Creating a cheap low powered nas backup server.

[Shaddow798]

So I got a intel nuc d54250wyk for free.

I want to use this as a backup server to run some things. and as a router.

This machine is the small one without the cady for a 2.5in ssd.

It all ready has a msata ssd. that is 240gb.

But I want to add a new maybe 4tb laptop hard drive from an external hard drive. To do this I would probaly get one of these (https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/CABSTT ... er-Adapter) and cut of the input and make a male to male adapter to plug it in. and along with like a 50mm sata cable.

Since I want a second ethernet jack so ill probaly do something like this guide.
https://blog.fosketts.net/2015/06/05/ad ... mini-pcie/
with this https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B524102/

I plan on designing a custom base that has the drive cady and the ethernet jack.

If anyone else has anything to add let me know.

[MattKC]

Seems like you've got a good plan. It's a shame the NUC only seems to have one SATA, otherwise I'd encourage getting at least two disks and setting up some kind of RAID so you can sustain a drive failure without losing any data, but it seems that isn't feasible here (I guess you could use USB, but there are performance implications, and it's probably not really necessary if you're only using this for backups).

I'm a big fan of home NASes though, I actually think anyone with more than one computer in their home should have one (even if it's just one of those routers that supports a USB hard drive as an SMB share). The convenience of having centrally located files without having to fiddle with flash drives or hard drives is life changing, and once you have a server you can start getting it to do other things like torrent serving (*cough* only for legal purposes of course), offloading overnight tasks like long downloads/uploads to it, and even running a fully synchronizing cloud server like Nextcloud on it (this is great as a free replacement for Dropbox/Google Drive subscriptions, having unlimited space if you frequently share large files with people/computers outside your home, or just having access to things like notes/password databases anywhere). Also if you have a PS2, with mods you can get it to play ISOs right off the network share, which is super convenient.

[Shaddow798]

Seems like you've got a good plan. It's a shame the NUC only seems to have one SATA, otherwise I'd encourage getting at least two disks and setting up some kind of RAID so you can sustain a drive failure without losing any data, but it seems that isn't feasible here (I guess you could use USB, but there are performance implications, and it's probably not really necessary if you're only using this for backups).

I'm a big fan of home NASes though, I actually think anyone with more than one computer in their home should have one (even if it's just one of those routers that supports a USB hard drive as an SMB share). The convenience of having centrally located files without having to fiddle with flash drives or hard drives is life changing, and once you have a server you can start getting it to do other things like torrent serving (*cough* only for legal purposes of course), offloading overnight tasks like long downloads/uploads to it, and even running a fully synchronizing cloud server like Nextcloud on it (this is great as a free replacement for Dropbox/Google Drive subscriptions, having unlimited space if you frequently share large files with people/computers outside your home, or just having access to things like notes/password databases anywhere). Also if you have a PS2, with mods you can get it to play ISOs right off the network share, which is super convenient.

This reply is late I started writing it a while ago and then stopped for some reason.

I think what i'll end up doing is since I now have 2 of the same machines but one with 8gb of ram 1 with 16. (but ill need to get another 19.6v power adpater but whatever. ill make the one with 8 the router with the second ethernet mod.

Then for the backup nas server what i'll do is posibly get one of these https://www.amazon.com/Zer-one-Converte ... B07WJJVGS2
and desolder the connectors 2 wires. and then I might modify that cable from the original post to have 4 sata power female connectors to have one in the board to power everything. and then 3 for the 3 different sata connectors.

So then since in the nuc I would be able to connect upto 4 sata devices I would likey end up do this:
240gb sata msata drive (This would be the boot volume likey running proxmox like my other servers.
2x4tb laptop hdds. These would likey be in a software raid 1 so either drive could fail.
I'm not too worried about reduncey as this already is a backup. From my primary nas.
then there will likey be a 500gb ssd for the containers and virtual machines.

I could also get 3 laptop hdds and run raid 5 but meh

I really like running a home server as I allready do.

Nextcloud is great.
I likey would move my vpn over to the nuc. as its good to be able to access it when my primary server crashes or something.
jellyfin is far better then plex.
and there are many other things that I like using a homeserver for.
I might at somepoint selfhost my bitwarden. but then again im really fucking stupid and might losse access to all my accounts due to my own incompentece.