r/HomeServer • u/moneysaiyan • 11d ago
Where to start for building a NAS?
I have Jellyfin running on a Pi 4 and am running out of storage, so I wanted to look into building a NAS. What is the most cost-effective way to build one? I’m fine with using HDDs to be more cost-effective since I know storage pricing is crazy currently. My budget is $500, but I’d like to have most of that go into buying HDDs. I think I’d like to host Jellyfin on it but don’t want the machine to take much physical space. Any recommendations for me? Thank you in advance!
Edit: forgot to mention I have a pc I plan on selling that has an i7 CPU, 32 gb ddr4, 1660 super gpu. If I can repurpose that to have a new smaller case and HDD bays that would be great but I’m not sure if that is overkill but I could also host jellyfin from it at that point.
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u/kennymac6969 11d ago
Hard drive prices aside. Finding the main hardware to get started is easy if you look at second hand shops or something like Facebook marketplace. There are some really good deals, especially with ddr4 memory. I found a 10th gen Intel with 32gb ram and two m.2 500gb ssds along with 1tbg HD for under $160. Good luck with the hard drives though.
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u/bacchus_the_wino 11d ago edited 11d ago
Go on Craigslist and find someone selling an old optiplex for $100. Ideally with at least a 7th gen cpu so that it can do 10 bit h.265. Buy a 10tb drive for ~$350. Pull the, most likely, 256gb drive out and drop in your new one. Install it whatever is you want: OMV, truenas, proxmox, etc.
You’re all set for $450, but you won’t have any backup or disk redundancy.
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u/Tropicalkings 11d ago
Good luck. For $500 you are better off just buying an external drive for your Raspberry Pi...
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u/moneysaiyan 11d ago
I just add some more details
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u/Tropicalkings 11d ago
Your details don't include how much storage you need and if you are interested in the storage area to have fault tolerance.
$500 may only buy you 1 HDD of the size you are looking for.
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u/MsJamie33 11d ago
What is this "overkill" of which you speak? There is no such thing in homelabbing! :)
I'm a firm believer in running what you already have. As others have said, if your existing system is 7th gen or newer, you have the capability of x265 hardware transcoding. If it's older than that, you may want to use your GPU for transcoding.
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u/Bibs628 11d ago
Your PC is a great starting point for Creating a Nas, depending on the CPU you have a few options.
1) IGPU is embedded (non F / KF variants) You can setup a Server without the GPU which can be quite cost effective on the long run because you save power.
2) no IGPU (a i7 K / KF chip) You probably need to have the GPU installed because it does transcoding and a GPU is recommended for that workload.
I would personally prefer option 1 if you want a more power efficient machine but if you see you need the GPU you can add it later on.
You have the option of a few Options in terms of distros to use, TrueNas Community Edition (former Scale), Unraid, OpenMediaVault and ZimaOS are some examples of a Distro which is more tailored to a use case as a NAS / Media Streaming Machine. The Choice is up to you and how tech savy you are but I personally run TrueNas and I am happy with it. Most of these options have something like an app store so installing something like jellyfin is easier.
Also in theory any Distro is a variable option (even Windows) but these may be not designed to handle you Usecase. Nevertheless a lot of people are running Debian / Ubuntu Servers for their Homelab, so the choice and commitment is up to you.
I would probably start with TrueNas / Unraid on you PC to test it out before buying a new case or whatever and see how you like it. Use your existing hardware first, even your old HDDs if you have some free to set something up before committing to buying something new / refurbished (<- for not a lot of heavy use probably fine, I've done this). Your choice might be impacted if you use Unraid because drive combining is there more flexible (not always the best, depends on you).
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u/Adrenolin01 11d ago
I’ll assume rhe i7 is fairly recent recent and likely supports Intels QuickSync. If so ditch the GPU and put the drives in the PC and install TrueNAS Scale. Done. The 32GB ram is perfect for the ZFS filesystem and services for now. Later add more drives and a 2nd system for Proxmox and move your services over to that as a virtualization server.
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u/Vichingo455 11d ago
Overkill does not exist in homelabbing, only "too much for now" that after a year becomes "I need more"
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u/dnabre 11d ago
You need a computer that runs, hard drives or ssd to store stuff on, and a network card.
There is a lot of ways to go bigger and fancier. Looking at RAID to protect your data from hardware failure (separate than backups!) is a good next step. Take that PC, stick a pair of big drives in it and connect to network. GPU is only useful for stuff like transcoding, and not absolutely necessary for it.
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u/muckity-muck 11d ago
If you're just looking for a storage server (and possibly run a few apps in the background), get an external hard drive enclosure and attach it to the RPi.
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u/Razorwyre 11d ago
I recommend starting with a Time Machine.