Question Home DIY NAS SSDs: quality vs. quantity

[Tech Junky]

reliability

It's more about data safety with the spares there while you order a replacement. If you're planning on doing backups and rotating disks it will take the pressure off redundancy. But in reality most people don't bother with a backup. It's more money and time... Laziness is a factor too I having to grab the backup disk and run the backup and verify it.

Once you setup the raid you have a better understanding of how to keep it running and the maintenance side of it. There are utilities / scheduled tasks you can setup to monitor things. Obvious things would be using power protection to prevent a surge from wiping out the components. Keeping things cooled for longevity.

 

[bhelhokie]

Maybe all you need is https://www.snapraid.it ?

It's kinda cool to discover all these different options are out there (looking at this table). However, I'm set on TrueNAS for this time around as I really don't care to mess around with a headless linux box.

 

[bhelhokie]

If you're planning on doing backups

Yep, that's the plan and will be looking into options. I'm hoping that it could be set up so when I plugin an external HDD drive, it automatically triggers a backup op, but I might be too hopeful here.

Obvious things would be using power protection to prevent a surge from wiping out the components.

My Synology box has been running only on surge protection (no battery backup) for years, and luckily I haven't experienced any data loss. I'm planning on replacing the surge strip with a UPS (thinking of picking up a used Belkin off eBay).

 

[Tech Junky]

UPS

Might be a waste, I've had a string of power blips during hurricane seasons and no issues with data. During a cold snap there were rolling brown outs and no issues with data. Then again I'm not pushing data all of the time either. If it's in use 100% of the time during a power event then a backup power option or capacitor would be helpful. A UPS gets costly as you have to replace the battery every 3 years or sooner.

I just concentrated on a high joule surge instead. I can live without data but hardware is expensive. It comes down to risk mitigation and evaluation.

 

[aigomorla]

It is indeed more or less for archival purpose for me.


This begs a question. Is this a relevant limitation for a home NAS? An SSD must be an adequately fast writer if it could be used in PCs, and definitely faster than a spinner, individually speaking. It's hard for me to see SSD's write speed being a detriment for a 2-user/5-PC house. No?


Right. We're using an arcane wifi, so I'm not looking to take advantage of I/O speed at all. My constraints are more on size & heat for my unique situation (replacing a 2-disk synology box in a tight space). As far as I know there aren't 2.5" HDDs that are suited for NAS, or am I wrong here?


With you and Junky preaching on this and reading up more on the risk of raidz1, I'm now leaning towards a zpool of 2 mirrored 2-disk vdevs (4 2TB disks for 4 TB of storage space) and eat the mirroring capacity tax for better reliability. Also, it occurred to me that it's more cost effective future-proofing: buying only 2 disks to up the capacity compared to needing all 4 replaced for a raidz setup.

Well it totally depends on what your using your NAS for.
If its like pictures, and lots of and lots of it, i still would not recommend a SSD for anything archival unless its a enterprise grade.
Even then i would probably only use Samsung PRO's and not EVO's if i absolutely went down that consumer route.

I would still probably recommend you go down the route of using 3.5 inch spinners.
Helium Drives are my absolute favorate when it comes to NAS.
Helium Drives would be like Western Digital HC / Golds, or HGST He's.
I am also testing a few Seagate EXOS's but they are SAS edition.
They been holding up great so far, however i would probably NEVER recommend Seagate drives to anyone.

Since you'll be using Wifi, which i totally do not recommend, I/O speed wont matter, and reliability should be absolute primary.
I trust Helium Drives way more then SSD's unless we start talking about Intel 3DXpoint drives. These drives are on a whole different level compared to normal SSD's.
There are 2.5inch NAS drives, well more server drives, but they are mostly SAS interface and they spin at 10k RPM.
But im pretty sure your synology can handle 3.5 inch drives, so i still would recommend you getting 2 x HGST He's.

If your gonna Raid 1 them i would totally recommend you getting refurb 10TB's like these:

Amazon.com

They even offer a 5yr warrenty on the drive.
I have done a few RMA's with GoHardDrive.
They are reputable.

That would give you 10TB of storage in a mirror, and HGST won't lock you out after a set amount of hours like WD Red's will on a synology unit .

About redundancy, i am a absolute advocate for redundancy.
I have lost many drives and been saved because of redundancy.
Just remember tho, you NEVER want to Raid-5 spinners because of URE's.
And if your going to use a ZFS file system, then id recommend you getting a HBA with SAS ports, as i much prefer SAS drives over SATA drives.
Its become like a witch doctor potion brew, people will say there is no difference, however i just feel SAS drives are more durable then SATA's as SAS was only intended to enterprise usage.

