Should You Buy An Off-The-Shelf NAS Or Build Your Own?

If you are in the market for a new NAS you might be asking yourself whether you should buy something off-the-shelf or build your own. In this video Adam chats with Jeff from @CraftComputing to go over the strengths and weaknesses of both options.
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#nas #diy #interview

[@Kennephus]

Fantastic seeing Jeff out in the wild. The world needs more Jeff.

[@AV-th6kn]

and we need Gordon back.

[@ryanmcfarland1900]

My problem with using old desktops is the power consumption. For someone like me who lives in a warm climate with a really well insulated house, the power consumption and heat from a desktop running 24/7 is a nonstarter.

[@bartios]

yeah when you need to run air conditioning you need to look at low power/efficient solutions and can't really reuse old stuff.

[@fionnlanghans]

There are very cheap mini PCs with n100/n200 Intel CPUs and 2.5Gbe networking. Those are great as a NAS device with DAS over USB.

[@bushi1147]

You can get intel cpu chips and amd that run low power about 35 watts or get the board Jeff has and it's a mobile cpu also ryzen low power stat is crazy good.

[@Gromuhl]

This, my downclocked old pc parts with all power saving options enabled still used 4-5x more power than my aftermarket NAS (same drives). With the rising power costs here, I made the money I spent on my NAS back within a year due to power savings.

[@johndoh5182]

I think people should really evaluate a NAS. If you don't need access to all that data all the time I don't know why a person would want that data mounted in the first place. Having an eSata port is a wonderful thing. Most ATX MBs will give you a PCIe slot at the bottom that won't have conflicts with the GPU, that run through the chipset. In fact you can buy a connector that will hook up an internal SATA port and run to the back panel and give an eSATA port. This gives a connection to the outside world that's a little more friendly than USB (I've had issues using USB sometimes).

[@peterjansen4826]

I am glad to see that Adam's guest has a stimulating influence. Yes, play with it yourself, make a Pi-hole and all that, it is fun.

[@GTian]

put your electricity bill into consideration when getting something that supposed to be running 24/7. Off the shelf parts while being weaker, usually have lower TDP parts that can save you over hundreds just in a year of 24/7 operation, especially when you electricity bill is already through the roof like in bay area.

[@peterjansen4826]

Good advice, of course you can also tweak it to a lower power-setting but indeed, more cores and higher clock frequency is not always better. A 4C with a low clock-frequency would probably be better for a media/storage-server considering the lower electricity cost.

[@RealLordy]

If you settle for just a reliable NAS with comparable speeds of off the shelf NAS appliances: dont run TrueNAS as that is almost enterprise grade and requires horsepower. If you want easy to use and not too much whistle and bells: There is still Windows based storage spaces. Use a flagship motherboard from 3 or 4 years ago with a low power processor and 16Gb of RAM. Install either windows 10/11 and enable storage spaces. Create a mirorred storage space !!! Agreed: not as efficient as parity, but more reliable and very fast. Use enterprise grade hard drives or SSDs and there you go. You got a low power reliable NAS which most probably will outperform a similar priced off the shelf NAS. Advantage: If hardware fails, pull the drives out, connect them to any other windows machine (order in which you attach does not matter) and boom... you are up and running again. In my opinion the above is a very underrated solution as all YT channels focus on TrueNas etc... which requires quite some knowledge to run. For my NAS and other IT systems in my home, I always think: if something happens to me, either my wife or kids need to be able to get at least to the photos and personal stuff and they need to be able to keep internet up and running. So keep it stupid simple, safe and reliable (yes, potentially with the cost of a couple of more disks when it comes to the NAS, but at least they can connect the disks to any PC in the home and access whatever is on it as long as they have the user credentials...0 Above solution is NOT for content creators requiring 100+ TB of storage which can be accessed at the speed of light for real time editing of videos of course... 🙂

[@theglowcloud2215]

These homelab dweebs don't care about power use because they've got sponsorships and Patreon. Why else would any sane person have a 42U rack full of off-lease quad socket servers in their basement just for PiHole and Wireguard?

[@user-fr3hy9uh6y]

I have tried both. The biggest difference is reliability. If you want something that just works, go off the shelf. If you want to tinker, have fun rolling your own. I would not recommend Windows, especially the home version, for live recording with Plex. I do use Synology for Plex, but only as a home server.

