Home Lab NAS
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 Something like ReadyNAS or Synology are basically silent and give you blind swap RAID. Build your own and likely you are going to suck ten times the power, make a lot more noise and while you can get hot swap, no one offers blind swap. 
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 Building your own gives you a lot more flexibility to do other things with it, of course. 
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 @scottalanmiller said in Home Lab NAS: Something like ReadyNAS or Synology are basically silent and give you blind swap RAID. Build your own and likely you are going to suck ten times the power, make a lot more noise and while you can get hot swap, no one offers blind swap. Yeah, blind swap is definitely something to take into consideration. 
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 I like the idea of building your own, I do, but would you actually be saving a good amount of money by doing this? You'd have an old server, which uses far more electric, for the same end goal. Why not buy a refurb two or four bay Synology, with some decent drives? 
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 @DustinB3403 said in Home Lab NAS: I like the idea of building your own, I do, but would you actually be saving a good amount of money by doing this? You'd have an old server, which uses far more electric, for the same end goal. Why not buy a refurb two or four bay Synology, with some decent drives? Recommendation on models? 
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 I've used the Netgear ReadyNAS from earlier on when they were sparc based. No complaints, they just work and work. I still have one in production where it does not matter if it fails. its going on at least 8 years. 
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 @DustinB3403 said in Home Lab NAS: @RamblingBiped Do you want a 2 bay, or a 4 bay?  Edit: And what RAID capacity are you looking for? I'd prefer a 4 bay, but realistically I can probably get by just fine with a 2 bay unit. I don't have a ton of data to put on it right now, I could get by with 4TB, but would like at least 8TB of storage. 
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 @tiagom said in Home Lab NAS: I've used the Netgear ReadyNAS from earlier on when they were sparc based. No complaints, they just work and work. I still have one in production where it does not matter if it fails. its going on at least 8 years. I still have a Sparc one, I think. 
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 I would look at the Synology DS416 or even the DS414j there are a few "like-new" units on Amazon for $230 + 9 bucks shipping. 
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 @scottalanmiller The one i mentioned is sparc based, its a ReadyNAS 1100. Only have had to replace a few drives over the years. 
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 This is something I worked on for a while,.. I had a 1U server I could use, but it only had slots for 2 drives.... something I thought was 'risky'. I looked at getting a heavier box something that could take up to 8 drives,.. but boiled things down to getting a ReadyNAS 314, 4 bay with 2TB drives. IT's been running fine, have a few shares on it,.. permissions and attached a 1TB external USB drive as well (already had). Small form factor and serious lack of ambient noise makes for the win... ETA: I credit research and speaking with @scottalanmiller and ML for insight on it. 