If your going to build out of TrueNAS....
RAM... and More RAM... and Even MORE RAM.
FreeBSD absolutely LOVES Ram, and will use EVERY LAST BIT you throw at it.

You can see here how much my TrueNAS box is eatting up ram.

Absolute monster when it comes to using RAM.... reminds me of windows 95 days, but it does speed up caching.

 

[Tech Junky]

enterprise

The only issues here are they're designed for speed which means heat.

Most enterprise setups mean loud fans for higher airflow and the noise from the fans covers up the noise of the drives.

SAS/SATA speeds will be the same unless you're paying up for speedier disks. Then you run into more heat.

NEVER recommend Seagate drives to anyone

1000% agree unless you step up and away from consumer labels.

The EXOS line is tempting me for my next round of drives when I run out of room or when one dies. For a 18TB refurb / return @ $200 on Amazon they make sense for expansion and durability. On the other hand my WD Red's might last another 5 years. By then maybe NVME drives will be considerably cheaper at higher capacities than they are right now. 8TB / $1000 just isn't all that appetizing. 8TB SATA though is more reasonable @ ~$400 but still a bit much.

When it comes to space spinners rule but, durability with no moving parts it's still a toss up since the only real change is SATA vs M2 but, since the M2 / NVME drives have temp issues due to the speed of which moving data on the controller. Though DRAM less NVME drives seem to run a bit cooler .

For instance my SN770 / 37C and SN850 / 45C in the same system.

 

[aigomorla]

SAS/SATA speeds will be the same unless you're paying up for speedier disks. Then you run into more heat.

Yeah which is why i said its more a witch doctor potion, i feel they are better hence i am jynxing myself thinking they are better.

I also think Helium Drives run cooler which and require less power.
They also have overall less failure rates.

Do Helium-Filled Hard Drives Perform Better Than Air-Filled Drives?

Helium-filled hard drives attempt to cut down on friction, leading to better performance. We’ve crunched the numbers: how do they actually perform?

www.backblaze.com

 

[Tech Junky]

they are better

When looking for density they are. Using the sff fan out cables means more drives in an enclosure. Each cable supports 4 drives per port and the cards can have several ports. Iirc I think the most drives per card is somewhere around 128. The only thing then is the bandwidth since SAS maxed at 12gb/s which would be roughly 6 drives per cable and then gen 3 slot bandwidth.

I suppose you might be able to get more capacity by muxing SATA drives off then somehow.

 

[bhelhokie]

using Wifi, which i totally do not recommend

Just to be clear, the NAS box will be wired, but nothing else in the house currently is. I thought of wiring up the house when I bought it a decade+ ago, but it hasn't happened (yet? lol)

But im pretty sure your synology can handle 3.5 inch drives, so i still would recommend you getting 2 x HGST He's.

My model has a pretty slow CPU, so retiring it is a must.

I have never considered He drives (well, didn't even know about it till you mentioned it). I like everything said about the linked He HDD: capacity, price, power & temp. I can definitely do 2 3.5" drives, but now I'm curious how many can be clammed in the space...

And if your going to use a ZFS file system, then id recommend you getting a HBA with SAS ports, as i much prefer SAS drives over SATA drives.

Based on your exchange above, I don't need performance and high temp, so SATA should suffice for my use.

 

[aigomorla]

@bhelhokie
I can tell you from experience, the first TrueNAS box is always experiemental.
Meaning it won't last very long without a Ver.2 and Ver.3 to follow up later on with more enterprise grade Hardware.

Just have fun with it, and see what works and fits.
Do not be afraid to use used enterprise grade parts, if its clean and the seller has a lot of feedback / reviews.
Enterprise grade even used, will often in most cases last longer then consumer grade new.

 

[bhelhokie]

I can tell you from experience, the first TrueNAS box is always experiemental. Meaning it won't last very long without a Ver.2 and Ver.3 to follow up later on with more enterprise grade Hardware.

So, you're saying that I should start saving right now lol.

Realistically, what I'm rigging up right now should serve us well for a long time, and will I ever decide to go for a next version, it must wait till I revamp the home network completely. But, yeah, it's fun to learn about a new technology.

Do not be afraid to use used enterprise grade parts, if its clean and the seller has a lot of feedback / reviews.

I'll keep that in mind. My holdback has always been the cost associated with enterprise parts (I've always been a stingy PC builder). So, the price of the above used He HDDs was a big eye opener for me.

