Simple FreeBSD based NAS hardware, what would you recommend in 2026?

[Freedom]

Hey,

I have never been into "storage".
My understanding of it is basically there are mechanical spinning disk drive and some based on memory chips (faster and more expensive, especially now). And that ZFS is awesome.

I am now feeling the need for a NAS for the first time in decades but I have little idea how to approach this in regards to the rocketing cost of memory.

Those are the thoughts I gathered so far:
- I want it to be FreeBSD/ZFS based as I now feel comfortable with it,
- It would be to store movies, music, backups, documents.
- Protocol wise I do not think I need more than accessing files with SSHFS and maybe S3,
- I would rather not have it always on. WOL for weekly backups and when I need it is enough,
- Capacity doesn't need to be more than 10 TB initially,
- Speed is really not that important for me. If it take 20 min to transfer 1 TB so be it,
- I wouldn't spend more than $400-500 initially
- I could reuse a N100 minipc or Raspberry Pi 4B I got laying around but I am not sure it is worth it,
- I do not want it to be too big so it can fit in a standard hotel room safe.

I looked a bit and that market is very confusing. What would you recommend? (do not hesitate to just send me link and say "buy that")
Also stupid question: do I need that RAID thing I have been hearing about for for decades?

Many thanks !

 

[SirDice]

I want it to be FreeBSD/ZFS based as I now feel comfortable with it,

Good choice, solid base.

It would be to store movies, music, backups, documents.

Any filesystem would be able to do this.

Protocol wise I do not think I need more than accessing files with SSHFS and maybe S3,

Has very little to do with the filesystem.

Speed is really not that important for me. If it take 20 min to transfer 1 TB so be it,

Gigabit ethernet is probably fast enough. And I'm assuming your home network doesn't have 10, 25, 40 or 100 Gigabit/s switch ports.

Capacity doesn't need to be more than 10 TB initially,

do I need that RAID thing I have been hearing about for for decades?

I'd go with a 3 or 4 disk RAID-Z (ZFS' RAID-5), least amount of overhead (redundancy) while still providing single drive failure protection. Drives fail, eventually. Nice to know your data can survive that.

 

[MrBSD]

Any x86 based Qnap hardware will do nicely. Their factory software is the worst in business, but their x86 hardware is excellent.

 

[bgavin]

XigmaNAS is a great turnkey NAS based on FBSD.

I have mine in ZFS2 config with six drives.
Web based GUI does all the NAS control you need.

 

[vermaden]

Hey,

I have never been into "storage".
My understanding of it is basically there are mechanical spinning disk drive and some based on memory chips (faster and more expensive, especially now). And that ZFS is awesome.

I am now feeling the need for a NAS for the first time in decades but I have little idea how to approach this in regards to the rocketing cost of memory.

Those are the thoughts I gathered so far:
- I want it to be FreeBSD/ZFS based as I now feel comfortable with it,
- It would be to store movies, music, backups, documents.
- Protocol wise I do not think I need more than accessing files with SSHFS and maybe S3,
- I would rather not have it always on. WOL for weekly backups and when I need it is enough,
- Capacity doesn't need to be more than 10 TB initially,
- Speed is really not that important for me. If it take 20 min to transfer 1 TB so be it,
- I wouldn't spend more than $400-500 initially
- I could reuse a N100 minipc or Raspberry Pi 4B I got laying around but I am not sure it is worth it,
- I do not want it to be too big so it can fit in a standard hotel room safe.

I looked a bit and that market is very confusing. What would you recommend? (do not hesitate to just send me link and say "buy that")
Also stupid question: do I need that RAID thing I have been hearing about for for decades?

Many thanks !

Small NAS case with Intel N100 inside - https://aliexpress.com/item/1005011838208405.html - with 2 x 12TB disks in ZFS mirror you have everything You need.

When it comes to software - Sylve or XigmaNAS as xVault seem quite inactive sine some time ... or just plain FreeBSD - this is what I use.

