Build Your Own NAS vs Turnkey NAS - Which Should You Buy in 2024?

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Video Chapters
00:00 - The Start
01:11 - DiY is SO Much Cheaper
02:06 - The Cost of TIME
04:52 - Freedom of Build Your Own NAS!!!!!!
06:22 - 1st Party Apps and Tools Aplenty
07:32 - Value for Money?
09:23 - Some Turnkey NAS are INCREDIBLE Value
10:21 - Sustainability and Long-Term Storage?
12:52 - Real and Artifical Limitations?
14:24 - Warranty Headaches?
15:59 - REAL Bare Metal Utilization
16:47 - Tried and Tested is Better?
17:51 - Limits? Example 1
19:21 - Example 2
20:15 - Fixed Memory?
21:05 - Turkey NAS System PUSH Innovation and Development
23:48 - Innovation Example - ZFS Expansions
25:08 - Surveillance Station is 10/10
26:34 - Pay Now or Pay Later or Pay Gradually?
27:20 - Verdict and Summary
Thinking of buying a product mentioned in today's video? If this video has helped you make that decision, you can use the links and we will get a small % profit of whatever you buy.

[@BrianDavids]

I love this discussion. For me, 61 year old IT guy, I want simplicity. I’ve been building systems my entire life and I’ve grown tired of it. I have 20 Synology DS1821+ systems and setup and management is a dream. Simple, efficient, and just works.

[@junior-OG]

20 Synology DS1821+ 😲👀

[@joelnrs]

Great seeing you guys in video together!

[@GregMcCall]

I think the difference is amplified over time. In say 1 or 2 years, when your mind is embedded in a new hobby, a new family situation etc and you want to change something a bit more complicated or hardware breaks. A DIY, you may have to relearn stuff because unless you are doing storage on a regular or semi regular basis, it will need research and I think probably a lot more research than going to a built system and just navigating a menu or perhaps a google howtoo because it’s more likely someone has solved your issue on a off the shelf NAS.

[@abel4776]

Very true, the KISS principle is very important. But we also can't assume both Synology and QNAP, Chinese/Taiwan companies to never go bankrupt, discontinue or face economic issues due to war, etc and not be able to acquire spare/used NAS's once they go bad or die on you.

[@keithmiller9665]

Interesting discussion which neatly sums up that while I watch your pre-built NAS videos… I build my own 😅

[@bertnijhof5413]

For me, close to 80, I love to reuse old stuff as e.g a headless backup server controlled by ssh or ssh -X. My 2nd backup server are the remains of a 2003 HP d530 SFF with a Pentium 4 HT (1C2T; 3.0GHz); 1GB DDR; 1 Gbps Ethernet and 4 HDDs (2x IDE 3.5"; 2x SATA 2.5") in total 1.21TB :) :) That 20+ years old hardware runs the newest software; FreeBSD 14.0 + OpenZFS 2.2.0, released Nov 2023. The only disadvantage is that the ZFS based backup (send | ssh receive) runs at ~30MB/s, due to a ~95% load on one CPU thread.

[@cooldispatch]

Using Synology NAS as storage/backup + 1 liter Mini PC (for Plex + Proxmox). The best from the both worlds. Couldn't be happier...

[@InspectorGadget2014]

Turnkey is convenience, on short-term as well as long-term. Freedom (BYO) can become headache soon if not careful. But if you like to experiment, get way more involved and also learn a lot, BYO can be a lot of fun. You can also buy turnkey second-hand/good-as-new, quite affordable, btw. (and you can also hardwae- and software-hack turnkey solutions) There are pro's and con's to both sides, it is depending on the individual what choices to make, there is no wrong or right in that respect. BTW, Eddie with a beard, suits him. But does make him look like he is family of you (too) haha (joke)

[@andrewbroadfort6856]

Separate server from storage. A NAS should be for file sharing only. It is in the name! Network Attached Storage. RAID is not a backup. You should also have a backup solution in place. I have two identical NAS units (primary and backup) and run nightly backups over my 10 gigabit network.

[@nlrz313]

If the redundancy of data in a NAS is not a backup, the one made outside is not either, otherwise you have not finished making backups...

