11:40 Attention new NAS builders: don’t just hit ENTER, hit SPACEBAR to select the drive then hit ENTER. Went through that for like 20mins on my first build wondering why it wouldn’t select 😂
That's why I went through the stack of old drives I had sitting around, eliminating the ones that showed themselves to cause errors under ZFS. I plan in the future to replace them one by one with NVME drives when they get cheap enough, or I get a deal of some sort. I managed to cobble together 11TB (6TB mirror, 5TB Z1) of reliable storage that saturates a 2.5GB NIC.
_"the problem is not nas"_ the problem is how much current it draws from a power grid cause basically it is what defines the final bill as a server stays online 24/7/360. So it's quite silly to use regular desktop hardware for home NAS. I built my NAS upon ODROID HC4 SOC with 2 native PCIe SATA onboard and 2x1TB HDDs I pulled out of CATV set top boxes found in a rubbish bin. So the file transfer speed is 70MBytes /s via WiFi and I'm very happy with it. The NAS draws 700mA max. at 15VDC when transferring files what is 10.5W. So 10.5W x 24 x 360 = 90.7 kW/h per anum. The average electricity rate across the country is 30c per kW/h 90.7 x 0.3 = $27.12 is the operating cost of my NAS per year. The coffin like on the video normally takes ~40W so it's going to be 4 times more expensive than mine one.
Other than probably opting for a less proprietary system (Prodesk 400 G2 MT has standard ATX PSU connector and standard mATX mounting so you can later transfer the motherboard to a bigger case that holds more storage), this is an enjoyable build.
I've done builds like this and they work very well in two ways: They teach you the basics of setting up a server and once running, they help you find out where the weak points are and where to focus your money on expansion/upgrades or even how to plan for your next one. They can also serve as a great backup/restore server if/when you do upgrade.
@@Janecomly For $50, it'd be hard to go wrong, even if the drive is HDD and not SSD. That much storage will give you plenty for music, pictures, emulators, and a great starting point to build from. If the drive is HDD, then you might want to pick up a cheap SSD for your main OS as it will run much smoother. You might also want to check out Hardware Haven or possible Raid Owl when planning your build. :)
@@Janecomly Awesome. There are certainly more factors to speed and smoothness, but SSD for your operating system certainly makes a big impact. Good move on the 1TB drives as it'll give much more flexibility with what you can store and run.
You might have wanted to mention that if you're running the system without a keyboard and monitor, you want to double check the bios settings to confirm it's not set to throw an error and halt if it doesn't detect any peripherals connected. Most PC's by default will stop at the bios screen with an error until you change that setting.
that used to be the case with older machines...but these days I find machines might just report no keyboard but contine to boot anyway that is my experience with well designed HP kit, like 260 G1/800 G1
My top tip for janky hdd mounting is to use thick elastic bands (the kind the postman uses) and wrap those around the drive, then zip tie to the case over those, adds a tiny bit of noise and vibration isolation
I've done this since 1995 xD the rubberbands are easily available from your mailman xD and it was a perfect vibration dampener for those old 5400 ide drives xD
i just placed an order for 2 lenovo thinkcenter M715s on ebay earlier today. both should have an AMD A6-8570 CPUs and 8 GB ram without any hard drives or OS, but for under $50 each, i figured id buy 2. ive always wanted my own media server, and i want to get back into DJing, but in virtual reality, and that doesnt actually need a lot of power, but i want it to be its own dedicated system. Also, the one driving force that really made me decide to buy it though was the fact that the dual core, 2 thread A6 8570 uses the AM4 socket platform, so in theory, as long as theres bios support, i have quite the upgrade path, and the manual says it supports up to 64 gb of ddr4 ram. the only real issue is internal space for storage drives, but i can rig up some sort of janky jbod for it on the outside
Drive mounting - high density packing foam is your friend. It can be cut with a bread knife into odd shapes or just simple strips. I usually cut a block to overfill the drive area in the case a little, then carve out a hole a little smaller than the drive so it is a press fit in the block (and the case), then cut panels out of the block to increase airflow over the drive. I've done this for TONS of these older OEMs and never had a problem with drive slippage.
