this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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I'm looking for advice on how to get started with a NAS, probably Synology since it's beginner friendly and often well recommended. I'm thinking of a 2 bay case with 2x4TB HDDs in RAID1 setup. What do I have to look out for in a device to get the best bang for my bucks?

My use case:

I have various documents, software projects, family pictures, videos that I want to store on something more reliable than a bunch of internal/external HDDs or USB sticks. I have a full *arr stack and jellyfin but I want to move these to my "server" laptop and docker once NAS is setup, and then host the files on it. For projects I might want to self-host gitea down the line.

Some more specific questions:

  1. if I go with a 2 bay NAS case, can i also connect my old external drive to it as a separate drive, can they handle USB3 drives? Will it require reformatting since it was used on windows so far?
  2. are there any issues with connecting docker ~~drives~~ volumes to a NAS?
  3. noise issues - does the NAS itself make a noticeable amount of noise or is it just the drives?
  4. whats the life expectancy of a NAS? if it dies, can I just plug the drives into a new one?
  5. does syncthing work well with a NAS or is there a better way of syncing local files to the NAS for backup?

Sorry for the question dump, just wanted to cover as many possible issues as possible 😅

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[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago (14 children)

Synology or QNAP will do the trick. However, once you get into the self-hosted rabbit hole, they'll become insufficient pretty quickly. My suggestion it's to start with a self-built right with a Ryzen 5 or 7, enough RAM (16GB should suffice at first) and take it from there. That way you have flexibility in terms of what hardware (disks, ram, processor, board, power supply, cooling, etc) and its usually very cost effective in terms of bang-for-the-buck. You can then test OMV, or Ubuntu server, or TrueNAS or anything else, and find your favorite. There are plenty of cases that can meet those needs without breaking the bank.

[–] dillydogg@lemmy.one 2 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I'd like to ask a clarifying question.

I'm interested in building a computer to self host from that would exclusively run on my local network. I would like to have some storage (on the order of 2x 16TB HDDs in RAID1 or 3x in RAID5) but also have the ability to host some other services, like Nextcloud, Arr stack, RSS feed, Immich for photos, and a Joplin server. I would probably put Wireguard on there to access these services remotely (but not the *arr stack).

Someday I might want to host some services that are accessible from the internet (not Wireguard), but I think that is for another time in my life.

I am gathering from your comments that, for more than strictly local storage, it is probably worth building a server with storage, rather than trying to stretch a Synology NAS to do all of this for me. Does that sound right?

I've been toying with this idea for a while and am not sure if I sound just go with a Synology or self build. But I think I have more interest in tinkering with the system than a Synology would allow. I'm not totally new to self hosting, I have a VPS that serves a few apps and my blog online, and use an RPi at home to serve a few things. I suppose a third option is to buy the NAS, but then build a computer to host the other applications using the NAS data.

[–] Clusterfck@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mainstream NASs (like Synology and QNAP) are very good at what they’re built for, which is be available on the network and have plenty of storage.

They CAN do more, but then you start to notice the limitations. It is still “just a NAS.” It’s not called a NASAHVAVMM (Network Attached Storage and Hypervisor and VM Manager)

If you want to do what you described, a smaller NAS would probably be good for backups, but look into a fully fledged, capable server too.

[–] dillydogg@lemmy.one 1 points 8 months ago

This is great advice. I think the smaller NAS is a prudent investment now, and the more capable server can come later. I think I don't want to let perfect be the enemy of good and keep me from investing in a local storage solution.

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