And as usual everyone is saying NAS, but talking about servers with a built in NAS.
I’m not saying you can’t run your services on the same machine as your NAS, I’m just confused why every time there’s a conversation about NASs it’s always about what software it can run.
At this point you’re just fighting semantics. Even a commercial NAS is reliant on the software too, like with Synology. They run the disk management but also can run Docker and VMs with their built-in hypervisor.
If we lose the meaning of the word NAS then we can’t effectively talk about it. And enough new people are coming in and being taught that a NAS is the thing that runs Plex that it’s sometimes impossible to have a conductive conversation.
What in the hell are you talking about
I started my media server in 2020 with an e-wasted i7 3770 dell tower I snagged out of the ewaste pile. Ran jellyfin, audiobookbay, navidrome, calibre-web and an arr stack with about a dozen users like a champ. Old hardware rules if you don’t use windows
My main application server is a middling office desktop computer from 2011. Runs dozens of services without a sweat.
The main concern with old hardware is probably powerdraw/efficiency, depending on how old your PC is, it might not be the best choice. But remember: companies are getting rid of old hardware fairly quickly, they can be a good choice and might be available for dirt cheap or even free.
I recently replaced my old Synology NAS from 2011 with an old Dell Optiplex 3050 workstation that companies threw away. The system draws almost twice the power (25W) compared to my old synology NAS (which only drew 13W, both with 2 spinning drives), but increase in processing power and flexibility using TrueNAS is very noticable, it allowed me to also replace an old raspberry pi (6W) that only ran pihole.
So overall, my new home-server is close in power draw to the two devices it replaced, but with an immense increase in performance.
And of course I see this after I bought (and received) a miniPC. Picked up a"beefier" n305 unit with 16GB and a 256GB NVMe, as I wanted some headroom in case I have loftier goals. So far have have horrible luck with it in the first 3-4 hours of attempting install of some Linux flavor. Started with Proxmox, as I want to run LXCs and containers of HA, PiHole, and Jellyfin, and there are some boots where I can’t even get past the installer. Booted up a LiveISO of Mint, and even that froze after a few minutes. Reading around about possible NIC driver issues, C-states, temperature throttling, etc… and what a headache so far. I can’t be sure it’s the device, me, or the images. /vent
I’m a rookie back in the Linux world after 15 years in windows hell, but Proxmox is hard if you’re new to Linux. I didn’t have the patience. I’d install mint on the nvme itself, let it get going, see if anything persists. Best of luck!
Thanks! Yeah, quite the rookie myself, but I wanted to go with Proxmox because it the awesome scripts database the community has created (RIP tteck), as there’s one for each system I want to utilize. I suspect the unit I bought has some issues tho. I’m gonna keep tinkering for a few days before I consider returning it, if possible.
Ah yeah that could be it too. I saw all the community scripts and decided that was too much tinkering til I’m back in the Linux world lol
How about a Raspberry Pi? I’ve got one (Raspberry Pi 400) running my Home Automation setup with a couple USB 3.0 ports. Was thinking there’s gotta be some add-ons for Home Assistant to put some external storage to good use.
Don’t need anything too fancy. Just looking for some on-site backup and maybe some media storage
I’ve got 2 rPis - a pi5 running Home Assistant and a pi4 with a USB drive caddy acting as little more than a NAS (it also does all the downloading through radarr etc… )
I find them perfectly adequate.
My gaming rig acts as my emby server as it’s basically on all the time and it has a beefy gfx card that can handle transcoding.
IIRC raspberry pis aren’t great as big storage NAS due to limited io but like for a small amount of home storage more than adequate.
I think you can install OpenMediaVault on that, at least I used to run it on a Pi 3 and an USB drive. Then just run whatever docker container you wish to.
You can use it as a smb server and mount it with your other devices. They have an official addon for it with samba in the name.
The number one concern with a NAS is the power draw. I can’t think of many systems that run under 30W.
Why would I throw it away, when I can give it to someone who needs it more, or sell it? Using it as a NAS will use up more power than just buying a mini PC and using that. I calculated the costs and the energy savings would pay for one in two years. My NUC uses 6-7W idle.
I’d use an old PC as a NAS but turned it on only on demand, when it was needed. Which does hurt its convenience factor a little.
Note: talking about desktops.Don’t throw away your old PC
Literally first-world problems, right? There’s absolutely no need to tell that to someone that don’t live on a rich country. Old gear always finds some use or is sold/donated away.
I don’t know why yall are being so NASty… seriously what’s a NAS?
I see what you mean, and I have that (old PC with a bunch of 2.5" HDDs formatted as ZFS).
For me power consumption is more important than performance, so I’m looking for a lower power solution for photo sharing, music collection and backups.
I’ve got a Lenovo sitting by the TV, quietly running Jellyfin along with ESde. Might not run Win11 but it works fine for what I use it for.
My GPU failed on my old (vista) PC and can no longer boot. Should I throw it away?
A few years ago I had that case with a Laptop with a burnt dedicated graphics card.
The moment the Windows installer detected it, a blue screen ended the installation.
But a Linux installation worked and afterwards it was even possible to disable the damaged hardware permanently.
The laptop still runs without further problems.
I used to have a 5700G system that I had to switch out to a 14600k system due to quciksync pass through.
I got my 14600K down to 55w from 75w with everything else being equal. Insane how efficient some setups can be.
My 16tb Pi sips at 13w max or 8w idle. But no encoding or enough storage for normal work. So it’s warm storage
I have an old machine been using as a Unraid server for years. It’s an i7-3770 paired with 32GB of ram and like 4x2TB drives.
Finally upgrading it because it’s just not going to keep meeting needs and frankly it’s wicked old (might keep it as a gitlab runner server or something). Finally “upgrading” by taking some old hardware (and bought some new), to have a full compute + storage setup. Proxmox (Ryzen 9 5900XT + 128GB ram) with all the compute and TruNas (Ryzen 7 3700X + 64GB ram + 8x16TB drives [LSI LOGIC SAS9211-8I] [raidz2/82.62 TiB usable]) for storage with a private 10G direct link between the two (Intel X550T2BLK).