This is a well done and highly informative video. I was thinking of buying a NAS but the prices scare the hell out of me. This is a great alternative where one could look for yard sales and other places for computers that are for a cheap sale. You've definitely given me something to consider, bro. Thank you much👍🏾
been doing similar way for years with no issues. I do recommend an old 200's era full tower if you want to maximize storage, plus if you are Tech like me you'll have a few hundred old 1-3 TB spinner drives laying around. Technically you'd want the Red series drives by WD or Seagate as they are designed for NAS use, but really anything will work for a small home design. Great video here.
My primary machine uses an old IBM x3200 server case, which has 4 HDD bays (front loading) and two optical drive bays. The original board started failing on the memory, and it steadfastly refused to accept memory upgrades the machine was supposed to support. So I used it for my AMD Ryzen system. Only problem with it is the P.o.S. MSI motherboard. I have a second machine that uses the same case (Lenovo TS200) that I use for server test installs. I might use that one for running a test install of TrueNAS.
While I'm way past the budget NAS thing this was still a solid video. My one recommendation would be to throw in a little more for a spare drive, I'd rather have a spare drive on hand in case a drive dies instead of having to rush to get one.
It would be really helpful to test power usage. The Kill A Watt meter makes it easy. Or the smarter idea is get a smart plug...get it...that has built in energy monitoring. Then you get 2 uses for it.
Using this guide I was able to build my first server! It came with an intel i5 7th gen, I upgraded the ram to 32gb, and for storage I populated it with 2 14tb nas drives, a 2tb mvme on the mother board and a 256gb ssd for the operating system. I had a 10gb network card that also hosts 2 extra nvme drives populated with 2 4tb. I had to buy a pcie extension cable to make it work as its not low profile but happy its working flawlessly with the card located outside of the machine. I'll have to figure out some sort of enclosure to better protect the card but I can now edit video straight from this nas with a direct connection to my Mac Studio, and the 1gb port is connected to my router for the rest of my network.
That's awesome! I love resurrecting old tech because it's still useful. In my opinion it's a wise thing to do both for our personal economy and the environment. Plus I like it when a plan comes together.
Lots of people saying SMART data can be faked, and I can't blame them for that. It's also one of the primary reasons as to why I personally never buy second hand drives, but for this purpose, he has it set up in RAID 1 which is pretty "smart" if I don't say so myself (this is where you laugh or point and laugh at me) Honestly for a $100? This would be a really good application for saving your Shadowplay footage or as mentioned in the video, using Plex. I personally have a 2-bay NAS with two 8TB drives in RAID 1, but I'm looking to use 3 or more drives to shove into an older machine. Great video and thanks for the motivation
Please continue this video with what you do next... I've got an old PC I replaced with my new build back in April & I'm looking to dip my toe into media servers to rip all my Blurays & DVDs so I can watch them on the go...
Great job keeping to the budget, it drives me crazy when someone posts a video and then goes on to tell how they spent $x more. I also hate when people say that you might as well spend $50, 60, 70, etc. more on an xyz, 50-100% above the initial budget! $10 means something different to everyone. If you're new to building a budget system, don't under budget either. Your drives are the first thing that you'll end up replacing and always remember that TIME IS MONEY. If you're spending $100 and can drop another $10-$20 on a brand new reliable SSD to save yourself the headache of rebuilding and restoring, do it! Go with reliable budget components over older components from the big brands.
I used to do this. Still have my htpc. I got the synology ds220+ . I think I paid 250. Could build my own, but meh. I need something that my wife will be able to figure out.
Have both. I use a self build for a regular media and docs storage server using only flash. But also a couple of Synology boxes as mirrored backups. The latter need to just do their job with little fuss, but the former I don't mind tinkering with.
Edit: actually building a small base system to start people out. 👍🏻 Reading the title without having watched it yet. My prediction, not a 100$ build, but one of those "if you have the hardware worth 2k already you can do a 100$ build videos - actually rather wrong with my prediction, fun to watch, this is a nice video for someone wanting to go down the rabbit hole with a first cheap build
Outstanding video!! This is a simple ez to follow video. The beauty is you can go from entry level to a more complex system, following this basic video. Genius!! Thanks.