Enterprise grade even used, will often in most cases last longer then consumer grade new.

To be honest, I'm not yet convinced of this. A couple of enterprise grade HDDs failed (2 out of 4) in the FreeNAS box that I built for work about a decade ago (at least one within its warranty period). This rate is higher than all the consumer HDDs I've owned since mid-90's. But, if the price is right (for home use) I'll give them another shot.

 

[manly]

This begs a question. Is this a relevant limitation for a home NAS? An SSD must be an adequately fast writer if it could be used in PCs, and definitely faster than a spinner, individually speaking. It's hard for me to see SSD's write speed being a detriment for a 2-user/5-PC house. No?

This sounds like hyperbole, so perhaps he meant one of two different things. A) low-end SATA SSDs like Team Group have a small SLC cache. Once this is exhausted (say a large copy to SSD operation), write throughput plummets. B) On paper, longevity for QLC-based SSDs is not great.

In general, there isn't any real scenario where SSD write performance will struggle for your intended use case. Nor are you likely to run into the longevity issue, but that's kind of unknowable. It's hard to say if a spinning HD is more likely to spontaneously fail than an SSD hitting its NAND writes limit, but the broad consensus seems to be that SSDs are still way more reliable than hard disk drives.

To be honest, I'm not yet convinced of this. A couple of enterprise grade HDDs failed (2 out of 4) in the FreeNAS box that I built for work about a decade ago (at least one within its warranty period). This rate is higher than all the consumer HDDs I've owned since mid-90's. But, if the price is right (for home use) I'll give them another shot.

Sample size too small to draw any conclusions. But Backblaze has been publishing data for many years, and I don't recall them rejecting consumer parts because the failure rate was too high. Arguably their business model would be quite different if they had been forced to buy enterprise grade HDDs all these years.

I think you just have to make an "executive decision" as to what makes sense for you. A small 4 SSD array will be performant, but as mentioned you won't reap any speed advantage over Gigabit Ethernet. Conversely, two 12TB hard drives in RAID-1 will be more "future proof" capacity wise.

I have a modest 4TB NAS that is only about half full. BUT if I actually consolidated my legacy hard drives data onto the NAS, it would instantly be full. Point is there is some beauty as @Tech Junky suggests in over-planning for the future. So that "too much" capacity today doesn't become "not enough" tomorrow.

 

[igor_kavinski]

One word of caution regarding SATA SSDs. Some of them will crap their internal firmware metadata if they are busy in the middle of some housecleaning/maintenance chores and the PC suffers a hard shutdown or sudden reboot. If that happens, it is not guaranteed that they will always successfully recover. Especially ones that lack a power loss capacitor could be trouble. Crucial BX500 doesn't have one. MX500 does. Using capacitor-less drives in a NAS appliance could be unpredictable.

 

[bhelhokie]

"executive decision"

Indeed. First of all, thank you all who chimed in. I'm now pretty much set on the config. Well, down to 2 options, depending on the space constraint.

• TrueNAS Scale
• ZFS: 1 zpool with 2 mirrored vdevs, each with 2 drives
• Hardware:
  • Gigabyte GA-H87TN (thin mITX)
  • i3-4150T + stock hsf
  • 16 GB DDR3
  • 150W PSU (AC/DC brick)
  • 120mm case fan
• Storage:
  • (3.5" option) 4x HGST He10 HDDs (20TB total) OR
  • (2.5" option) 4x MX500 or equivalent grade SSDs (4TB total)

Now, I'll draw up a chassis in CAD for each of these options to see how each fits in the 8"(w)x6"(h)x10"(d) space to make the final call. Since it's essentially a single-board PC, I can build a wooden wind tunnel and simply mount the mobo and drives in it. Not needing an HBA simplifies the build a lot.

If I go with 3.5" route, 20TB is an awful lot of storage. So, I'll probably experiment with a striped mirrored zpool to see if it makes any difference on my network.

Again, thank you all for the tips and advises!

 

[manly]

One word of caution regarding SATA SSDs. Some of them will crap their internal firmware metadata if they are busy in the middle of some housecleaning/maintenance chores and the PC suffers a hard shutdown or sudden reboot. If that happens, it is not guaranteed that they will always successfully recover. Especially ones that lack a power loss capacitor could be trouble. Crucial BX500 doesn't have one. MX500 does. Using capacitor-less drives in a NAS appliance could be unpredictable.

