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My Newbie Experience Getting Into NAS
- Thread starter drrich2
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I expect the current prices have affected demand quite a lot. In theory that would be an opportunity for somebody that could push down prices, but I guess there is always the risk that demand goes down and the investment would be lost.
From a manufacturer point of view the current situation can be quite good, they are selling everything they manufacture at way better margins then before… So the problem is more on consumer side.
From a manufacturer point of view the current situation can be quite good, they are selling everything they manufacture at way better margins then before… So the problem is more on consumer side.
Yes, the spiking prices of hard drives, SSDs, RAM and NAS have basically made it unaffordable for most hobbyists (definitely a result of collusion among manufacturers, not just the AI boom as reported).
I'd say hold the fort if you already have a NAS, and maybe wait things out if you're looking at getting a new one.
Meanwhile, Ubiquiti UniFi steps into enterprise:
I'd say hold the fort if you already have a NAS, and maybe wait things out if you're looking at getting a new one.
Meanwhile, Ubiquiti UniFi steps into enterprise:
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The impression I got from online content was that ramping up production in a major way for this type of highly sensitive components isn't something that can be done rapidly. If it could, why wouldn't they? If vendors could fill A.I. data farm demand and also service the consumer market, the more the merrier. So sadly, no, I don't think a substantial drop in the next several months is likely, other than holiday shopping season. I don't think Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2026 will look like it did in 2025 (when I snapped up a Terramaster F8 and 2 Crucial 4-TB NvME drives and was probably 'all in' close to a grand - I wouldn't dare try that today).
I think you already know finding an ideal, ready-made 'solution' product may not be feasible; the next questions are where are you willing to compromise, and how far are yo willing to go?
If you insist on a ready-made, 'off-the-shelf,' 'plug & play,' type product (e.g.: UGreen, QNap, Synology, Terramaster, Asustor), and you find it, I hope you'll share what you settle on.
A little quick Goggling (and willingness to accept A.I. results) indicated UGreen doesn't have 1U rack mount NAS units right now, QNAP (a well-established mature brand that from reading I'm guessing is between UGreen and Synology, leaning toward Synology perhaps?) does - and even has a rack mount section in the QNAP Store on Amazon. At a cursory glance, I'm getting sticker shock at those prices. Do you need a 10 Gbps ethernet port? QNAS has an official store site - read carefully, I spotted 1 with only 4 gigs RAM. Terramaster has an official store with rack mounted NAS.
An interesting alternative, more involved and advanced, would be a DIY NAS where you basically take a PC or similar (I would think you could get something that could go in your server rack), and run a 3rd party OS like TrueNAS or UnRaid. I haven't done this. I've somehow gotten the impression those OS's aren't as 'easy' as, say, UGreen's might be, but then again they may offer things it doesn't?
Any idea how much total storage you anticipate needing? How many drive bays you want this to have?
If you plan to host web sites, are you by any chance on cable model service where the upload speed is far slower than the download?
Are you open to used equipment - IT Industrial Asset Disposition (ITAD vendors), eBay, Craig's List, Facebook Market Place, etc.?
I'm rambling. Here's what I'd do in your shoes:
1.) Figure out how much storage I need, how many drives I want to spread it over and what RAID version I wanted to use (e.g.: RAID 5 for 1 drive redundancy, RAID 6 for 2). See if there's an option to attach another storage unit to this NAS if your storage needs grow in the future.
2.) Stick to HDD-based (big SSDs too expensive now), but ideally get one with read or read/write SSD cache capability.
3.) Not being up on RAM requirements, I'd want at least 8 gig, or at a dead minimum the option to add to or replace anything under that later. I don't run virtual machines.
4.) Decide if you need 10 Gbps ethernet ports.
5.) See if it can host what you hope to host.
6.) Pick a couple of ready made models that are closest to what you want, perhaps a QNAP and a Terramaster or what-have-you. Compare features and trade-offs/omissions at those price points.
7.) See what would be involved in building your own, and compare to 6.).
Now the trade-offs begin. Ubiquiti's 1st entrant into the NAS sphere was the UNAS Pro, IIRC, and I think it's mainly just a NAS, not much server functionality vs. competitors so I question odds of you hosting from it. But...7 bays and around $500? Wow. Looks like it's 2U Rackmount, though.
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A warning about Unraid - I had it for a few weeks and found that it hangs on small files sometimes. It's what pushed me to Synology, and eventually UNas Pro. I don't know if the small file issue was fixed, but it shouldn't take 20 minutes for a directory of Atari disk images to be written to the server, nor smaller Mac files from years ago. It was a known issue, but not widespread. I eventually gave up.