I think something like this is in every way better than a NAS appliance, but it has the potential to be a lot more slightly modifying the template. I have a NAS/randomstuff computer that is a Dell Precision 5810, upgraded to have a 14 core Xeon, 96Gb RAM, 6x gigabit NIC, soon Wifi as well as NVMe via a PCIe adapter. In other words it's the functional equivalent of a corporate network in one box. Sata drives for bulk storage of course, enough RAM and CPU to run a bunch of VM's for whatever I want to populate my network with as well as NIC's for separate VLAN's so I can isolate things from eachother however and whenever I want. Not saying everyone should do what I did -- my point is that grabbing an older PC and some parts can get you a NAS plus almost every other thing you can think of wanting on your network. You can spin up a VM to do nothing except serve up random witty oneliners within HTML tags when someone connects to port 777 on it - if that's your jam. The sky isn't the limit - you are ;-).
Great video! I actually built my own NAS just a week ago using a $20 Intel NUC I found on Facebook Marketplace lol. I already had some extra RAM and a 2TB 2.5" hard drive lying around, so I didn’t have to worry about additional costs. For the record, old mini PCs are a great choice due to their low power consumption, especially since they'll be running next to a router 24/7 😉
And before some idiot starts talking about ECC memory, the solution is to go cheaper, do not use memory above DDR4 and do not use ZFS, it is a fucking budget nas, not a google server for video editing.
Fyi, the HP Elitedesk G2 800 SFF has roughly the same specs, can also be gotten for cheap, and there's a 3D-printable HDD caddy, that allows for four(!) 3.5" HDD's + a 2.5" SSD. It'll even allow for good room for PCIe devices, one of which will be necessary for all the storage, but will also allow for fast networking and/or a couple of NVMe drives.
I picked up that exact system (including a flat panel monitor, keyboard, and mouse but no hard drive) from a local university auction last year for less than $20. I threw in some more RAM and a terabyte SSD and now it's my Proxmox server.
I think something like this is good for someone to learn how to setup and operate a NAS. Wouldn't put anything important on it mind you, as used drives can be rather sketchy, but still a pretty decent setup to learn on and play around with.
Definitely a GREAT intro level homelab and NAS setup Great job..just glad to see you didn't do what some other youtubers by getting cheap hardware...then whipping out a few thousand dollars of "sponsored" drives Definitely not a mega powerhouse...but definitely more than enough for entry level homelabbers! Keep em coming!!!!
I would keep in mind the power efficiency of the motherboard and cpu and implementing tiered caching with spin down enabled on hard disks. the electricity cost of a 24/7 365 server adds up.
Yup, there is a 3th Sata , just add an SSD for the OS , use NVME to cache and spin down HDDs. Idle power consumption is around 20 watts, and fast as a gazelle.
But it was meant to be a $100 server. Tossing out comments like "oh, you should be using all these whiz-bang features instead" drives the price up very quickly. Sometimes you have an extremely limited budget to do the build, and putting up with a few pennies more per month on electricity is a very acceptable trade-off.
As for the screws for the HHDs. If you have the bag of screws from a case, there are plenty of HDD/SSD mounting screws. Just grab a couple from there. Over the years, I have quite the number of extra screws. If you aren't a dinosaur like me, just order some extra case (& Motherboard) screws online or pickup at Micro Center (if one if nearby).
Nice job describing what you did. Very easy to understand. My main concern with servers is how much power they draw when left on all the time. I am setting up a webserver on a micro computer that uses only about 6 watts. But webserver files are small and there is no need for the hard drives.
I just use a Zimaboard with a few extra upgrades, like NVMe adapter. Allows me to use two NVMe drives (one M.2 one NGFF), a 3.5" HD, and two USB hard drives. All I bought was the device, adapter, and the two NVMe drives. I threw a couple of 5TB Western Digital game drives I had into the USB ports and gutted a Seagate external hard drive for the 3.5".
Amazing work! Building a storage server at such a low cost is very impressive. This is perfect for beginners like me who want to learn more about servers
Amazing video, im new to all of this so this is a perfect start for me to dip in and get my feet wet, i cant wait to start buying the parts and set up my very own storage system!
Nice. I'm doing something similar to this with a Prodesk 600 G4 (i5-8600). It's not all sweetness. The system is VERY slow to boot because HP and the proprietariness makes it less than perfect. Mine uses a flex-atx 180w PSU that only outputs 12v. This is a PITA, although not unsolvable. That CPU cooler sucks and isn't straightforward to replace. It's a lot of power use for two HDDs, all the case will take, and recasing is a nope. It's been a great learning machine though and it's good enough that once I'm done playing, I intend to give it to My Mother to browse on.
