Other How would you build your own NAS?

I built my NAS with a full size Antec tower with six drive bays.

My SuperMicro board supports six SATA including the optical drive so I have six WD Red drives in ZFS2 config and booting from a thumb drive.

I had the six in stock, but in retrospect I should have used larger drives for this movie server, as I am already out of space.

XigmaNAS V12.x works perfectly so I never upgraded to newer versions.
 
hruodr said:
Commercial NAS systems have compact cases, but their CPU does not allow to install the OS you want. And they are expensive.
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You can buy consumer-grade used NAS boxes like ccammack mentioned for relatively fair prizes. A few days ago I bought the predecessor of that box that ccammack points to (used) and AFAICT it's semi-professional hardware. No ECC-RAM, no battery-backed storage controller, but all else is more than reasonably good quality; the case is of excellent quality, 2.5 mm alloy, I can stand on it (65 kg).
hruodr said:
I would be happy to have a "2 bay docking station" with power supply and 2 esata outputs, no nas,
just connect through sata when I want to save something. But does that exist?
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These devices are called DAS Direct Attached Storage. I search with the words "2-bay HDD SATA plug" on a well-known internet auction platform and get a plethora of results. Whether you're looking for new or used equipment, there's a huge selection in both cases.
 
hruodr said:
I have such a box for attaching 2 SCSI devices, but not seen something analogous for SATA.
The boxes I see are to be connected through USB to the computer.
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Ya, because USB 3.x nowadays is the common interface to transport virtually any lower protocoll. I have dark memory that there exists a physical plug & interface to connect SATA external (miniSATA?), but I guess it's rarely used. USB 3.x should usually be fine as it's fast enough for SATA III.
hruodr said:
Nice to see you back!
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Thx to you and all others for your welcoming greetings! I'm happy to be here again & will bug you with my quirky ideas, silly comments etc. pp. ;)
 
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In this thread, I think we're far too much focused on the enclosure (case, power supply). In reality, a good NAS distinguishes itself by using server-class internals (reliable storage devices, fault-tolerant RAM, and so on). But mostly by running good software. The definition of "good" is a tricky question and depends on the preferences of the user. Do they mean easy to manage? To they mean performant and efficient? Do they mean powerful?

Mjölnir said:
I have dark memory that there exists a physical plug & interface to connect SATA external (miniSATA?), but I guess it's rarely used.
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It's called eSATA. I have both a PCI card and an external enclosure at home, but no longer use it. The connector looks similar enough to a regular SATA connector that I sometimes confuse them. Look for the bigger plastic, and metal bits on the outside of the connector. I used to use it for an external (portable) backup disk that was usually connected to my server. It didn't work terribly reliably, and I couldn't easily find a long enough cable, so I ditched it in favor of USB-3, which has been flawless for me.
 
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