I thought power loss capacitors generally exist only on enterprise SSDs? MX500 seems like an all-around good choice if OP goes that route.
Do current higher-end NVMe SSDs come with power loss capacitors? A quick glance seems like they generally don't.

Some Consumer NVMe SSDs Reportedly More Prone To Data Loss During Power Outage

DRAM plus a power outage could makes for a bad situation

www.tomshardware.com

Looks like Samsung just dropped the retail price of 2TB 870 EVO to $100. They claim "Limited time only" but it doesn't feel like PC component prices are heading back up anytime soon.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I thought power loss capacitors generally exist only on enterprise SSDs?

https://content.crucial.com/content/dam/crucial/ssd-products/mx500/flyer/crucial-mx500-ssd-productflyer-en.pdf

You are right. It doesn't have a capacitor but it has firmware level protection to prevent existing data corruption. Data in flight WILL be lost on power loss.

A Closer Look At SSD Power Loss Protection - Kingston Technology

The combination of firmware/hardware PFAIL protection are a highly effective method for preventing data loss in enterprise SSD applications, allowing important metadata information to be written to flash memory to ensure a successful recovery of the SSD on the next power up.

www.kingston.com

Kingston would be a good choice since they are claiming even their client SSDs are resilient against power cycling.

 

[igor_kavinski]

but it doesn't feel like PC component prices are heading back up anytime soon.

Never say that. You wake up and suddenly everything is priced three times high. The industry is just unpredictable. Buy two of everything you may need in the near future.

 

[igor_kavinski]

https://download.semiconductor.samsung.com/resources/others/Samsung_SSD_845DC_05_Power_loss_protection_PLP.pdf

845DC EVO available on eBay for cheap.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Do current higher-end NVMe SSDs come with power loss capacitors? A quick glance seems like they generally don't.

Beware: Your SSD can lose data on power outage even after proper flushing [Update]

A test has found that certain NVMe SSDs are losing cached data in the event of a power outage. The data loss is happening even after flushing those SSDs fully before the triggered power cut.

www.neowin.net

SK Hynix and Sabrent are to be avoided.

 

[manly]

Never say that. You wake up and suddenly everything is priced three times high. The industry is just unpredictable. Buy two of everything you may need in the near future.

Like with any products, prices can and do fluctuate. What I was alluding to is that we're still in the midst of a PC sales crash and oversupply of components. Outside of graphics cards (thanks, AI), it's pretty much a golden era if you need to buy PC parts. At some point, the excess inventory will be drawn down and price-cutting can't go on forever. Outside of oddities (i.e. ETH mining of years gone by), that doesn't mean prices will spike up but they will settle around some natural point in the supply/demand curve.

You may recall that hard disk drives had a fairly consistent multi- decade trend up until 2011, when severe flooding hit Thailand and knocked out a lot of production. (Short term prices soared.) Combined with SSDs taking over the marketplace over the following decade, and industry consolidation, HDD prices have never really gone back down. Capacity at the high end keeps going up, so you get more for your money. But 4TB drives haven't moved a whole lot, despite shenanigans like SMR drives hitting the low end.

https://download.semiconductor.samsung.com/resources/others/Samsung_SSD_845DC_05_Power_loss_protection_PLP.pdf

845DC EVO available on eBay for cheap.

Certainly an option, but DC or enterprise drives tend to be rather expensive unless you're comfortable with used or refurbished. When this thread popped up, I glanced at Samsung 860 PROs and was surprised to see how expensive those prosumer (non-DC) drives are. I guess nobody buys them now, and I believe they are the last of consumer MLC drives (lol they're over 5 years old!). Many years ago, there were a few prosumer SSDs with power loss capacitors, but it was pretty rare. As you noted, the high-end manufacturers have other techniques to avoid data loss on power interruption.

I'd use an SK Hynix Gold P31 in most laptops (they are fast and highly efficient), but last fall I was cheap with went with a low-end QLC drive. Prices really nosedived in recent months.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've created or posted in recent threads, particularly about my Win 2012 R2 hardware failure and panic. If I got in a panic about it, the only source of real anxiety would've been the fact that I never gave myself fire-drills in the event anything like this would happen. It was nothing to restore the server WITHOUT Win 2012, yet salvaging the drive pool of 4x 3TB HGST/Hitachi spinners.

How I go forward now is a personal choice based on a handful of practical objectives. Let me interject here, by the way, that building a NAS or buying Synology or other hardware is a perfectly fine idea. Further, I was impressed with the second-hand revelations by others in various blogs and forum threads concerning TrueNAS. Linux is also another approach.