Regards,
vermaden

 

[Maturin]

My advice was, get yourself some "old" used machine. If you don't find one in your attic you may get one on a garage sale, second hand shop...for 20...100 bucks. Any working x86 midi or big tower not 30 years old will do. 8 GB RAM would be sufficient, 16 nice, >16 not really needed.
Most important things:
at least 4, better 5 SATA ports, the more the better
a working network card, if not, cost you 10 bucks
Not important: graphics card. anything you can attach any old junk monitor at just to provide text only will do.
Place some small storage drive into it for the system. 10...20 GB was fully enough; since there are no such small drives anymore, any thing will do.
Add 2, 4 or 5 equally large storage drives for the pool into it. 2 for a mirror, 4 for a raidz2 pool, 5 for a raidz3.
Install basic "vanilla" FreeBSD on the single small drive, create a ZFS pool from the others, configure NFS, ssh (once you have that, you can remove keyboard and monitor), perhaps Samba if there are Windows machines in the LAN that shall also have access to it.

You can get a pretty reliable 2..3T NAS for <200 bucks this way.
Most expensive pieces are the storage drives of course. If you must have a 18T raidz3 pool this will be not available for 200 bucks, unless you already possess the drives.

It's recommendable to use labels on your drives/partitions.

Another one of my posts to the same topic
or this one
...or this one

 

[turingo]

I've never build a NAS so take what I say below with a grain of salt.

- I want it to be FreeBSD/ZFS based as I now feel comfortable with it,

FreeBSD and ZFS is indeed a good choice for this usecase from what I've read.

I think ZFS needs ECC memory (or it's better to have) so you may need a motherboard and memory that both support ECC.

If you need hardware video transcoding (for Plex or Jellyfin), you will need a CPU that supports it.

My understanding of it is basically there are mechanical spinning disk drive and some based on memory chips (faster and more expensive, especially now).

For mechanical drives, there are 2 types of it depending on the connection they support : SATA or SAS. SAS is faster than SATA but you might need an adapter for it.

I'd go with an NVMe drive for the OS if it's supported (by both OS and motherboard) or SATA SSD if not, and for the the data I'd go with mechanical drives.

- I would rather not have it always on. WOL for weekly backups and when I need it is enough,

For WOL, i think it will depend on the network adapter / motherboard support.

Also stupid question: do I need that RAID thing I have been hearing about for for decades?

For a NAS, RAID is going to be useful indeed. ZFS support RAID software so it comes with no extra cost (as opposed to RAID hardware). But RAID is not a backup solution, so if your data (or some of it) are really important, you are going to need a backup solution too like the 3-2-1 backup rule.

- I could reuse a N100 minipc or Raspberry Pi 4B I got laying around but I am not sure it is worth it,

The minipc you got might be useful for experimenting, but I don't know if it's going to make it for a long term solution. I would avoid using USB adapter for the drives as a long term solution and go directly with SATA / SAS connection on motherboard.

- Protocol wise I do not think I need more than accessing files with SSHFS and maybe S3,

If you are going to access your S3 from WAN or any other protocol than SSH, it's better to put it behind Wireguard (VPN) to access it security-wise.


Also, there is this popular guide that you may find useful (even though they are kinda old now and that the page title didn't age very well):

[Guide] NAS Killer 6.0 - DDR4 is finally cheap

Our website is supported by our users. We sometimes earn affiliate links when you click through the affiliate links on our website, including but not limited to Amazon and Ebay. This is what AI thinks the best home NAS looks like. It sure looks like a Cooler Master N400 to me. Intro What...

forums.serverbuilds.net

[Guide] NAS Killer 5.0

[NAS KILLER 5.0 BUILD GUIDE] [JOIN THE DISCORD] 1. Objective Update the NAS Killer line of builds to iteration 5.0. Moving on to socket 1150, we should be able to see better performance and power usage, with only a slight increase in cost compared to the NAS Killer 4.0. This guide will feature...

forums.serverbuilds.net

 

[Maturin]

do I need that RAID thing I have been hearing about for for decades?

