My First NAS Build

Building my first NAS from some old, some new, and some used parts.
I had an my old Louqe Ghost S1 case just sitting there begging to be used for something. Since I have wanted to try building a NAS for some time I decided to put some parts I already had to use. The only parts I didn't already have were the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and SSD.
Case: Louqe Ghost S1
PSU: Corsair SF600 Platinum
Board: AsRock Z690M-ITX/ax
CPU: Intel i3 12100
RAM: Crucial 16GB DDR4 3200
M2: Patriot 128GB P300 M.2
HDD: Seagate 16TB EXOS (2x)
HDD mount: ORICO Aluminum 5.25 Inch to 2.5 or 3.5 Inch Bay Adapter
Unraid
03:56 Bay Adapter Bracket Installation
♬ MUSIC ♬
Artist: tubebackr
Track: Chill With Me
@tubebackr
hypeddit.com/tubebackr/chillwithme-1

[@es-br8ck]

Don't build a NAS drive like here, because they did it like a game PC build. A NAS has almost the exact opposite requirements to a gaming PC. Reliability trumps everything, because data loss for several terabytes is very painful and you often cannot make full backups of all those terabytes anyway. Also, power consumption and noise matter a lot, because it'll be online for thousands of hours. So: first thing: System drive must be 2 drives in RAID config, because you don't want to reconfigure everything if a lone system drive died. It may take all the data with it, if the system crashes after system drive failure. Smallish SSDs are very affordable and size doesn't matter for the system drive. Second: CPU for a NAS build should use a thermal pad, maybe a carbon pad, for longevity and low TDP anyway. Thermal paste dries out after a while and needs repasting. For a gaming PC, this is fine, because maximum performance matters there. For a NAS, reliability is critical and you won't repaste and check on it all the time. Third: we don't see efficiency of the PSU mentioned. That means they didn't care. You want gold or platinum efficiency for the PSU because it's going to be running a lot and waste enormous amounts of money if it's not efficient. For a gaming PC, even if you game a lot, it's not even close to these runtimes. Also, gaming PCs often run at higher loads, not idle, and PSUs are usually quite efficient at 50-80% of their rated wattage. They are all terrible at 20% load, the platinum rated ones are just a lot less terrible. Fourth: build the system so maximum consumption is not too much higher than idle consumption and scale the PSU not too much above that, bringing it into the most efficient range to operate in, mostly. Fifth: HDD spin down or not is a religious thing. Those in countries with higher power costs must spin them down or they'll pay through their noses. Sixth: use a case that can accommodate at least 4 data drives. RAID 5 is the most efficient setup for home NAS. Don't use hardware RAID unless you're a big company. Explore the options of hybrid RAID models that let you add more drives later. In a home or small setup, you want enterprise or NAS class drives from different manufacturers and different production batches, so they don't fail at the same time, in the same way. Seventh: using SSD cache for the data drives increases speed a lot and keeps them spun down longer, when other client PCs come online and just enumerate the shared volumes and their directory contents, which Windows does a lot. Eight: use a UPSs for that. Power outages do happen, or something in your house or office causes the breaker to trip. Sudden power outage might kill the data, or at least forces the system to do a RAID resync, which takes several days or a week, putting unnecessary wear on the drives, wasting energy and more importantly, are a period of highest risk for the data, because a power outage during a RAID resync will most likely kill the array for good. And whatever causes one power outage will probably cause another one soon after. Use a UPS and configure quick auto shutdown when it's going on battery. You must test that setup before trusting it. Ninth: homebrew software is a great opportunity to learn a million things, but you can't trust it, unless you are quite good already. Readymade software will save you hundreds of hours of learning or extreme regrets when the data is lost. Especially when doing upgrades. Don't skip upgrades for security, but don't use rolling distros that update every day. Tenth: concerning all these things, it is not the worst of ideas to buy a purpose NAS machine from a major brand, unless you specifically want to learn and experiment. You will lose data if you do it yourself, so plan and backup for that. Write down your configuration and steps, because once it runs satisfactorily, you will forget the settings and how you did them. Again, think long and hard about rather choosing a purpose NAS appliance. People are selling used NAS appliances all the time when upgrading to a bigger one. Don't try to learn Linux on the home NAS, or don't use that NAS to store anything important, try it on a spare or virtual machine.

