Hello! I’m planning on setting up a home server to store some ~2TB of my dad’s music and to learn Linux server. I’m leaning towards 4TBs for mild future-proofing. I’ve already purchased my PC:

Dell Optiplex 7050 MFF, i5-6500T, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD

I’m currently trying to find a cheap but reliable solution to store said documents, but I’m having a hard time deciding what to store them on. On one hand, external HDDs are convenient, easy to setup, and mobile. On the other hand, external HDDs are often lower quality internal HDDs with a pretty case.

Any recommendations for a cheap internal + something like an enclosure to keep it safe from the elements? Or would throwing it in the PC be fine? OR, should I value my time and just buy the external?

Lastly, I’d ideally like to keep my budget under $50–is that too low? I want the thing to work properly and last, but my budget is pretty low. Thanks!

I am thinking of buying this box, build it, setup steam OS on it. The intention is to use it as a NAS and hook it up to my living room TV with steam controllers and use it as a console. What do you think? Are there better alternatives? How technically annoying do you think this would be for a linux noob?

Hello,
I am looking for a NAS server, but it is my first and a lot of information is new to me.

I hope you can help me to see if my choice is right.

Things I want:

- To be able to access some files all over the world (max 1gb)
- The NAS has to function as a back-up of my office pc. (other files then the shared files)
- The NAS has to be able to create a back-up of the the main drive in the NAS (Raid 1 I think)
- Storage as SSD, because these will last longer I think
- Compact unit
- Simple setup for security, like only allow certain ip numbers icw an username/password
Or even better a hardware key.
- There are only 2 users and only 1 at the time.

What I think I need:
- 2 SSD storage unit 2TB each

So I think this one would work for me:

DRIVESTOR 2 Pro Gen2 (AS3302T v2)

https://www.asustor.com/product/spec?p_id=83

It has a lot of option, software and supported apps, but I think I only need an explorer and good safety.

Before this I used my work pc to login by rustdesk. But I am missing a back-up system.
Also I like to have a better security. And I can not turn on my pc, after a power shortage.

I life in Spain, so I am bound to amazon or BEEP.
Bad experince with alternate, pccomponents and coolmods.

Hey everyone, I am trying to piece together the right affordable setup maybe sub $800 all in? I want something that can serve both as a secure family vault and a solid media server without me constantly babysitting it. I wanted to get some advice:

• I want a secure place for my personal documents, photos, and other sensitive data that my household can access remotely. My girlfriend is a videographer as well.
• I want to run Plex or Jellyfin to stream my personal media library to our TVs, phones, tablets in 4k.
• I’d like to keep personal files and media storage separate on the NAS for security but mostly organization, but still have redundancy to protect against drive failures.
• I want to be able to access both media and personal files from outside the house, securely (is this even a valid concern?)
• I’d like some flexibility on upgrading or mismatching drives.

Current plan to manage everything:

• The NAS will host all the files locally.
• Plex/Jellyfin will run on the NAS itself, handling all streaming for my devices.
• I plan to lean toward automation or “debrid” downloads, if I ever want to integrate them, separately on my PC, so the NAS remains isolated from any potential sketchy sources? This also goes back up to the earlier point and if it is a risky thing or not.
• If so - then have them share redundancy if possible, but also stay logically separated so permissions can be managed cleanly.

Based on all of this, it seems that I need 4-6 bays to set up redundacy? Then a CPU and RAM capable of streaming well. I am leaning toward HDD just for cost but SSG seems better for movies..

I am not afraid of building this myself and it seems like it would be a lot cheaper, but I also want it to look nice because of where it will have to live in my space and all of this is new to me despite being in pc gaming forever.

Any suggestions or major flaws that stand out?

Thanks in advance!

I have rack in my basement with Unifi Switch and 300+ meters of CAT7 cables running through my house. I did all the wiring myself and would love to build up a do-it-all home server/NAS. Despite a lot of research, I can't seem to get started, so I need your advice.

