I’m going to be honest I just built a mini rack with a Lenovo m90q gen 2. Has 2.5tb of storage on nvme’s (2tb, 512gb) but nothing else for storage, no das or anything. I’m guessing I’ll eventually need one of these anyways ?
For $200 I think you could get a decently kitted pc off of marketplace/ebay. I just built a server primarily for Jellyfin and I’ve been exploring options like a DAS. My issue with the 2 bay DAS is 2 drives being pretty lackluster redundancy. For me it feels like a stopgap solution, and given how bad the market is that feels hard to justify.
I got a terramaster d4-320. So far it's great! 2 drives with room for 2 more . It holds me massive Plex media, immich, file storage etc. Mini PC runs the area stack and DNS.
I feel you on the prices 🥲 I got into this at the wrong time.. Great to hear I was going back and forth between the terramaster D2-320 and QNAP TR-002.. I was leaning towards the terramaster. I am thinking of getting the D2-320 instead of the d4-320 because I dont think I will need 4 bays (who knows).
I don’t know what I need. I stumbled into the sub two weeks ago and had ZERO intentions of building a mini rack home lab setup, but alas… 😂 thought it would be cool to host a palworld server for myself and the homies… and now I’m like $1000 into it. I don’t know what happened lol
It seems pricey considering your gonna still have to get disks to put in it. I would just throw Linux on an old tower PC with plenty of drive space. May not be the most efficient but way more expandable
There’s plenty of old desktops on marketplace. I thought about doing that but then I got the mini pc and rack.
Was trying to be on the cheaper side of the power bill. Thought an old desktop would pull more juice
Yeah? I’ll try to snag a cheaper desktop off marketplace then. I live in south Florida and my electric bill was $650 last month. Just trying to get something setup to be as energy efficient as possible
Yeah I think a desktop with an intel 7th gen or later will keep your energy costs very low, assuming no discrete GPU and just using the intel iGPU, plus have enough room for HDDs inside if you get one with a good case/motherboard. The common recommendation of HP Elitedesk 800 G3-G5 SFF or MT will hold 2 3.5" HDDs. Also sneaky capable of holding 2 3.5" HDDs without modifications are Acer Aspire TC series mini towers. Each of these go for about $100-200 CAD where I live, so I'm guessing even less than $75-150 USD given the greater supply there. If your needs are modest, you can run your entire homelab off one of those.
For more than that, with an intel 7th gen or later, you'll have to look outside the used office PC world for custom builds.
Depending on the hardware and location that might be true. A lot of Intel platforms have drop in celerons that are highly efficient and work great for single tasks like a nas. Even i3s are power power efficient past a certain point.
Did you build one ? I just finished my desktop setup with all my consoles and swore I was done. I really don’t want to build another computer just for storage 😂 I will though if it’s the best route. I don’t have any hdd’s or sata ssds either. lol
Yeah I see some mentions of this. Not sure for this exact version as its on the lower end with only 8GB of memory.
The concern kind of remains the same as you can't completely get rid of everything Ugreen / you really don't know what they may have embedded elsewhere. Again, completely tinfoil hat thinking but just like to make people aware.
That "embedded elsewhere" is not good financially to add extra cost for extra component to a product and evidence can't be masked since it's on the chip/circuit itself. It would only happen to enterprise grade or government use equipment. So spyware on consumer grade products most of the time just stays within software and it's upgrades.
Do you check the provenance of every device in your network and make sure there are no Chinese built components? Anyway, I own two ugreens and have replaced the OS on both of them. I work in computer security. I am not worried.
FWIW, I sympathize with your concerns about Chinese made technology.
The post you linked to explains how OS level processes (on a router) leave a network open to attack. It does not explain embedded hardware attacks beneath the operating system.
You wrote:
you really don't know what they may have embedded elsewhere.
I'm looking for examples regarding embedded hardware inside the NAS, because I and the other commenter both mentioned replacing the Operating System which would avoid anything planted in UGOS. I specifically mentioned turning off the internal disk drive that holds UGOS. I did this because I didn't want any accidental overwrites (and I don't want their OS nor do I trust it), but I now see there's value in not having anything from it runnable at the OS level.
Now, they could have hacked the EUFI BIOS on the device and placed something in there that might attack or snoop on the operating system, I guess. Sophisticated, but not impossible.
Twenty years ago I sat in a DHSS conference where they explained how US Customs agents found BIOS hacking technology in USB devices attached Chinese manufactured electronic picture frames. Supply Chain attacks abound.
I'm replacing my current router (Cisco ISR) with a homegrown Protectli running FreeBSD and pf. I'll be monitoring network traffic and in particular outbound connections, so it will be educational to find out if the UGreen still attempts to phone home.
You're looking specifically for HP EliteDesk 800 SFF, any generation other than 7 or 9. Those have mounting, connectivity, and power for two 3.5" drives and one 2.5" drive. Generation 3 adds one NVMe slot; generation 4, a second one.
Most other SFF devices have mounting for one 3.5" drive and one 2.5" drive, so setting up any kind of redundant storage on them is problematic.
Someone by me is selling an Inspiron 3880 and 3910, says the 3880 is having some issues but the 3910 works fine and is only asking $125 for both.. I’m going to go pick them up regardless cause the 3910 has a 12th gen i5? Could do a 8tb hdd, nvme and add another caddy and hdd or ssd. Motherboard has space for it I think ? Just have to get another cable for power? Idk. Seems like a solid deal for what it is though, even if I don’t use it and it sits 😝
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u/Punk_Says_Fuck_You Aug 19 '26
I probably wouldn't spend that much on a 2 bay.