[@peterjansen4826]

Assembling your own NAS certainly is more fun, especially the software-side of it.

[@veredictum4503]

Good info, fair. Most of us would have old PCs - I have 3 - that can be cannibalised. That saves $1k. Other than the size of old tower. The buy vs build cost is standard - go to a restaurant, vs cook own meal. It's always cheaper to DIY, but the penalty is time. You're basically buying time.

[@jakethesnake1023]

Best thing i did was take the time to build my own plex server using unraid vs a synology. For the same money i built something with 8 times the ram and the ability to transcode 5 4k streams at once (the synology would struggle with 1) not to mention i have 11 bays vs the 8 bay synology i was looking at. This was only my 3rd build. It took me an Afternoon to put together and get it set up. I understand some people may not even have that much free time but i think most people get overwhelmed by the thought of building a pc but its surprisingly easy.

[@utmichael2008]

Do you mind sharing a parts list/summary? I am leaning towards DIY.

[@catalystguitarguy]

If you’re just storing files or setting something up for family, off the shelf is fine. It’s quick and easy. If you’re doing beyond just network storage then DIY and learning how to maintain it is going to be the better long term solution. Pick your solution or parts for your task and situation. Maybe you just need a 2-4 disk standalone box. Or you might be looking at a 8-12U rack with a disk shelf and multiple thin clients and a UPS, or just a full depth full height rack loaded up with everything. There is no 1 size fits all. That’s why we’re PC users.

[@jaysantiago-BX-NY]

Excellent questions! Every question I would ask. Thank you so much. I'm not knowledgeable enough for an off-the-shelf. And this video just confirmed it! 😂 Keep up the great content!!

[@jonathanfabian4973]

I just got my first computer a few months ago. I’m definitely building my own nas this month. I don’t know much but with all the information online and help in forums I think it’s very doable

[@TomCee53]

When Jeff mentioned SLAs, I couldn’t help thinking, well, just make it redundant. Have two servers either sharing storage or being the redundancy. 😂👨🏼‍🏫

[@dustojnikhummer]

Jellyfin or Plex aren't built for that. They can't share a database. Sure, you can have two servers, but then you deal with two accounts per user, two play queues etc

[@Cooper3312000]

I use a cheap Terramaster nas with tiny red pill bootloader for Synology OS 7. Been running solid for years. With nvme cache and Synology cloud access.

[@ThorDyrden]

I ran my own NAS/Homeserver for many years (was VIA Epia based, if somebody still remembers these guys)... but though I had enough Linux admin-knowledge came to the decision, that I would prefer to spend my free-time otherwise and bought a Qnap NAS. Besides the significantly reduced admin-effort, this solution also is more efficient, than my self-build system and saving ~10W in a System running 24/7 also sums up over the livespan of the system and at Europe energy-costs means you can invest 100-150€ more into the purchase-price of the Synology/QNAP NAS, if it is more efficient.

[@PolymorphicBytes]

If you have any PC building skills, build your own NAS. You will save tons of money.

[@mcash2189]

I really hate when people Express enthusiasm for the DIY aspect but then want to shy away from having to learn how to do something like everything else in life you're not going to know how to do everything perfectly the first time it's a learning experience so learn

[@milohajek]

I like my Synology DS920+ & DX517 expansion unit. I could easily throw some drives into one of my 14 (15 once I find a replacement CPU i9-9900KS or even i7-9700K), but the problem I always run into is a good networking software.

[@thomasgessert8518]

The most important parts of a NAS are network and storage. Secondary size, cpu and energy usage depending on use case. As for DIY NAS I found it difficult to find a suitable mainboard. Today you probably want to use SATA and/ or NVMe SSD. In that case 1 or 2 2.5 GbE port would be the absolute minimum for networking, 10 or 25 SFP+ the optimum. If you even think about a DIY NAS you probably want at least 4 SATA ports. There is no way to get a mainboard with these features onboard. Today moainboards have often only 4 SATA ports and probably a single 2.5 GbE. So several PCIe slots with at least 4 lanes or more are needed (16x with bifurcation for 4x M.2 card, 4x for a single port 10GbE card, maybe another for storage controller). In the consumer spaces we are talking about ATX form factor or above. In my case I either end up with another main PC build with special software or to buy a professinal NAS for way above 1.000€. For professional use I would go with either NAS or storage server. A storage server would give the freedom of OS choice. NAS OS typically only support basic RAID configurations. In my use case I decided against both, put more storage in my main PC, use my old NAS for cold storage and just wait for the times to come.