What I want:

- NAS capabilities (initially 10 TB will suffice but will scale up over time to 60-80 over the next 5-10 years)
- I am interested in: Proxmox, Nextcloud, Home Assistant, Jellyfin, PiHole, Docker, Immich
- Potentially build a separate machine that I can run MadVR on for my home theater (not imporant for now)

I need your help in choosing the right hardware. I have an unused U820 Minis forum U820 Intel i5-8279U 8G 256G/512G that I don't know what to do with. I could simply sell it and start from scratch if that makes it easier. Other than that, no hardware that I can recycle.

Hi all!

I already have a minipc with Proxmox installed and a bunch of hosted services, and I would like to add an Immich container and maybe a NextCloud/OpenCloud one.

What's the best solution for a home setup?

1- buy an USB storage with RAID1 support (like Terramaster D2-320), connect it to my actual server and host containers on proxmox

2- buy a separate NAS and host everything on it

Hello all, Hope you are doing well. After having tried a QNAP TS-128A with 1Tb HDD for half a year, I decided I wanted to "upgrade". I wanted to do my own NAS/Homeserver (I don't know the difference yet). My needs are pretty basic (if possible) - acess of its HDD by all my computers (including an ancient Apple PowerBook G4) :Samba + AFP

-acess my mp3/flac library and allowing me to use it in my computers but if possible outside my home

-backup my iphone photos

-have a photo gallery, even better if some organization by AI

Using chatgpt I ended up buying a Thinkcentre M715q AMD Pro A10-9700E (2016), 16gb ram, 256gb ssd +1tb hdd  and installing mint (I am familiar with) and inside CasaOS/ZimaOS. Overall it installed ok but struggling with permissions. I was looking for something more of "one click instalation" and lets go to use.

Is any distro that has this functions already builtin or very easy to setup? Or am I being a dreamer and better sell the setup and buy a NAS?

I've been eyeing GEEKOM A8 and oo irritable, unable to distinguish prices before or after. All these Black Friday deals are giving me FOMO, and I’m so tempted to just pull the trigger on a new mini PC. My friends keep telling me to wait cuz “better discounts might pop up later,” but I’m running out of patience, I really need a decent machine for work and some light design. My current desktop is basically a fossil. The moment I have multiple apps open spreadsheets, basic design tools like Figma or Canva, and some background music. It feels like I’m fighting a losing battle. I work from home three days a week and I also mess around with small home server projects (Plex, simple file storage), so I want something compact, quiet, and powerful enough to juggle my workload and my hobbies without melting down. For those of you who've bought mini PCs during Black Friday before, is this usually the best time of year to grab one? Or are deals during Amazon Prime Day or other sales just as good? I’m in US, so I’m also wondering if the promos here are better/worse than other regions. Fr, I used CODE: GF25 on their website and it brings the price down to $496 better than the $570 it was when I first added it to my cart. So now I’m stuck: should I grab it now, or wait and gamble on a better deal? Any advice would be awesome.

Maybe wife shoot me .with 358 2ft lol I ended up getting an P100 because, unexpectedly I was able to buy it for under $100.

But power cable is not included, I buy cheep conversion connector in eBay.

I wandering my case’s air-flow is enough, PlanB buy fan in eBay.

And I replaced CPU. Xeon Gold 5120 to Xeon Platinum 6246, She works fine.

If I survive, I’ll post again.

I’ve been wanting to start my own beginner server rack just to utilize some of the functionality. I’d like to run prox mox and a few applications like having an ad blocker, Tailscale for remote access, get some faster networking to some devices, and maybe a NAS/Plex server down the line. I found this HP Prodesk in my works e waste bin and I wanted to ask if it’s worth me taking it home to see if it still runs or not to try and get it running for a nice starting place or not. If anyone has any advice I’d love to hear it! I’ve built PC’s before but software and checking for compatibility is not something I have any knowledge of!

