The Cheapest NAS

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Hardware choices for a “cheapest NAS”

  • Many argue SBC-based NAS is fine but fiddly; others prefer used small form factor PCs (Dell/HP/Lenovo/NUC/thin clients) as more expandable, better supported, and often very cheap on the used market.
  • Ex-corporate SFF desktops and thin clients are highlighted as sweet spots: $40–$200, low idle power, good connectivity, often enough for 1–2 drives plus NVMe.
  • Some recommend dedicated NAS appliances (Synology/QNAP/TerraMaster) for people who value ease, monitoring, and vendor support over DIY savings.
  • USB enclosures and DAS are discussed; reliability depends heavily on the USB–SATA bridge quality, and some brands are reported as failure-prone.

Performance, networking, and small files

  • Several say 100 Mbps Ethernet is a real bottleneck; gigabit or 2.5 Gbps is preferred, especially for small-file workloads and Time Machine-like backups.
  • Small files are dominated by latency, where faster links help even when bandwidth isn’t saturated.

ECC RAM, ZFS, and data integrity

  • Strong debate over ECC:
    • One side: ECC is essential for any important data, especially with ZFS, to prevent RAM bit-flips corrupting on-disk data and checksums. Real anecdotes of silent corruption and bad memory are cited.
    • Other side: many have run ZFS/non-ECC for years without noticed issues; risks may be overstated for home use and most data (e.g., media) is not critical.
  • Point made that backups solve different problems than ECC; silent corruption can propagate into all backups if not detected by checksums/scrubbing.

Backup strategies and cost

  • For large home NASes (e.g., 28 TB), cloud backup is often expensive.
  • Options discussed: B2, Wasabi, Glacier/Deep Archive, rsync.net, Interserver+borg, Storj, Hetzner storage boxes.
  • Many conclude that for multi‑10‑TB datasets, a second NAS/backup server in another location is often more economical.
  • Some use low‑tech rotation of external drives or a friend’s house NAS as offsite.

Access protocols and remote access

  • Common local protocols: SMB/CIFS and NFS; also SFTP/SSHFS, WebDAV, Seafile, Syncthing.
  • Remote access typically via VPN: Tailscale, WireGuard, ZeroTier, sometimes OpenVPN or Tor.
  • Opinion that VPN is safer than exposing NAS ports directly; some rely on vendor “QuickConnect”-style relay services.

NAS vs just putting disks in PCs

  • Some argue home “NAS” is cargo cult: often simpler and cheaper to put disks in existing desktops/laptops and share over the network.
  • Counterpoints:
    • Laptops/phones/tablets dominate; they can’t easily host lots of disks.
    • Dedicated NAS avoids noise, uptime interruptions, and desktop reboots, and centralizes services like Plex, Docker apps, or Time Machine.

Expandability and storage layouts

  • People ask for NAS systems where redundancy automatically adjusts as disks are added/removed; closest suggestions include Unraid, mergerfs+SnapRAID, Windows Storage Spaces, Greyhole.
  • Note that automatic transition from mirrored to non‑mirrored as disks fill is generally seen as undesirable for anyone who truly cares about redundancy.

Power, reliability, and “cheap vs good”

  • Low idle power is a recurring goal; SBCs and some mini‑PCs/NUCs can idle under ~10 W, but used desktops may be 20–50 W.
  • Some emphasize that “cheapest” often ignores costs of power, time spent debugging flaky USB/SBC setups, and the higher risk of data loss without redundancy or robust hardware.