[@curtisbme]

Was looking a Synology until I found out that it is going to give me issues for not paying stupid price for their branded hard drives and not my own. So back to looking just rolling my own.

[@PatrikKron]

I believe that’s only their business nases, not the ones you are likely to buy. But verify before buying.

[@807800]

It's weird people keep talking about Plex for DIY stuff while Jellyfin exists.

[@dano8308]

Until jellyfin works with Samsung tizen and is more stable on apple tv would be nice. Then I can make the switch

[@xellaz]

I luv my Synology NAS'es and they've been running reliably for years but their recent stance to force users to use their own Synology HDDs/SSDs/etc. is making me think of just going with a different brand or just DIY my own for the next upgrade. 😔

[@ryanmalone2681]

They also won't stand behind their drives. I have a 920+ and the Synology NVMe cache was corrupting the data. I proved it by removing them and it worked fine, whereas as soon as I put in the Synology NVMe it corrupted my Plex database. They were brand new and they wouldn't replace them or accept any responsibility. Now that I need a 12-16 bay NAS, there is no way I will go Synology.

[@xellaz]

@@ryanmalone2681 That sux! Yea! Synology don't realize they will be loosing more business by being greedy and now not even supporting their own products that are forced upon us. 😮‍💨

[@dianaalyssa8726]

I agree with Jeff. Have a lot of large drives 12-20TB it's gotten cheaper to be a good data hoarder. Not sure the old 1tb-3tb what to do with other than redundancy.

[@Fractal_32]

You could throw them in a ZFS pool and use them as one drive. (ZFS stands for Zettabyte File System.) ZFS addresses some issues that RAID has since ZFS is both a file system and a logical volume manager. ZFS has been in improved upon for decades and is seen as reliable legacy software. (SUN Microsystems started development of ZFS in 2001.)

[@arthurwintersight7868]

Old hardware can be recycled into PC flipping. If you already have most of the parts you can build a system on the cheap, slap in a 3 tb hard drive that's been fully cleaned, to pair with a 256gb SSD, and you're good to go for selling it.

[@ironfist7789]

Have one of each! for more backups

[@tek_soup]

Build! just built mine, it will Smoke 99% out there

[@huplim]

Jeff, where’s the beer?

[@FOIN22913]

You can have some fun with a Synology Nas if you want to get into it. After all its just linux!

[@milohajek]

OK, I do have an A/V issue for either of you (Adam) or Jeff, after a VLC player update in October/November 2023, and since then I've had issues with audio cutting out for 3 to 5 seconds in RANDOM intervals when listening to TV shows or Movies that are streaming from my Synology. I've Uninstalled/Reinstalled VLC, I've checked the VLC Reddit boards and tried all the settings and still there are times when the Audio drops out (the video keeps playing). Any ideas 💡?

[@firecwby1999]

Check the windows error log as soon as you can after an event. This sounds like an audio driver could be crashing. Normally it takes a little longer than that for a driver to recover, but it’s not unheard of.

[@milohajek]

@firecwby1999 Thanks for the suggestion but I think it was one of my 2TB NVME boot drives, as it ended up taking the entire bootloader down with it 3 weeks ago. I sent it in for warranty and put another 2TB NVME in that system, had to reload Windows and ALL my software (which I was not happy about, next time I think I'll make an ISO of the drive and keep it on the NAS), but the AUDIO problem is gone, which is about the only positive experience from this so let that be a lesson, keep a backup ISO of your main drive.

[@sliphere011]

Where do you buy your storage? Was the $1000 including the 80T of storage? I'm looking at building my own solution as well.

[@Dgodwin94]

He normally does a lot of enterprise refurbished / recertified on Ebay and alike. Sas drives are also normally a little cheaper but require an hba / raid card (you would want the hba or if you go the raid card you would want it in hba mode)

[@sliphere011]

@@Dgodwin94 thank you! I didn't know that retired enterprise hardware was sold on ebay. Is there a specific flag/tag to look up? Or just searching "enterprises refurbished" will do the job?