Great video for anyone on a budget to get to know how to build your own server. However, the fact you are on a budget, you need to consider the power running costs, especially with energy costs these days. If you intend to have it plugged in and running 24/7/365 then you're going to be using a lot more electricity than a dedicated modern unit. It may cost a few £'s more but get the most energy efficient (less wattage) that you can and think about what you actually want from it. Mini pc's , raspberry pi's can do the same job in most cases, if set up correctly. Spending wisely and efficiently is the key to a budget server which includes the ongoing costs.
It was a **BUDGET** build, don't you people get that? If you don't have the extra cash, dealing with a few pennies more a month on the electric bill spreads the expense over a longer time.
Ditto.. It seems to be a real lottery sometimes. I've had new drives that have failed after 6 months, others that last a couple of years and a couple of real methusala's that just go on, and on and on....
I retired my oldest drive at 13 years old this year out of my 2011 Hp laptop. It still spins up, but it took about 7 minutes to get the laptop up to operating speed. You probably have more run time on your drives though
That’s pretty much where I’m at price wise for my current budget NAS, minus a bit of storage. HP prodesk g2 mini pc with i3-6100t and 8gb of ram - $28 256gb 2230 NVMe drive - $10 1TB SATA SSD - $30 4TB WD blue CMR drive and external enclosure - $65 Total cost - $133 Everything except the hard drive was off eBay or Facebook marketplace
I have a old dell I found someone was going to trash I want to turn it into a NAS as well but I don’t have the know how I wish you lived in Southern California that would make a good video helping a subscriber with their NAS project
If everything you're going to be playing media with from the server supports the file formats and codecs, and has DLNA support, all you need on your media server is DLNA. The server simply has to... serve files. The client device, smart TV, phone, laptop/desktop, tablet etc handles the playback on itself. No need for transcoding on the server. With a basic DLNA server even a 32 bit x86 thin client running Open Media Vault with Mini DLNA will do the job. Of course it's a bit more effort to setup 32 bit Open Media Vault so a 64bit system is better.
I am looking to do something like this - Aliexpress to the rescue. There are a320 kits with 16gb of ram, a ryzen 2600, and an A320 mb for just over $100 that make a good base to build from.
I did nearly exactly the same thing as you. I had an ewaste dell optiplex with an i5 and installed TrueNAS scale. It works ok-ish but it is fairly slow. I suspect the specs on the unit I used were worse than what you used which is likely why it is much slower. But it does work so I shouldn't complain about a free NAS system.
I'm thinking about rolling my own NAS and have come across OpenMediaVault which, with a Bmax mini PC B1 Pro and a 1TB M.2 sata 2280 SSD, I can use to build a headless NAS for about $150. The OMV OS needs a screen for the easiest configuration but afterwards runs from a browser.
Thanks a lot for the idea !!! Can I use this kind of server to back up pictures from my phone? Like google photos? What would I need to do? Me and the kids naturally
I made one from an old broken laptop, the screen was gone. HP Pavilion media one with place for two HD´s of 1TB and booting OMV from a USB. Works well and dose not use a lot, I did the same on a old Dell computer with 4 HD´s and a small HD for booting. Power is a lot more but gives more choices of how you want your HD´s been used.
These types of videos really be like "this is how i built my $100 gaming pc" and then go on to say "i installed this 7800x3d i found in the trash, 128gb of ddr5 ram from todays sponsor dickass racing, rtx4090 i got off craigs list from a granny selling her sons old belongings, and then i spent $100 on rgb fans"
Thanks for the video. Just a heads up the Amazon link you posted for the drives appear to be for SAS drives and I don't think that HP listed would support them. Might need to swap that for a SATA drive.
Very good video. The only thing that would be better is another harddisk so that you can run TrueNas with RaidZ1 but there isn't room for one more drive and the number of sata-ports is limited to 3. For this reason I chose a Fujitsu Celcius W530 chassis that does't have these limitations an is about the same price. Oh, and added another 16 GB of Ram 😉
I am looking to do this with an old HP SFF PC that I have lying around. My pfSense firewall is presently a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF PC with an i7-4770 and 8 GB RAM. So far, I just have an old 160 GB SATA HDD for the storage, but I will probably upgrade it to an SSD at later time.