[@HardwareHaven]

This comment is overkill lol. In the description it says he was using some used parts. There is nothing wrong with this for a simple 2 drive NAS. Yes, have a backup of the data and a backup of the config. But this is fine.

[@makingitsew]

Oh my. Thanks for the detailed thoughts. This is decidedly my first build and going to be primarily used for storing my Bluray rips and Plex. I had been using 4 different external USB drives plugged into my main PC and it was getting out of hand. Nothing mission critical going on this one. Just had a bunch of spare parts laying around and my (to me) gorgeous Louqe case, so I decided to put them to use.

[@es-br8ck]

@@HardwareHaven I am trying to help others avoid the big mistakes that I did when building my first NAS setups. I lost a lot of data that way, spent hundreds of hours on something that ultimately did not turn into a NAS that could be trusted with data. A NAS *is* the backup. A single system drive, a single data drive is never fine for that, because then it cannot be as reliable as it must be. Remember: an unreliable NAS is worse than no NAS. I'm serious. If it's unreliable, you can't save anything important to it or you'll have to make backups all the time, which you and I and most others won't ever do, or cannot do, if the NAS has several terabytes. Don't tell me someone at home is backing up 10TB, because there's few options to do so and the machine will take several days of writing to USB to do that. Unless you build a NAS to be reliable, don't build it at all, because then it'll eat your money and your time - and if you're unlucky, also your data, without providing the use you wanted.

[@HardwareHaven]

@@es-br8ck The system has mirrored drives though. Still not a backup, but a mirror is still fairly reliable. Also, he's using UnRAID, so there isn't even a way to have redundant system drives. As long as the config get's backed up, all he would need to do is flash a new UnRAID drive, transfer the license, and re-upload the config.

[@TheTrulyInsane]

Impressive first video, looking forward to seeing more

[@HardwareHaven]

Nice shots! Hope it works well for you

[@makingitsew]

Thanks! I actually watched a number of your videos in preparation. Thanks for the inspiration. :)

[@HardwareHaven]

@@makingitsew Oh nice! This definitely looks prettier than anything I've done lol

[@bradleyhanks]

Really nice for first build and vid. Congrats! Are the top hats the small version?

[@makingitsew]

They are the mediums I believe. I have a large also that I may try at some point should I need to add more drives.

[@mr_DIY]

as beautiful as it is, only 2 drives?

[@makingitsew]

Budget. That's also why I chose Unraid, so I can add drives down the road.

[@mr_DIY]

@@makingitsew but there is no space in the case

[@makingitsew]

There is space behind the motherboard for another, I would just need to figure out a way to mount it, and I also have a larger tophat that could accommodate another on the top. This build was just using what I had on hand and trying not to buy too many new things. :-)

[@mr_DIY]

@@makingitsew uh, now it makes sense 🤓

[@RatchetLive]

200+$ Gaming Mainboard for a NAS? Hell no!

[@makingitsew]

Here is my partpicker list if you'd like to see what I spent. pcpartpicker.com/user/nyc_derek/saved/nQRKhM Everything else I used were parts that I already had. Factoring in how much a Synology or Qnap NAS costs, I decided that was a pretty reasonable price. :)

[@thomashendricks9774]

I subbed because Star Trek and Tech, looking forward to more content

[@makingitsew]

Thanks! My interests are varied. There will probably be some 3D printing/modeling, cosplay, sewing, prop making... I do a lot of stuff. :)

[@thomashendricks9774]

@@makingitsew fantastic, can’t wait to see.

[@TFPMadcow]

It’s a shame you had to use a top hat for the second hd.

[@makingitsew]

Yeah, I could have possibly mounted it behind the motherboard, but I would have had to look for a solution to mount it to the PCIE riser standoffs. Still may happen down the road should I add more drives.

[@TFPMadcow]

@@makingitsew i was dreaming being able to use the large empty GPU space for the drives. Maybe going SATA could help? But I should settle for smaller capacity or the cost is going to skyrocket

[@christopherjames9843]

So music and you just building a pc with exactly zero narration or instructions is supposed to be useful?

[@makingitsew]

It's not intended to be a how-to. @LinusTechTips has those pretty well covered 😂 Just documenting my build.