I really doubt it’s collusion. Manufacturers will make whatever they assume brings in the most money. For ram / SSD manufacturers that meant a mix of solutions to different verticals. Suddenly there is a shortage of memory chips as somebody is willing to pay significantly more. Yes, you can still buy the consumer products but the increase in raw material cost matches what enterprise is willing to pay for it.
There is a huge boom in datacenter building and everyone that can wants their share.
It really does not need a collusion when the basics of capitalism lead to this exact outcome.
Sux though, I just payed almost 300€ for an 8TB drive in my nas. Skipping RAID as it just felt like too much.
Will do. May be a minute. I have no more urgent deadline than Golden Gate.
Yeah, I'm not looking to devote that kind of time to it. Cross that one off the list.
This is pretty modest. I think a 4-bay unit will be fine. And depending on $/TB, pretty much anything at least 8TB (maybe even 6) should be fine.
Nope. But nothing I'm looking at doing would be huge demand or bandwidth. Hosting needs are pretty minimal. Mainly, I'd want anything that is accessible from the outside to be cordoned off to minimize security risk to the backup volumes.
Nice to have, given that it sitting right below the gateway in the rack mount means I'm not dependent on the speed of my whole site's wiring. But not essential.
Yes, like I said, the lack of server functionality is the main downside of the UNAS. But if I go toward Unifi, the 7-bay UNAS Pro for the same price as the newer UNAS Pro 4 is interesting.
Probably RAID 5. Here's a question: thinking about how to have an off-site routine... is there a way that I can basically just get an extra drive to have off-site and periodically just swap one of the drives for the off-site drive? In a 4-bay NAS, would that look something like:
Bays 1-3: RAID 5
Bay 4: I swap two drives, each configured as a backup of the bay 1-3 backup volume, so that whenever I swap them, the active just catches up with backups since it was last present?
I assume I'd need to make compromises between the size of the bay 1-3 volume and the capacity of the bay 4 drives - i.e. if bay 1-3 are 8 TB drives, for a capacity of 16 TB, I'd need 4 to be 16 TB drives... or limit the size of the volume I'm backing up to bay 4, or a compromise between the two.
Any other suggestion that accomplishes the same goal?
So you're probably looking for a 4-bay HDD-based ready-made NAS hoping to use a RAID-5 setup offering 8-terabytes usable storage, and you want the option to backup your RAID-5 array to another disc to store off-site (a really good idea). Preferable packed into a 1U (1.75" height) form factor. And you have questions about how to do that backup.
I think you probably could do what you have in mind, but a little differently. And I suspect you'll want to do something else. But let's take a look. A Raid 5 array means 1 disc is set aside for redundancy in case any of the others fail. You want 1 disc apart from that to backup the array, as additional security, to keep off-site. Nice, but it won't help if the RAID box itself gets a power surge or some other major malfunction and screws up all the discs. The other concern is in a mainstream RAID array, all discs in the RAID array are treated as though they were the size of the smallest disc in it (but Synology, Terramaster and UnRaid have propriety RAID approaches that get around that).
Here's what you could do:
1.) Take a 4-bay HDD NAS and populate Bays 1, 2 and 3 with 4 terabyte HDDs.
2.) Have your device compile that into a RAID 5 array with 8-terabytes useable space.
3.) Do NOT include your Bay 4 HDD in that RAID array. Keep it separate, like you would an external drive attached to your main computer. Set your NAS to back up the RAID 5 array to it manually (since it won't be in the NAS all of the time).
There is a better way. There are a couple of better ways.
Method #1: Buy an external HDD drive, connect via USB to the NAS, and back up your NAS to it. Then take off-site.
Method #2: Find an off-site setup like a friend's home, who has a router with a USB-B port. Buy an external HDD drive, connect it to your friend's router, and delve into what settings to use to make it accessible remotely as network attached storage. You now have an off-site HDD that you can have your NAS back up to automatically at set intervals, without having to pull out or swap drives, transport a drive between places, etc.
It's possible your parents have a router with a USB-port they don't use. Not all modern routers have them, but some do. Might even be worth buying a cheap router to add one.
Methods #1 and #2 leave a spare bay in your NAS in case your storage needs grow in the future.
Did a little quick shopping to see what I might turn up. QNAP TS-h765eU-8G-US
looks interesting (though it makes me want to shoot their marketing people - who comes up with these names?). Around $950 + tax, depending on where you shop I imagine.
4-Bay, option to add NvME for cache, not a recent release but seems admired, it's 1U and I suspect would fit your rack.
In terms of 'gotchas,' it comes with 8 gig RAM and if you want to take it to 16 you've got to replace the single RAM module, and you need to add an optional component if you want to take it to 10 Gbps speed. And like with other NAS, you've still got to pay for those hard drives.