What is that case at the very beginning of the video? It looks like one of the Fractal Define cases, but not 100% sure. I need to get my hands on something like that. Don't wanna pay the external multi HDD enclosure or pre-built NAS box tax.
Nice project but I'd go with 2.5 Gb/s as I am spoiled with it already. Good video, I may make something like that to play around with, I have a real NAS already but that could be fun.
The NAS is not the problem. The energy that the system need is the problem. Using standard hardware, absorbing 60w to 90w constantly, will make your electricity bill bigger. This is why you want to spend 500$ for a dedicated 15w prebuild NAS. OR _at least_ use a raspberry driving 2 hard disks. that makes more sense.
Thanks for all the informative content. How can I add/install a GPU to my TrueNAS Scale installation and ensure apps can use it e.g. Photo Prism, Nextcloud, etc.
Just took a Dell XPS from work and pulled a couple of my 3.5 out of a 1U server as it’s cheaper on power with the i5 then the old Xeon + raid card. I have a another Dell chassis with unraid idles under 30 W with five drives
A NAS should have drive bays! Anything else is just stupid. Just buy a cheap tower with lots of 5.25" slots and insert bays. The pick a cheap motherboard with lots of SATA ports. I have one myself with 9 bays. Cheap as chips.
@@jabbathegoole Well, then just use something like a crappy computer and USB to SATA adapters for a NAS. That's what I started with. USB to SATA is like 3 USD.
Was wondering if you could have stolen some space on the HDD for swap instead of using the SSD - though I guess 44% health means just over half the write endurance used, in a position where it probably gets less action than usual
Lovely tutorial. After buying a Synology NAS, I would rather go down this road. The CPU is very weak it takes ages to do anything. Quick question, what is the power draw when idle for this server?
I’m just now getting into a home server. I do have laying around a bunch of 1tb 3.5” hdd’s. But I can’t seem to remember if my sas abdapter is if it’s to mini sas or just regular Sata. But I plan on building them into a file server and converting them into one drive. I belive I have 8tb’s in 1tb drives all together. So I’m just going to get a 12tb hdd drive to have as a back up.
A nice server to start with, my usual requirement for domestic use is low power, as this type of kit usually ends up turned on 24/7, so a Raspberry Pi, or Intel N100 based box.
when he zip tied them down, I knew this was a true master builder. Awesome budget build my friend!
11:40 Attention new NAS builders: don’t just hit ENTER, hit SPACEBAR to select the drive then hit ENTER.
Went through that for like 20mins on my first build wondering why it wouldn’t select 😂
the problem is not nas, the problem is the price of hard disks
Exactly, often times the hard disks is many times the cost of the NAS
That's why I went through the stack of old drives I had sitting around, eliminating the ones that showed themselves to cause errors under ZFS. I plan in the future to replace them one by one with NVME drives when they get cheap enough, or I get a deal of some sort. I managed to cobble together 11TB (6TB mirror, 5TB Z1) of reliable storage that saturates a 2.5GB NIC.
Tbh I can easily find at least 2 used 2TB HDDs for $50
@@thecaptainseye Sometimes, used aren't even worth that.
_"the problem is not nas"_
the problem is how much current it draws from a power grid cause basically it is what defines the final bill as a server stays online 24/7/360. So it's quite silly to use regular desktop hardware for home NAS.
I built my NAS upon ODROID HC4 SOC with 2 native PCIe SATA onboard and 2x1TB HDDs I pulled out of CATV set top boxes found in a rubbish bin. So the file transfer speed is 70MBytes /s via WiFi and I'm very happy with it.
The NAS draws 700mA max. at 15VDC when transferring files what is 10.5W. So 10.5W x 24 x 360 = 90.7 kW/h per anum.
The average electricity rate across the country is 30c per kW/h
90.7 x 0.3 = $27.12 is the operating cost of my NAS per year.
The coffin like on the video normally takes ~40W so it's going to be 4 times more expensive than mine one.
Other than probably opting for a less proprietary system (Prodesk 400 G2 MT has standard ATX PSU connector and standard mATX mounting so you can later transfer the motherboard to a bigger case that holds more storage), this is an enjoyable build.
Indeed, unless you have to go for an SFF build, the Prodesk towers are preferable for this use case.