[@bushi1147]

​@sliphere011 just look for hours on and test your hardware when you get it for ebay's refund policy.

[@FakeName39]

TrueNas Scale for plex and photoprism or jusr get a synology so i can back up photos from cell phones. Its really the hassel of learning how to config that

[@PatrikKron]

I build a TrueNas Scale system and never got it really stable. The network share works but I’ve had a lot of problems with apps, vm’s and the main gui freezing. I might have some bad hardware, but I don’t think it’s _only_ that. If I had set it up today I would gave used Truenas Core or bought a Synology.

[@tauheedulali2652]

Turn your old computer into a NAS storage by installing a suitable version of Linux on it when support has run out for your Windows OS e.g. Windows 7 and 8.1 era machines that have decent multi core support. Minimal change needed

[@PatrikKron]

It’s a great way to start. Keep in mind the electric cost though, in some cases it can be cheaper to buy new (or newer) hardware due to lower electricity usage. But I think it’s great if you can start with what you have and then learn if you want to upgrade or switch to a prebuilt nas.

[@tauheedulali2652]

@@PatrikKron if running it as a Nas you can probably underclock your processor, run it in energy efficiency mode, enable the iGPU, remove any PCI-E cards except network cards, replace the power supply with a better rated one or one made for small form factor, that might make a little difference

[@brettdavis6361]

TrueNAS is the answer

[@kvbk]

What is the phone he is using? Seems perfectly flat on the becnh with front camera. is it zenfone with a case?

[@mamdouh-Tawadros]

I am a fan of Jeff for a long time. But recently I found that NAS cases are priced in a way that the whole build end up more expensive than the regular 4bay NAS on Amazon. Unless you are prepared to use non hot swappable trays, (atypical NAS) then may be you, can make it cheaper.

[@connortreado2179]

Only liking and commenting out of respect for Jeff.

[@the_arcanum]

I'm amused by the fact no one is mentioning the planned obsolescence of turnkey NAS caused by lack of firmware updates (I'm looking at you Synology but others are guilty of it too). It's a Network Attached Storage. It has to run securely on the Network so it needs regularly updated firmware else you lose a lot functionality because you can´t connect your server to the Internet anymore. That's the thing with DIY, as you're running of the shelf hardware and not proprietary hardware you'll never be stuck with EOL solutions. And you'll never get stuck with controllers that are unable to run bigger drives because the NAS wasn't built at the time to handle their size.

[@milohajek]

Haha 😂 he said $1,200... I think I have over $3,000 just in the 9 HDD in my Synology NAS, plus the cost of the 2 Synology boxes.

[@TazzSmk]

simple: if you're asking such question in first place, you probably should not build your own :D NAS means network attached storage, and if you're planning to tinker with important and sensitive data, good luck having proper backup strategy :P

[@kevinhansford3929]

Iv found that an n100 mini pc has made a great plex server in my home for £100

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

Same (except I run Jellyfin). I am running Proxmox on mine - after an upgrade to 16GB of RAM - with several LXCs containers and a few VMs and it runs like a champ. I love my Beelink!

[@kevinhansford3929]

@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 really good little machine for the money! Probably my best computer purchase of 2023 imo

[@TokenTech]

Space invader one for unraid videos

[@bdot0276]

I have a DS920+ and it can do hardware transcoding just fine. 🤷🏾‍♂️

[@salto1994]

that one has a intel CPU with GPU, the 923 has an AMD without GPU

[@bdot0276]

​​@@salto1994I know this. I watched this video over a month ago so I'm not sure if they brought up the 923+ and I commented about having a 920+. Either way there are still affordable options options with Quick Sync, like the 423+.

[@arminbreuer7968]

As for software - get Unraid and be done with it.

[@OperationDx1]

Many off the shelve NAS's can do plex perfectly fine without having to deep dive on building your own. It's a massive undertaking and suggest avoiding it unless you really want to spend weeks learning and research on hardware.

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

Actually, only the good off-the-shelf ones can deal with on-the-fly transcoding easily: the consumer level ones are riddled with old Celerons or worse, ARM CPUs that were used on circa-2017 phones with 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM that are pathetically weak to do anything other than be used as a fileserver. See the Asustor AS1102T or the Synology DS220j to have a good idea of what I am talking about. Once you start budgeting for a decent Synology unit, you start to get into the price range of powerful DIY setups that will outperform that Synology by 10-fold.