Yes.
Since you're using FreeBSD with ZFS I wouldn't bother about any hardware RAID,
but I recommend especially for that thing a RAID system, yes. ZFS provides it. And it's no big deal. It's just the question of drives you have/want/can afford, and your decision which raid to chose. ZFS does the rest.
RAID means hardware redundancy. Any hardware can fail anytime. All hardware can be bought and replaced again, but not your data. And that is saved on your storage drives. If that fails, and there is no redundancy - Backups = copies on another drive, or redundnancy through RAID - the data is lost, and nothing can bring it back. (Beancounter prevention: not for sums a common user can afford, and even then not guaranteed.)
RAID on ZFS produces pools of more than 1 drive, so there is a number of drives may fail, but there is no data loss until this number is exceeded.
Most simple way is a mirror: all drives are mirrored, containing the same data. All drives can fail until at last one. Downsize: provides you only the storage capacity of the smallest drive. Makes only real sense on two drives, or for being really safe when money is of no importance.
raidz2 and raidz3 are good compromises, raidz2 may let you lose 2 drives but you need at least 4 drives, raidz3 3, at least 5. The resulting capacity available also differs (there are online calculators for that you find quickly.)
What you chose depends on your situation, but for using it as a backup device definitely YES to RAID: Yes, of course.

 

[cracauer@]

I recommend a vanilla PC mainboard with AMD Ryzen (probably DDR4 now) that supports ECC memory. Most flexibility, you can plug in a 10 Gb ethernet card or more SATA ports.

 

[Espionage724]

- I could reuse a N100 minipc or Raspberry Pi 4B I got laying around but I am not sure it is worth it,

I have a 10TB HDD formatted UFS on USB SATA to a RPi4 with 16.0-CURRENT doing fine, and before that it was on USB to a Pro/CAD ATI FireGL laptop (same HDD was fine years single-partition ext4 Linux and NTFS Windows). USB's more consistent from the RPi (I got random UAS errors on Rensas USB 3.0)

 

[tingo]

Simplest way: NAS = file server.

 

[Freedom]

I have a 10TB HDD formatted UFS on USB SATA to a RPi4 with 16.0-CURRENT doing fine, and before that it was on USB to a Pro/CAD ATI FireGL laptop (same HDD was fine years single-partition ext4 Linux and NTFS Windows). USB's more consistent from the RPi (I got random UAS errors on Rensas USB 3.0)

Yes I am actually thinking about first making a prototype with the RPi 4B I have and 2 USB SATA adapters (with power adapter like https://www.amazon.com/Mbiydeg-Adapter-External-Converter-Transfer/dp/B0DSP9SHVF/ because I doubt the RPi power adapter can handle powering 2 drives). The RPi 4 has 2 USB 3.0 port so...

I can reuse the drives I'll buy in the next setup anyway and for the cost of 2 adapters ($20 and I might need those adapter anyway) I can get a feel of it.
Is there anything I should be careful when choosing a USB SATA adapter?

Talking about SBC I also saw both the Radxa:
- Taco https://radxa.com/products/io-board/taco/#techspec
- Penta https://radxa.com/products/accessories/penta-sata-hat/#techspec

I really like Radxa but everything tell me this is probably a bad idea, especially with FreeBSD...

 

[Espionage724]

Yes I am actually thinking about first making a prototype with the RPi 4B I have and 2 USB SATA adapters (with power adapter like https://www.amazon.com/Mbiydeg-Adapter-External-Converter-Transfer/dp/B0DSP9SHVF/ because I doubt the RPi power adapter can handle powering 2 drives). The RPi 4 has 2 USB 3.0 port so...

