Storage Thinking about a NAS

The most expensive part of a NAS is always the drives, if you have those already then the cost for a homebrew NAS or specialised hardware is similar - unless you already have the hardware for a homebrew.

If you don't have spare hardware suitable for building a homebrew, I cannot recommend Synology hardware enough.

 

I run two Synology NAS drives and also have an Xpenology homebrew NAS on which I tested a whole bunch of other OpenSource NAS OSes. Xpenology is fun to play with and does work but its certainly not trouble free, its a very rough installation process, including spoofing Synology S/N's, and definitely not a drop-in replacement for a Synology NAS. If your NAS is for critical data and you want it to be trouble free then I would go Synology 100%, even go 2nd hand and buy new drives or use a proper open-source alternative if you are on a budget.

When I next decide to upgrade my homebrew NAS (which I only use for non-critical stuff) I will change the OS from Xpenology to OMV (OpenMediaVault) - in my view OMV is the best properly open source NAS OS which can do most stuff out of the box without heavy hardware requirements. Worth checking out if you are going the home-brew route. Watch out for the many so-called "open" NAS OSes which have pay-walls for services, or are hog-tied unless you subscribe to a support package - I also like to avoid the resource-hungry ones which demand lots of RAM etc etc (but I am a bit of a cheap-skate)

Chunks

 

Might have a look at OMV over the weekend instead of using FreeNAS.

 

I also recommend OMV for a homebrew, I used it for years as a backup NAS (backing up my Synology 2 bay). I only recently replaced it with a four bay Synology as a primary NAS and repurposed the 2 bay as a dedicated backup unit, saving me a load of space

OMV is actually developed by the guy who developed FreesNAS - he went his own way when FreeNAS went commercial.

 

I haven't heard of OMV before, only FreeNAS.

 

OMV is a bloody good NAS OS, I only ditched it because it kept "forgetting" my laser printer. That was a few years ago too, so it's probably improved since then.

 

I got a used Drobo Pro a few years ago with 12Tb of hard drives in it for $500 on eBay. It's been a very nice low-maintenance solution for my HTPC. All I've had to do over the years is replace drives as they've gone bad. I've only lost 2-3 drives total the whole time I've had it.

If I were to get something new today, I'd probably get the Synology 8 bay DiskStation or RackStation. It offers all the same convenience, but is more reliable and less dependent on proprietary data management.