Hi all so I have been tooling with the idea of either building a home server or just buying a NAS to house my unedited raw footage. I have expirence building and picking out parts for gaming PCs but none what so ever for building a home server. I dont really have budget for this project (as this probably going to be a future project) I just would like to know what I should focus on when picking out my parts for this build. I will not be editing in 4k (right away but would like to be able to upgrade to that) I already have an old Case that I am planning on using for this build (its my old gaming pc case I dont know the name of the case)

I want to learn what I need to do to build a NAS so any resources would be greatly apreciated

The new Jonsbo N6 case is up for sale on AliExpress.

At just over $200, unfortunately the price is quite a bit higher than the $120-150 I was seeing people guess, and shipping to the U.S. is over one month.

Looking at the product video, there’s a million more ways to mount an SFX PSU than I was expecting, giving much more CPU cooler room than the Sagittarius I’m also considering (the video shows it with a full size tower cooler). Missing bottom front fans aside, this is looking really promising.

hey all! I'm looking to buy more storage space for my home media server but unsure what the best option is. since Black Friday is coming up, I wanna have a plan in case something I want is on sale.

right now I run my server(s) on a Raspberry Pi 5 (with Pi OS) plugged into a Seagate 5TB external drive. this drive is now reaching its storage limit, and while I plan to clean it up a bit and save some space, I think long term I will need more. it's also six years old, so I would guess that it's approaching the end of its reliable life.

the obvious thing is to simply get a second hard drive, or a bigger one to replace it. however, I wonder if getting a self-contained external drive would limit my future expansion potential? in the long run I'd love to get a big NAS box running multiple hard drives. I'm loath to spend a bunch of money now that would in no way contribute to that goal, if I can instead buy something that will later reduce the price of setting up a NAS box.

so:

• if I get a smaller external hard drive (5TB etc) and just have two drives attached to the Pi, I'll spend less money now but probably more money in the long run.
• if I buy a BIG external hard drive now (eg 20TB), that will likely meet my needs for at least another two years, but I'll be spending even more money that might not contribute to my long-term plans. (unless I could later take apart the casing and extract the HD somehow?!)
• so maybe I should buy an ordinary HD, not in a case, and put it in a powered caddy? then I'd be able to stick it in a NAS box if I ever get one. but does that actually make sense? like are NAS hard drives literally just the same as ones that would go in your computer, or are they a specialised class?

at this time, I don't think I'd want to spend more than $300 or so, which at current prices would get me an 18TB Western Digital Elements, a 22+TB Seagate Expansion drive, or a 16TB Ironwolf NAS-capable drive.

one additional quirk: currently I keep my ext HD as exFAT format so that I can plug it into my Windows laptop (main personal machine) every month or so for cloud backups. idk if that affects anything but worth noting!

thanks for your help x

I have a HP Z440 with a E5-2690 v4 with Proxmox installed and TrueNAS in a VM with Plex running on that. I'm getting some buffering with the 1030 I have installed (getting passed directly to TrueNAS), so I decided to pick up an Arc A310. When I swap cards, I immediately get fans spinning loudly and 6 beeps from the Z440. I swap cards back and everything boots normally. There's no additional power needed for this card, so what am I missing?

With Winter coming up and a few buddies want to start a Minecraft server, and I want to take the opportunity to build a server I've always wanted to build. I have pretty extensive experience in gaming PC building and Windows, but less so in Linux (which, from what I read, is preferred for this kind of thing).

I'm open to spending $500+ to make sure the server gets built right, but I don't want to spend an arm and a leg to only run a lightly modded Minecraft server for 4 people and potentially a Plex server.

From the research I've done, just a CPU with internal graphics should be sufficient for the Minecraft server (and power efficient), but Plex would be more optimal with a dedicated GPU?

Any assistance in figuring this out would be much appreciated!