[@andrewbroadfort6856]

@@nlrz313 Local backup and then cloud for 3rd level. If you run just one NAS then you are doing it wrong.

[@nlrz313]

If you run 2 NAS + cloud for 1 file, you just have too much money, you do what you want with it but don't force everyone to think like that plz.@@andrewbroadfort6856

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

You could get a mobo/cpu with enough lanes and a couple of m.2 adapter cards and a fast nic to get the like of asustor hardware-wise. Wouldn't be cheap, if course

[@mannyc19]

I have done both, and building one from scratch is best,one that has a software setup already on board. Byukdung a 2 drive raid NAS was less then half $$$ my Synology,and only slightly more hassle.

[@ultimatemaverick]

You must be reading my mind because I was just thinking about this. Whether to build my own NAS running Unraid or go with Synology 1621+ (1624+ when it's released). I haven't watch the video yet so I'll probaby edit this comment but my top considerations were which one would have better idle power draw and have the capibility to backup some data to cloud based backup solutions. Unraid doesn't have a polished solution for cloud backup other than backing up to another unraid nas. As for Synology they have their Synology C2 cloud service which I'm testing now.

[@user-jk5um1om8l]

Turnkey at lower capacities, DIY at higher, when the cost becomes prohibitive. The trade-off at cost-prohibitive levels means leaving lots of storage on the table! How many more terabytes of drives could you have had, if you weren’t paying a small fortune for the NAS itself?

[@jimcallahan448]

I love the LincStation. Tough learning curve first week ("auto") is not a valid setting for disk formatting, disk array looked like it would run but Docker wouldn't run. Fixed formatting and both array and Docker are OK. Had scare with Crucial SSD firmware, but that would happen with any system. But, the UnRAID OS is very fast and responsive and fun . UnRaid has very smooth integration with Linux (unlike recent version of CasaOS). Downside is that UnRAID has a zillion settings and it is sometimes hard to figure out what you need to change and what you can leave alone -- mostly it is a documentation issue, but I am from data science and spoiled by keystroke by keystroke instruction.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

One could slightly alter my fav quote from Amos Burton of the Expanse: "you could do both" :)

[@derred723]

i priced it out using most parts above in the amazon link and including memory it costs $461. Which is basically what a Qnap would be about as well.

[@marklewus5468]

This might be a bit tangent, but on the topic of compatible hardware. I bought raspberry pi 5 and a SSD adapter board for the new pcie feature. It’s supposed to support any SSD. Except it doesn’t. If you use a WD SSD, you can read from to it, write to it, but you can’t boot from it. I think this is a similar argument to what you’re talking about with device compatibility on Nas devices

[@unicaller1]

DIY is more of a hobby. If you need reliability and simplicity then trun key. I have a Synology and am currently waiting on the last few parts for my new DIY system.

[@marcwesterink7742]

Interesting debate of opinions. I guess the DIY approach may be more suitable for the tech savvy people among us. But the Turnkey approach maybe appealing as well. To me, it depends on the scenario that allows you to define its use case. The scope may be limited between home use vs. small/medium size businesses. But I really need to resist the typical answer a consultant gives you: "it depends..." Looking it myself I'd say: DIY for flexibility, Turnkey for support... And yes, valuable arguments can be made to use cloud storage for backup purposes. For a business, such solutions are an insurance to protect them from data loss by a disaster. Knowing that app. 75% of business go out of business after a complete loss of data by a disaster, the monthly consumption of cloud backup is actually cheap in my humble opinion.

[@abel4776]

I would Turnkey for simplicity.

[@adam6080]

There's a ton of room in between the two examples. DIY doesn't necessarily mean no/free OS or only open source s/w. Setting up a micro PC running windows file shares, plex, some odd dockers or VMs to tinker with, maybe you pay for Blue Iris or something like that for security cams, that's best of both worlds for me. Easier to setup than freenas, more flexible than a synology. I reject that DIY means pinching every penny, a synology just isn't what I want.

[@nlrz313]

To deal with Qnap's after-sales service, I might as well have used a NAS I made myself, because I got no response after refusing them full access to my NAS and all my data... In addition, the software used in the NAS are old versions, at this date PLEX on Qnap is in 1.30 while everywhere else in 1.32 or even 1.40b. The only real reason I see for the branded NAS is the use of an outdated CPU, which we will no longer find for sale, but which does not consume much.