So, what was my personal decision about this? It was based on an ample supply of fresh, new or barely-used hardware in my parts lockers. The OP mentioned using an H87 ITX board for his needs. Schmee's remarks are also useful. AigoMorla's are equally so, particularly post #23 for a brief list of pros and cons.

What hardware parts do I have? Here's a list:

1x ASUS Z170 motherboard -- brand new.
1x i7-6700 CPU
4x 8GB or 2 x 2x8GB DDR4 TridentZ RAM
4x fresh, brand new Hitachi/HGST 3TB 3.5" HDDs
1x 500GB SK Hynix NVME stick
1x Corsair Vengeance C70 computer case
1x 650W Seasonic PSU

I could add an MSI GeForce 970 graphics card, but it isn't needed. Or -- it shouldn't be needed unless I need certain abilities to de-compress or render video files.

I note that I could spend something like $500+ on a Synology NAS box, and then I'd have to purchase drives for it. I could use the drives listed above, but I heard something about the manufacturer and their warranty pressures for buying drives from Synology. But the hardware list I have above is "paid for".

I am one user, with at most 3 desktop workstations and a laptop, trying to prune back on the active computers I have in this room. I have prospects or thoughts about buying a 13-gen 16-core Intel DELL XPS or Precision, just to find out what OEM is "all about these days" -- not having bought an OEM since 1994. Other prospects involve getting 12 or 13-gen hardware and building my own again.

Being one user, what advantage do I have to keep a server in the house? Not much. I have maybe 200GB of important personal files, deathly afraid of losing any of it. As long as I have active front-end workstations and a laptop, I want to access that data from any of my computers. But so much of it isn't going to cramp the hard-disk space on any and/or all of my workstations and the laptop.

I don't want a power bill for running a server box 24/7. I DO want a media server for my entertainment system, which I can turn on and boot up or turn off based on my usage.

So I've decided to keep duplicate file stores on most of my active workstations -- which, at one time, I (maybe "we") would've thought was duplicative and a ready-made disaster for inconsistency between files. Each workstation is already configured for comprehensive, scheduled and automatic Macrium backup to local disk on each system.

But following the implications of "Cloud storage and Cloud backup", I can see that I can do much the same thing with a "file-server" which doesn't need to be running all the time, provided that there is a strategic implementation of a program like these:

MS SyncToy
AOMEI Free File Sync
MiniTool ShadowMaker Free syncing software
Any of several others.

SyncToy seems to do just fine. It will also run in Windows 11, but isn't supported for it. It can be run with Task Scheduler to sync when more than one system is running, or you can create several tasks and run them all with a single mouse-click, 5 minutes and done.

What about the "server" OS? I don't really know why we ever thought we should "need" a Windows Server OS version. We'd had Windows Home Server 2008, and 2011. We exchanged it for Win 2012 R2 Essentials. But for home use and a handful or less of users, you wouldn't need any of that. Win 10 Pro would do just fine with file and folder sharing across the network. For one user -- it should be perfect.

I was impressed with the TrueNAS OS as shown in forum screen captures. I even liked the Windows server dashboards. But you don't need all that for the latter. You can access a headless server remotely with Remote Desktop.

So here's the simple clarifying fact. I can run this "server" as an HTPC two different ways if I want. It can simply serve up media files over my network directly to my Sony Bravia with a KODI app on the TV. Or, I can run those files with a media-software front-end and a video HDMI feed to the Sony Bravia. Either way, even if my DVR options are limited, I can rip all my DVD and BluRay optical discs to MKV or ISO files and store them on the 12 TB drive-pool of this backup-sync-file-server and media server, and then pick them for play with the Sony remote, or a wireless mouse to navigate the media player software on the media server.

And what about that replacement for a Windows Media Center that I cannot anymore have? I picked Cyberlink PowerDVD -- version 22 is the latest, but earlier versions are also great. With an HDMI connection to the Sony Bravia, the HTPC/file-backup-server is no longer headless, even if I planned to use it that way. So the TV serves as a monitor in a pinch. I could reprogram the WMC green-button remote (or rather the Windows registry) for using the HTPC to feed the Sony through HDMI, but a wireless keyboard and mouse should work fine.

Since this "server" is not likely to get a severe workout at any point in time, shared files and folders and Workgroup security seem adequate for my needs, an NTFS file system leaves me more comfortable for an ability to extract a disk and read it through a plug-in USB/eSATA docking station on another computer.