I've done builds like this and they work very well in two ways: They teach you the basics of setting up a server and once running, they help you find out where the weak points are and where to focus your money on expansion/upgrades or even how to plan for your next one. They can also serve as a great backup/restore server if/when you do upgrade.
I'm on a budget rn. Is it a great idea to buy a $50 500gb HDD corpo pc? Will 500gb be enough to start with?
@@Janecomly For $50, it'd be hard to go wrong, even if the drive is HDD and not SSD. That much storage will give you plenty for music, pictures, emulators, and a great starting point to build from. If the drive is HDD, then you might want to pick up a cheap SSD for your main OS as it will run much smoother. You might also want to check out Hardware Haven or possible Raid Owl when planning your build. :)
@@Skudster13 Found a better corpo pc with ssd storage and I'm just gonna buy and add 2x1tb of hdd to it.
@@Janecomly Awesome. There are certainly more factors to speed and smoothness, but SSD for your operating system certainly makes a big impact. Good move on the 1TB drives as it'll give much more flexibility with what you can store and run.
You might have wanted to mention that if you're running the system without a keyboard and monitor, you want to double check the bios settings to confirm it's not set to throw an error and halt if it doesn't detect any peripherals connected. Most PC's by default will stop at the bios screen with an error until you change that setting.
that used to be the case with older machines...but these days I find machines might just report no keyboard but contine to boot anyway
that is my experience with well designed HP kit, like 260 G1/800 G1
“Most PC's by default…” damn I'm sorry you haven't tried modern computers yet
@@JohnWink-ls9nv Sorry, I'm old school, only rocking a Ryzen 5 system...
My top tip for janky hdd mounting is to use thick elastic bands (the kind the postman uses) and wrap those around the drive, then zip tie to the case over those, adds a tiny bit of noise and vibration isolation
I've done this since 1995 xD the rubberbands are easily available from your mailman xD and it was a perfect vibration dampener for those old 5400 ide drives xD
i just placed an order for 2 lenovo thinkcenter M715s on ebay earlier today. both should have an AMD A6-8570 CPUs and 8 GB ram without any hard drives or OS, but for under $50 each, i figured id buy 2. ive always wanted my own media server, and i want to get back into DJing, but in virtual reality, and that doesnt actually need a lot of power, but i want it to be its own dedicated system. Also, the one driving force that really made me decide to buy it though was the fact that the dual core, 2 thread A6 8570 uses the AM4 socket platform, so in theory, as long as theres bios support, i have quite the upgrade path, and the manual says it supports up to 64 gb of ddr4 ram. the only real issue is internal space for storage drives, but i can rig up some sort of janky jbod for it on the outside
Drive mounting - high density packing foam is your friend. It can be cut with a bread knife into odd shapes or just simple strips. I usually cut a block to overfill the drive area in the case a little, then carve out a hole a little smaller than the drive so it is a press fit in the block (and the case), then cut panels out of the block to increase airflow over the drive.
I've done this for TONS of these older OEMs and never had a problem with drive slippage.
This is a well done and highly informative video. I was thinking of buying a NAS but the prices scare the hell out of me. This is a great alternative where one could look for yard sales and other places for computers that are for a cheap sale. You've definitely given me something to consider, bro. Thank you much👍🏾
been doing similar way for years with no issues. I do recommend an old 200's era full tower if you want to maximize storage, plus if you are Tech like me you'll have a few hundred old 1-3 TB spinner drives laying around. Technically you'd want the Red series drives by WD or Seagate as they are designed for NAS use, but really anything will work for a small home design. Great video here.
My primary machine uses an old IBM x3200 server case, which has 4 HDD bays (front loading) and two optical drive bays. The original board started failing on the memory, and it steadfastly refused to accept memory upgrades the machine was supposed to support. So I used it for my AMD Ryzen system. Only problem with it is the P.o.S. MSI motherboard.
I have a second machine that uses the same case (Lenovo TS200) that I use for server test installs. I might use that one for running a test install of TrueNAS.
While I'm way past the budget NAS thing this was still a solid video. My one recommendation would be to throw in a little more for a spare drive, I'd rather have a spare drive on hand in case a drive dies instead of having to rush to get one.
It would be really helpful to test power usage. The Kill A Watt meter makes it easy. Or the smarter idea is get a smart plug...get it...that has built in energy monitoring. Then you get 2 uses for it.