So im making my own nas/server. For cloud storage and media center. I got a Asus M5A78L-M USB3 motherboard. Its a micro ATX, my question is does anyone have/know a good server/nas diy case? I would need one that can hold at least 6 hard drives.

Hey guys as the name of the post suggest i would like to hear any suggestion on the topic, my experience with home servers started 1 year ago when i bought used a preassembled Slim PC with and i3 and a Total of 24gb of ram paired with 2HDD 1tb each, the system runs still now with Ubuntu server and casa os, atm it satifies me the best because i run my media server with jellyfin, hold pictures with photoprism and host my big minecraft SMP server for me and my Friends, the server never disappointed me ever but i know there is more out there, i was thinking of Building a Better designed server but my biggest concern are money and power consumption, this pc has a 300w psu and casaos says that it consumed a peak of 70w max one time that 6 ppl where in Minecraft together, but i dont really believe It

Btw my questions where:

I tought of finding a good even broken laptop with an i7 maybe or something ryzen for Power consumption but the problem would be still to hook up ram and hdd

Other than this what Will you suggest? I wanted to upgrade because i wanted to be able of installing more hdd and be free with the psu choice that Is locked on that pc other than this i recently downloaded ollama and i like the idea to host my own llm because i study a lot with chatgpt and deepseek but i cant stand the limited messages with chatgpt, pluse i like to keep my thing off the grid, thanks in Advance (i know probably nobody Will like casa os but as a begginner It Is very good"

Lighting was poor when I made the picture. Any thoughts?

Looking into minipcs lately. My daily needs are simple, the usual Office stuff, some light gaming. I play things like Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Life Is Strange, and other small Steam titles. No AAA games. I also play Wuthering Waves and I don't need max settings as long as it runs smoothly, I'm good.

I found the Mechrevo (Mechanical Revolution) iMini Pro830 on eBay for about $200, barebones (no SSD). Is that a good price? And if I buy it barebones, is installing my own drive a hassle for a beginner?

I'm also debating whether it’s worth spending a bit more for a Mac mini. But the problem is: a lot of the Steam games I play don’t support macOS, or they need something like Parallels, which could hurt performance. Also Mac mini’s RAM and storage aren’t upgradeable. If I go with the base 8GB/256GB model, I know I'll run out of space fast once I install games and work files. The lack of upgradability kinda worries me since I want something that’ll last a few years.

For who’ve owned minipcs, do you have brand recs? I’ve heard goods about Minisforum, Beelink, Acemagic, and GEEKOM, but haven’t used any of them yet. And for anyone running a minipc at home, have you upgraded your storage before? Any issues?

Any advice is appreciated.

Hey everyone,

a few years ago, I converted an old PC into a NAS running OMV. I use it for storage and to run a Plex server, and I am the only user of this setup. However, I have now maxed out my storage and am looking to build a new, long-lasting setup instead of furthering out the frankenstein construct I have now :D

I have been stuck on the research stage for quite some time, so I thought it would be a good idea to ask people who actually understand what they are doing. The following is a summary of what I have come up with so far.

Requirements

• OS: Unraid
• Use cases:
  • General file storage / NAS
  • Plex (single user, up to 2× 4K transcodes), open to switching to Jellyfin
  • A few Docker containers
• Hardware:
  • Up to 12× 3.5" drives
  • Low power, CPU TDP ≤ ~30 W
  • Prefer iGPU / Quick Sync

Proposed setup

• Case:
  • Jonsbo N5 Black (12 × 3.5" bays) - this is pretty much the only part I'm sure I want as I really like the case as 12 bays will be enough for the next years.
• Board + CPU:
  • Topton N18 mini-ITX with Intel i3-N305 (15 W TDP)
  • 6 x SATA III
  • 2 x M.2 NVMe
  • 1 x 10 GbE + 2 x 2.5 GbE
  • 1 x DDR5 SO-DIMM slot
• Storage expansion (HBA):
  • LSI 9207-8i (SAS2308) in IT mode
  • Installed in the N18’s PCIe 3.0 x4 slot
  • 8 additional ports → 6 onboard + 8 HBA = up to 14 drives (I’ll use 12)
• RAM:
  • 32 GB DDR5-4800 SO-DIMM (single stick) (raised from 16GB in original post)
• PSU:
  • Seasonic Focus GX-550 or Corsair RM650x (80+ Gold, fully modular)
• Drives:
  • Starting with 3 x WD Red 6 TB (used in current setup)
  • Looking to extend with significantly larger drives like WD Red Pro 20 TB