[@woom3]

I just use a nuc 13gen i5 for my TrueNas ,simple and Small

[@frankwong9486]

You can build the flashtor , get a nvme pcie card from saberent , which have pcie hubs controller and support nvme 3.0x4 host and 4 nvme .that cost like 180 GBP , slap it on any motherboard or used dell computer and called it flashtor DIY edition The flashtor have limited pcie lanes for each nvme slot so the speed diff to a diy version is not that much

[@frankwong9486]

Another option is some how expensive but you get full speed Any am5 itx and pcie burfication to 4/4/4/4 that give you 5-6 nvme all high speed . Another possible board is minisforum which have AMD cpu onboard BD770 etc ? Pcie burfication adapter without controller is really cheap now days . Both solutions should have higher speed and more performance compare to the asustor (except 10G port you need to figure out)

[@geerliglecluse5297]

DIY, especially if the storage is going to be a bit bigger, is soooo much cheaper, and not nearly as difficult as some suggest in the comments down below. All it takes is a bit of patience and the right mindset, even for not-so-techy people.

[@marcus3d]

So "the best" solution, which has "versatile" "memory support", doesn't support ECC memory, which is a dealbreaker for many, if not most, people putting together their own NAS. At the very least you could mention the fact a bit more prominently.

[@Ultrajamz]

I feel like a dummy if I buy a synology 1821+ and the 1824+ drops, not sure how much longer the wait will be….

[@abel4776]

Well, if it's 50%, I'd go with 21 but no 10Gbe!

[@praetorxyn]

As a Synology owner, I doubt I'll ever buy a turnkey NAS again, and if I do, it won't be Synology. It's just too limiting. Everything you host, you ought to be using Docker anyway, so I don't really give a damn about any of Synology's shitty first party apps that aren't as good as third party ones anyway, etc., and their built in nginx / Reverse Proxy GUI got in my way to where I had to figure out how to edit the .mustache files to change the port on it. That's more hassle than I'd have had if I just did DIY. Synology's hardware lockdown bullshit is also a deal breaker for me.

[@abel4776]

Thanks for your input. So you're saying that their official apps are only a handful when compared to docking essentially github?

[@praetorxyn]

@@abel4776 I do use Hyper Backup as it was there in the BackBlaze B2 instructions, but I haven’t needed to restore from a backup. But yes. Synology Video or whatever it’s called isn’t as good as Jellyfin, Emby, or Plex. Synology Photos isn’t as good as third party photo apps (I just use Nextcloud, but that stores them, it doesn’t really have the photo app stuff) Etc. I’ve heard their surveillance app is good, but I don’t do surveillance, and if I was going to, I’d probably do network level ones from Unifi or something. Synology is like the Apple of NAS vendors. It’s great if you like their ecosystem, but if you don’t, there are weird problems with it. In Synology’s case, vendor lock-in becoming increasingly prevalent, being limited to 1 Gbps LAN, AMD CPUs being less suited to media servers, the hardware just being weaker than their competitors in general for the same price point, etc. On Docker, I try to run LSIO containers whenever possible. Can’t link or KZbin will remove the comment.

[@clarencejrlundstrom7859]

I really really really wish i could install DSM on a Qnap..... Love love love DSM, but Synology has pushed me away from a great home experience.... Please Synology realese a Good Nas for home users....

[@abel4776]

Xpenology?

[@brucefay5126]

I think you should give Eddie a break and do the whole conversation in German. :-)

[@DavidM2002]

Full disclosure... I skipped to the end to see who had the most bruises and who had the biggest frownie face... Eddie, I want that hoodie. Synology and QNAP rule. I've tried Unraid and it was far too much work even if I value my time at $0.00 / hour.

[@kristof9497]

Jonsbo N2 + unraid. Because it's more fun to build it and cheaper.

[@curtisbme]

Not nearly enough devolving into violence and mother insults in this discussion.

[@rcmc88]

This isn't really a discussion, this is just Rob talking 90% of the time and beating down Eddie all the way. Not really a fair discussion