Can anyone guide me (a newcomer) to the subtle art of storing everything I possibly want in a NAS? Also how do I build a NAS from scratch? Thanks for any help at all!
If you are completely new, I would recommend a Synology. Very easy to use.
If you truely want to do one from scratch truenas I think is the goto project, (I personally go with pre-built solutions of external HDD or Synology/QNAP NAS).
You’re going to have to do a bit of your own internet research first, and figure out what your goals are (how much data/space you plan on hoarding, how you’re going to use it, how much you’re willing to spend on hard drives, in addition to hardware, etc.) before anyone can better answer your question. You could start with something as small as a Raspberry Pi, to something as large as multiple rack mount HDD enclosures, or something kind of in between like a Synology. When you say “storing everything I possibly want,” that is extremely vague and you’re asking us to guess what you want.
I am glad you asked. The question to start with is what do YOU want to store? Narrowing it down would make this easier to determine what hardware you might need. For example, if you are storing video media for personal viewing, then an intel CPU with quicksync would be a great idea to have as it allows you to transcode your media on the fly with an app like plex, jellyfin, or emby.
YouTube is your friend. So is piracy. And torrents. And a must, get cheap HDD’s.
Why cheap hdds and not ssds?
HDDs are cheaper than SSDs per GB
Shuckable HDDs are even cheaper per GB
I’ve purchased several 18TB WD Red Pro HDDs for $249.37, or $13.85/TB. I’ve also purchased and price tracked shuckable HDDs and don’t recall ever finding a better $/TB than that.
When they start making 12TB SSDs (or larger) at a similar $/TB, I’ll start using them over HDDs for hoarding.
I’d agree with everything except for “cheap” HDDs. Depends on how valuable your data is to you. And the best $/TB I’ve come across for an HDD, that I trust with my data, is the 18TB WD Red Pro HDDs for $249.37, or $13.85/TB.