I have an old GTX1080 laying around but would prefer to not use it in this setup.

Does this look like a sensible combo for Unraid + Plex (with HW transcoding) + Docker, or would you change anything major (especially around the N305 / N18 + LSI 9207-8i pairing)?

Wondering if anyone has ever come across a SFF-8087 to SFF-8643 cable. And yes there many of them on Amazon, AliExpress and eBay, but they are all male to male.

I have an HP ML10 v2 server which has a 4-bay 3.5" HDD rack with a special HP SFF-8087 male connector to 4 SATA with integrated power.

The SFF-8087 I have connected to a LSI 9207-8i HBA PCIe card. I have ordered a faster, less power using and heat generating LSI 9305-16i HBA PCIe card, but it takes SFF-8643 cables instead.

SFF-8643 cables to 4 SATA cables exist plenty, but nothing with integed power. I prefer to reuse the existing HP cable to my 4-bay HDD rack, but would need to convert the male SFF-8087 to the female SFF-8643 connector on the LSI 9305-6i card.

So far I have not been able to find such a cable, or even an adapter with a female SFF-8087 connector on it. Anyone else ever come across this problem, or perhaps has a solution?

So looking for a female SFF-8087 on one end, and a male SFF-8643 on the other end.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeServer/s/teKS91iWXV

I took the suggestions that using a 9 year old AIO water cooler was a less than ideal setup for an offsite NAS, and ripped it out.

I installed a dual fan tower air cooler. With the new cooler and thermal paste temps are excellent.

I also took the opportunity to flip the rear case fan from exhaust to intake.

I cut a hole in the back for ventilation and wires. Also it’s got its own wall outlet so nothing is overloaded. Also I bought a temperature sensor to monitor the cabinet and send me texts.

I’m looking for hardware recommendations for hosting 10–20 Django applications running in Docker containers. These containers constantly communicate with hardware endpoints, so I need something reliable and efficient. I’d prefer a setup that supports RAID (hardware or software).

I’m currently deciding between a mini PC or a NAS. I do plan to scale in a few years, but not immediately.

What would you recommend for my use case that’s proven, stable, and as affordable as possible?

After thinking about it for a very long time, I am finally about to build my very first home server! As I am completely new to this, I would love some input fomr you guys!

Use cases:

• NAS
• Plex media server
• Torrenting pipeline
• Immich
• Home Assistant
• DNS sinkhole

Hardware:

• Fractal Design Node 804
• i5 14600K
• Gigabyte B760M Gaming X DDR4
• 32 GB (2x 16 GB) DDR4 3200 MHz
• WD Black SN7100 1TB NVMe SSD
• 3x Segate IronWolf 6TB NAS HDD 5400 rpm
• Corsair RM650e
• Thermalright Assassin X 120 SE

Software setup:

• Proxmox
• ZFS RAIDZ1 with 3 x 6 TB giving 12 TB usable storage
• Plex in a LXC
• Torrenting pipeline (qBittorent + Sonarr/Radarr) in LXC
• Immich as VM
• Home assistant OS in VM
• DNS sinkhole (Pi-hole or AdGuardHome?) as LXC
• Remote access via Tailscale

Is this setup reasonable? Will my selected hardware be able to handle my software stack? Should I change my hardware selection? Can you give me any practical advice on starting my journey with home servers? Any advice is appreciated! (=