I can reuse the drives I'll buy in the next setup anyway and for the cost of 2 adapters ($20 and I might need those adapter anyway) I can get a feel of it.
Is there anything I should be careful when choosing a USB SATA adapter?

I use a random desktop PSU to power the Pi and HDD (post; 12V/yellow + GND spliced to a barrel end for the USB adapter, 5V/red on 2 5V pins + 1 GND)

Not sure if this is the same adapter, but the one I use looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Drive-Cable-Power-Supply/dp/B08HQQNSZN (iirc about $20 years ago; mine didn't come with USB-C converter); the cord on that looks thicker and might last longer.

UASP might be interesting; when I was using the laptop I frequently got random UAS timeouts on high-speed transfers (like a 1GB file transfer; it'd start off fine 80MB/s+, then randomly drop speed on client while server reported UAS/USB error flood). Seemingly using a quirk to force bulk mode(?)/non-UAS kept it stable most of the time. Not too sure if it's possible to buy a USB SATA without UASP, but not really sure if UAS itself could be a problem (there's various reports Linux) or if it was that specific computer/USB controller (afaik FreeBSD doesn't support UASP and does bulk mode by default)

 

[astyle]

HDDs are about half the price of SSDs these days. SSDs do last a lot longer, though, and have MUCH better data transfer rates. I'm personally sold on SSDs.

 

[drsnx60]

If you are building a Serious NAS you need a Motherboard & CPU that supports ECC memory.
it does not need to be big or fast, as the slowest critical component is likely your 1 Gbit/s ethernet port.

While this is not the cheapest setup you can go for .........

I'm using the Supermicro microATX X12STH-LN4F motherboard with 8 SATA ports four ,1 GBITs ethernet ports , with a Xeon E2300 and 64 GB ECC memory, and the fractal design NODE 804 chassie to be able to fit 8 SATA drives ( 7 disks in a VDEV and one spare. )

The motherboard chosen determines the future expandability of the platform. ECC memory is for the longterm stability of the platform.
7 disk ZFS RAIDZ2 VDEVs have tested to be the most efficient setup. RAIDZ2 is mor or less evavilent to RAID6, 5 data and 2 parity drives. system is running TRUENAS last freebsd version. Transition to a more modern O/S for this is most likely n Autumn project

 

[bgavin]

64gb of ECC will sell over $700 due to huge AI demand. Ouch

My big Xeon was a throwaway medical station. SuperMicro board, 128gb of ECC and several SSD.

My NAS is on a lesser Xeon and SuperMicro with ZFS2 and six 4tb disks, which is already full of movies. As noted above the network is the bottle neck, not the hardware.

 

[drsnx60]

64gb of ECC will sell over $700 due to huge AI demand. Ouch

My big Xeon was a throwaway medical station. SuperMicro board, 128gb of ECC and several SSD.

My NAS is on a lesser Xeon and SuperMicro with ZFS2 and six 4tb disks, which is already full of movies. As noted above the network is the bottle neck, not the hardware.

its the Diskdrives both HDD & SSD that costs the big money on a NAS. ( unless you have a JBOD in the shed ofcource. )

 

[cracauer@]

Again, the trick is to build a DDR4 platform, not DDR5. Especially if you want a good amount of RAM.

 

[gpw928]

Those in Europe can probably tell you something about operational extremes this last week.

A reliable and durable system needs to be well ventilated. That usually means fans blowing directly over the bits that get hot.

Also, now is the time to design your backup system -- because the requirements may impact your hardware choices.