TechPowerUp has a review - QNAP Unveils TS-h765eU Short-depth Rackmount 4-bay NAS for Space-constrained Environments Browsing the comments suggests some people think you can get a better hardware deal with Asustor at the cost of a less extensive software ecosystem.
How much money you willing to drop on this project?
looks interesting (though it makes me want to shoot their marketing people - who comes up with these names?). Around $950 + tax, depending on where you shop I imagine.
4-Bay, option to add NvME for cache, not a recent release but seems admired, it's 1U and I suspect would fit your rack.
In terms of 'gotchas,' it comes with 8 gig RAM and if you want to take it to 16 you've got to replace the single RAM module, and you need to add an optional component if you want to take it to 10 Gbps speed. And like with other NAS, you've still got to pay for those hard drives.
TechPowerUp has a review - QNAP Unveils TS-h765eU Short-depth Rackmount 4-bay NAS for Space-constrained Environments Browsing the comments suggests some people think you can get a better hardware deal with Asustor at the cost of a less extensive software ecosystem.
How much money you willing to drop on this project?
I’ve worked with servers for 30 years and seen a lot of things. But generally when a surge has killed a device the disks have still worked, and rarely have multiple disks failed at the same time (unless the server has first been running nonstop for 10 years, then **** down for hours and transported.
Best protection for a powersurge is a UPS, and assuming you rotate the backup disk (RAID5 and 1 backup disk in the slot, another offsite, rotate regularly) you are set up better then 99.9% of people out there. At that point your biggest risk is forgetting to rotate drives or having a problem in the source data and missing it long enough that it’s in the backups as well.
Well that is pretty much a fact, and the same goes for Ugreen. I’ve had Synology and Qnap and just got the Ugreen and the performance is on another level. The software has been stable up to now, but it is missing a lot of the features. I mostly don’t mind that much since I just use it as a network storage via SMB and get great speeds. The only bigger negative is the backup functionality that is a lot more simple, especially to s separate internal volume. But I don’t have regrets, this performance would have cost a lot more and Ugreen support changing the OS.
Thanks a lot @drrich2 and @dropadrop. To take it down in order...
To start, yes, confirming that's what I was envisioning and trying to describe. Questioning the description in (3) that I would have to kick off the backups manually--as I'd ideally like just to be able to insert the drive and have it do it's thing:
- If I set up a backup using the NAS's software, won't it just backup whenever it sees the destination volume is available? (Or is that a Time Machine luxury that doesn't work where the NAS assumes all the disks are always available?)
- If not, as least as far as the backup data goes, would it be an alternative simply to have all of the source Macs set each of the Bay 4 drives as a separate Time Machine destination? (Admittedly, that puts more load on those Macs, versus offloading the secondary backup task to the NAS. But not a dealbreaker.)
Just FWIW, that's them reposting QNAP's press release, rather than a review.
And what's more, I would have the off-site version of the Bay 4 drive as well.
I have a pretty good surge protector in the rack now. But I acknowledge it would be better with a UPS. Perhaps the Ubiquiti UPS 2U.
Not a super fan of this, partly because of being manual, and partly because it actually means 2 external drives and rotating them. I.E. I want to have the extra copy up to date between when I remember to rotate them, and to just swap and forget when I do.
For better or worse, I don't have a lot of friends who would understand the ask to hook up a random device to their home network. But maybe even better (?)... after an expensive data recovery incident, a close (but not nearby) family member recently got a Synology DS225+. If I set up a user account for me when I next visit, when I'm ready to move ahead, can I ship them the drive and just say 'plug this in' and configure it remotely? And conversely, can I reciprocate by backing up their NAS to mine? And does this scenario only work / work better if I also get a Synology?
Syno's nonsense that you could only use their drives in their units switched me off for life. Instead of the 1 Unas Pro 4, get a Unas Pro 7 (for cheaper), you only lose the ssd caching and get a Mac mini - that's your upgradable brains for Sonos.
If you want faster than 1Gb get a 2.5GbE adapter & you're set. The Unas is just a big hard drive so let that be its only job - your hosting lives on the mini.
I got 2 Unas to replace the 3 x Promise Das as I wanted drives that kept up to date software. Sometimes I do miss the speed, but these things are units. I got a Mac Studio (M2) cheap, for the RAM & hd bump, but more importantly (for me) the ports.
This combo is an indestructible web hosting, media serving, always on beast. The Flex 2.5 takes care of the extra ethernet ports at 2.5GbE and although I've the DR7 hardwired & UX7 will probably upgrade to a UCG Fiber & E7.
No point in splurging on AIO that have to be upgraded every few years.