transcode 4K HEVC in real time then maybe not...

Guess you're building your own server and not buying off the shelf QNAP/Synology NAS servers? With the appropriate HW you should have a good chance of keeping it cool and quiet enough.

I thought about installing a liquid cooling system on it

Don't know much about liquid cooling systems, although there are water blocks for HDDs, if you plan on running 5 or 6 drive arrays you'll need a *hugh* case to have enough room for the drives and the radiators.

I thought about hanging the thing from the ceiling of the kitchen, in the corner above the fridge

Placing it in the kitchen on top of a fridge may not be a good idea -- it's usually quite warm there from the fridge's heat exchanger. Secondly kitchens tend to be humid, and humidity is not good for HDDs.

Once a server is setup you really don't need frequent physical access to it, so you can put it anywhere that has power and within reach of an ethernet cable (you don't want Wifi as your NAS/Server main connection).

[Ragnite_Powered]

Thanks for the detailed answer! The size of the case isn't too much of an issue given the static nature of the project, and then I'll find an other place to put the thing in.
And yes, I'll be building my own NAS and will keep it plugged on an Ethernet cable!

[Vicotnik]

Placing it in the kitchen on top of a fridge may not be a good idea -- it's usually quite warm there from the fridge's heat exchanger. Secondly kitchens tend to be humid, and humidity is not good for HDDs.

I agree with you. But this is actually how my setup is. It's a shelf there, above the refrigerator, behind a screen. Space is a bit scarce, so.. Humidity is fine, temperature is not ideal but not catastrophic either. Usually just one HDD spinning and no heavy tasks for the system though. Main problem is lifting the box up there, connecting all the cables in the back, after an upgrade or something.

[whispercat]

Just curious...if a NAS is on the same router as my PC, and is uploading large files (e.g. 30GB) to a cloud, would this slow down internet speed on my PC?

[CA_Steve]

Do you mean will NAS uploads to offsite service affect your PC's download rate?

Shouldn't, unless your modem/internet upload/download speeds are really limited and the modem is running into an overhead issue. With typical cable modems and, say, 75Mbps down/10Mbps up service, the upload is a drop in the bucket.

[whispercat]

My speeds are: 25 Mbps Down and 3 Mbps Up

[mingv7v]

I agree with you. But this is actually how my setup is. It's a shelf there, above the refrigerator, behind a screen.

Yeah, everything's a compromise, but we have an enclosed kitchen and we do a lot of steaming, so its a no-no for computers.