[@OperationDx1]

@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 Sure but at that point you should just buy a proper server.

[@OperationDx1]

@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 I mean a decent NAS with an i3 or I9 is $2000 USD or more and at this point you can just but a computer for much less.

[@Pyrocumulous]

Server stage is the next demotion after child’s gaming PC. Easier to justify the upgrade when the old hardware still has useful life.

[@eliotcole]

I'd like to add to the discussion (I'm 30s in) ... and that is NVME (or SATA6, I suppose) NAS purely aimed at media storage for playback and nothing else. Surely there is a cheap way to do this, but I'm unable to find a way that doesn't either cost the earth or make more noise than my mother at a hairdressing salon. Bearing in mind that the solution will require at least 2.5gbe and passive cooling. There's some good things coming from the SBC land like the FriendlyELEC CM3588 ... but the issue that comes is the lack of a truly opensource OS. I won't use the OS images supplied by these companies because of trust issues, and prefer that there is a properly opensource way to do things since I have security concerns there.

[@greatwavefan397]

There are four-bay NVMe cases with Thunderbolt/USB 4 out

[@jerryguizar7073]

Asustor Flashtor 6 (FS6706T)

[@eliotcole]

@@jerryguizar7073Yeah, cheap at half the price 😉

[@eliotcole]

@@greatwavefan397Aye ... I know ... but ... NAAAAAAAASSSS ;-)

[@thestrykernet]

It really depends on how much storage you want and how fast it needs to be. CWWK who makes pretty much all of the small router boards that come out of china has a 4x m.2 PCIe x1 board that can be put in the 4 port Alder Lake-N version. So long as you could work out cooling that would get you 4x 2.5gb ports + 4x M.2 in a small passive case for probably around $250 USD (you just need to provide memory and storage).

[@jaimeduncan6167]

I believe either the expert is coming from an agenda or he has no idea of current QNAP offerings. QNAP has options with 32 XEON cores 1TB of RAM and 24 U.2 bays. They also have entry-level systems and intermediary packages like the QNAP TS-h973AX or stronger like the QNAP TVS-h1288X with a 6 core Xeon W-1250 at 3.3ghz and up to 128GB of RAM. It also has 8 bays for HDD, 4 for SATA SSDs, and 2 for m.2 The TVS-h1288X also supports ethernet over Thunderbolt with an optional card. So plenty of options.

[@manny7684]

At what cost

[@lewislane1143]

Adding any program on Synology is not much different than Truenas DIY.

[@eliotcole]

I would like to say that most people that want a NAS for their home are not the people that will be commenting here. They just want a safe place to keep stuff and host media. They don't need to virtualise their life or whatever. ;-)

[@bushi1147]

Please don't speak for other people you may want not to diy but not everyone is like you.

[@eliotcole]

@@bushi1147I'm literally doing the opposite of that.

[@bushi1147]

@eliotcole Do you not understand the words you write? I seriously ask as a question, not a statement.

[@Demonwicked]

if u have lots of free time and patience to mess around build it yourself, if u just want something that work and not interested in wasting your time, a set it and forget it, buy synology or something and save urself some time and headache, and go fishing or smth

[@rodfer5406]

Yes, off the shelf…. Blphphph 👎

[@BatTech]

Totally disagree with this guest. Off the shelf for something like Plex is perfectly fine. Have zero issues with it

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

Actually, only the good off-the-shelf ones can deal with on-the-fly transcoding easily: the consumer level ones are riddled with old Celerons or worse, ARM CPUs that were used on circa-2017 phones with 512 MB to 1 GB of RAM that are pathetically weak to do anything other than be used as a fileserver. See the Asustor AS1102T or the Synology DS220j to have a good idea of what I am talking about. Once you start budgeting for a decent Synology unit, you start to get into the price range of powerful DIY setups that will outperform that Synology by 10-fold.

[@tfkoincognito]

I disagree, Jeff knows his stuff, he was careful limiting into price ranges for a reason. A $1000 diy solution can run circles around 90% of off the self units. Some of those being $2k similar