 

[Maturin]

Yes I am actually thinking about first making a prototype with the RPi 4B I have and 2 USB SATA adapters (with power adapter like

Frankly, in my eyes that's a waste of time and money.
You end up with a heap of cable jumble, which is not only pretty fragile per se, but also a juice guzzler. This way you build a setup with at least three wall cubes: 1 for the Pi, 2 for the drives; don't be surprised if together they draw significantly more energy as a mediocre PC PSU.
Plus, as gpw928 said, also the drives need cooling, so another wall cube for at least one fan. If uncooled, especially when chosing HDDs, those can reach easy temperatures >50...60°C if not more.
As long as they stay below ~85°C (see drive's specs for exact values) that's not damaging the drives, but it's reducing their lifetime.
So, of course that's something for short term temporary purposes, but nothing to trust reliably in running a couple of years 24/7. And that's exactly you're also need to build: trust in such a thing.
You want to use it for your BUs. So you need to blindely rely on it's working rock solid.
By chosing FreeBSD and ZFS there is no issue by software side. Rock solid. But some improvised spaghetti rummage that has its issues every couple of days will not build much trust.

So, if this ain't the final solution anyway, and you're going to get some decent hardware for the real job anyway, why not do it in the first place instead directly, especially when you want to save money?
The bucks you will spend for additional equipmet on building a prototype, and get it working could be already enough for a used machine that was fully sufficient to do a reliable job, but is anyway lost for any decent hardware.
Plus additional fumbling. Setting up FreeBSD with ZFS, ssh and NFS on some decent x86 machine is a routine job. On a RaspbPi be prepared for the one or the other pitfall.

 

[Erichans]

To drive this home:

I have never been into "storage".
[...]
do I need that RAID thing I have been hearing about for for decades?

No, you don't: what you need is redundancy, and RAIDZ is only one way that ZFS can provide redundancy; see the list below. As mentioned RAIDZ1, given a minimum of 3 disks, is a reasonable choice to consider. For learning/experimenting/experiencing ZFS, I'd say consider a two-way mirror, unless you already have three drives readily available*. Currently ZFS offers, zpoolconcepts(7):

1. mirror
2. RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, RAIDZ3
3. DRAID1, DRAID1, DRAID3

Many first time users haven gotten the unexpected unpleasant surprise that, when using a setup without redundancy, a ZFS error destroys the ZFS pool. They somehow expected/hoped it could be restored by a utility like fsck(8) for UFS; for ZFS there is no such utility. ZFS is aimed at using redundancy. Without redundancy, if your pool dies (= no access and no booting of your pool), you'll have to restore the complete ZFS pool from backup.

Unless you're forced to work without redundancy, for example a laptop with only one internal storage device facility, you should really be aware of this fact. When forced to so so, you'd be wise, in addition to normal backups, to make regular snapshots that are not stored on the laptop's drive; ZFS snapshots are fast and mostly small, given moderate changes. With a local movie storage, if you add a couple of 100 GB+, then the next shapshot will be large, it's the diff between snapshots that counts.

___
* these need not be big, just to fit a FreeBSD basic install and some test data.

 

[Bucky]

Again, the trick is to build a DDR4 platform, not DDR5. Especially if you want a good amount of RAM.

Even DDR3 is fast enough. I'm running a Supermicro X10SL7 with 32GiB DDR3 ECC memory in RAIDZ3 for almost 16 years now without a hiccough.

 

[mer]

Even DDR3 is fast enough. I'm running a Supermicro X10SL7 with 32GiB DDR3 ECC memory in RAIDZ3 for almost 16 years now without a hiccough.

My opinion, but for most use cases, having enough memory at a "slower" spec beats not enough memory at faster spec.
It makes sense until prices of the older spec memory increases because of scarity.

 

[SirDice]

I'm running a Supermicro X10SL7

Mine's older, X8DT3-LNF4. Still works fine. Quite power hungry though.

And my "storage" server is an old B75M-D3V with a Core i5-3470 (it's 10+ years old now).

 

[mer]

Quite power hungry though.

I think that is the biggest difference between "older" and "newer". Newer is more aware of power usage and has more options to tweak (beyond what the OS can provide).
And power saving usually keeps more money in your pocket, then the utility realizes you don't use enough so they raise rates.