And that's about all there is. This is going to work for me. I didn't spend north of $500 on an SFF NAS device and storage for it. I can really use my 12TB pool for ripping optical discs. I don't need to leave the system turned on day and night and forever. And I have more backup potential in case of failure -- or at least the same as I'd had before.

Oh. And I was able to get a Retail Box, shrink-wrapped-never-opened Windows 10 Pro for about $60+.

 

[bhelhokie]

@BonzaiDuck - I've been following your recent posts. It sounds like you, too, came to decision on what to do.

Unlike you, I'd like to run my NAS 24/7 unlike your situation. So,

I don't want a power bill for running a server box 24/7.

is a concern of mine, and I think that's where the off-the-shelf NAS's excel at. I'm afraid my new box will consume far more power than my current Synology box. I'll find out how much more when I have it up and running.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Maybe all you need is https://www.snapraid.it ?

Thanks -- and that could also be an option. Here, I'm starting with three brand-new 3TB HGST/Hitachi drives in anti-stat wrap, two purchased spare several years ago and set aside. Another 3TB HGST I discovered in a 5.25" hot-swap bay of the old server. The key had been switched off, and the drive had not been powered on for years. Checking the power-on time, 450 hours works out to a total of about 20 days total run-time, so that one is also just short of brand-new.

Meanwhile, I have the disks that were running on the server (and still running on the temporary hardware while I rebuild) for over six years. StableBit Scanner has been run on them monthly, and they are still good. I could actually add these to the StableBit Drive Pool of the four new drives, spreading out the unduplicated media files over more disks. Or -- I could probably back up the media files to one of those disks for now, in the hotswap bay, then turn it off. Or, I could enable folder and file duplication with StableBit for the media files, but it would be cumbersome. Any way you look at it, I'm not at great risk for losing the media files, if only for periodic manual backup.

As for the synched folders of important files -- they are duplicated on the drive pool. But now, looking at the web-link more closely for SnapRAID, I may give this a closer look. Would it work in tandem with Stablebit Drive Pool? That might be perfect . . . .

Here's a casual, general observation for today. Over the past few weeks just following my server boot failure, I have felt weary of my hardware addictions and obsessions, and the collection of PCs in the house for a family which has declined from three users to one user. I felt tired of the maintenance, and tired of the clutter. The utility power-bill is not such a noticeable drawback. And I'm still contemplating purchase of an OEM workstation.

All of this seemed to depress me, in parallel with other things -- the eldercare responsibilities, my life prospects at age 75, but particularly -- the national and world news. After I started rebuilding the server box in the Corsair C70, I realized that puttering with all this stuff really takes my mind away from distressing thought.

It's good therapy, even if I think I've been doing it -- almost needlessly sometimes -- for at least two decades.

 

[igor_kavinski]

As for the synched folders of important files -- they are duplicated on the drive pool. But now, looking at the web-link more closely for SnapRAID, I may give this a closer look. Would it work in tandem with Stablebit Drive Pool? That might be perfect . . . .

StableBit - The home of StableBit CloudDrive, StableBit DrivePool and the StableBit Scanner

stablebit.com

If you can find a cheap option to host 200GB of your critical data in the cloud, this option could be perfect for you.

I think you will need to check with your Stablebit support guy. I don't really have experience with it and the cloud thing sounds fascinating but also confusing at the same time.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

@BonzaiDuck - I've been following your recent posts. It sounds like you, too, came to decision on what to do.

Unlike you, I'd like to run my NAS 24/7 unlike your situation. So,

is a concern of mine, and I think that's where the off-the-shelf NAS's excel at. I'm afraid my new box will consume far more power than my current Synology box. I'll find out how much more when I have it up and running.

I completely agree with you there. If I didn't have the spare hardware I listed, I might be doing the same thing as you contemplate. It seemed less expensive and less trouble for me to rebuild my NAS in the same box, with newer hardware and familiar software.

I've almost got it all put together, ready to fire it up, tweak the BIOS and then install the OS. After OS installation , power down and add the drive controller and drive-pool disks. Transfer the data, define security and shares and I'm done.

The power requirements for a regular NAS kit may be lower, but you'd have to count all the drives that run in the box. I don't think there's that much more in a difference. With a Synology or similar, you have a SFF and small foot-print. For me, I'll just put the midtower in a corner behind my entertainment cabinet -- still accessible.

At least, experimenting with this configuration I contemplate, I won't feel a need to switch on the server before I can work with my bank accounts and my document archives. It always seemed like having a motorcycle with a side-car, when you don't want the side-car always attached.