Using this guide I was able to build my first server! It came with an intel i5 7th gen, I upgraded the ram to 32gb, and for storage I populated it with 2 14tb nas drives, a 2tb mvme on the mother board and a 256gb ssd for the operating system. I had a 10gb network card that also hosts 2 extra nvme drives populated with 2 4tb. I had to buy a pcie extension cable to make it work as its not low profile but happy its working flawlessly with the card located outside of the machine. I'll have to figure out some sort of enclosure to better protect the card but I can now edit video straight from this nas with a direct connection to my Mac Studio, and the 1gb port is connected to my router for the rest of my network.
That's awesome! I love resurrecting old tech because it's still useful. In my opinion it's a wise thing to do both for our personal economy and the environment.
Plus I like it when a plan comes together.
Lots of people saying SMART data can be faked, and I can't blame them for that. It's also one of the primary reasons as to why I personally never buy second hand drives, but for this purpose, he has it set up in RAID 1 which is pretty "smart" if I don't say so myself (this is where you laugh or point and laugh at me)
Honestly for a $100? This would be a really good application for saving your Shadowplay footage or as mentioned in the video, using Plex.
I personally have a 2-bay NAS with two 8TB drives in RAID 1, but I'm looking to use 3 or more drives to shove into an older machine. Great video and thanks for the motivation
Thanks for the TrueNAS mini-tutorial!
Legendary video, gonna be referencing this in the future :D
I knew your were be all over this...;-)
Please continue this video with what you do next... I've got an old PC I replaced with my new build back in April & I'm looking to dip my toe into media servers to rip all my Blurays & DVDs so I can watch them on the go...
Thanks for the detailed video!
I was just looking for someone who made such a budget home server!
To hold the drives use the all mighty Zip Ties. ;)
true masters use double sided tape or zipties ;)
My trick for adding SSD drives when there isn't a mounting option is velcro.
I just built exactly the same home NAS from my old HP EliteDesk. Thank you for the video.
Could you access your files from your phone at a remote location?
Great job keeping to the budget, it drives me crazy when someone posts a video and then goes on to tell how they spent $x more. I also hate when people say that you might as well spend $50, 60, 70, etc. more on an xyz, 50-100% above the initial budget! $10 means something different to everyone. If you're new to building a budget system, don't under budget either. Your drives are the first thing that you'll end up replacing and always remember that TIME IS MONEY. If you're spending $100 and can drop another $10-$20 on a brand new reliable SSD to save yourself the headache of rebuilding and restoring, do it! Go with reliable budget components over older components from the big brands.
This is so cool . I just did the same with a p33 sff . got 2-3.5" 12TB in that thang ! plus a 1tb m.2
I used to do this. Still have my htpc. I got the synology ds220+ . I think I paid 250. Could build my own, but meh. I need something that my wife will be able to figure out.
Have both. I use a self build for a regular media and docs storage server using only flash. But also a couple of Synology boxes as mirrored backups. The latter need to just do their job with little fuss, but the former I don't mind tinkering with.
Personally I would look into power consumption first since that thing will be running 24/7
Would love to know what this system pulls on average
Maybe best to use an old laptop, or better an old tablet.
But how can it work on a tablet?@@Hairybassman
Idle 20watt
@@derekelpro7180 tablet media server
Very informative!! Thank you so much. This is my first time learning about server building aside from PCs. You're awesome!
From someone who is a complete novice this was an amazing video. Keep up the good work you got a new follower
Edit: actually building a small base system to start people out. 👍🏻
Reading the title without having watched it yet. My prediction, not a 100$ build, but one of those "if you have the hardware worth 2k already you can do a 100$ build videos - actually rather wrong with my prediction, fun to watch, this is a nice video for someone wanting to go down the rabbit hole with a first cheap build
Outstanding video!! This is a simple ez to follow video. The beauty is you can go from entry level to a more complex system, following this basic video. Genius!! Thanks.
I think something like this is in every way better than a NAS appliance, but it has the potential to be a lot more slightly modifying the template. I have a NAS/randomstuff computer that is a Dell Precision 5810, upgraded to have a 14 core Xeon, 96Gb RAM, 6x gigabit NIC, soon Wifi as well as NVMe via a PCIe adapter. In other words it's the functional equivalent of a corporate network in one box. Sata drives for bulk storage of course, enough RAM and CPU to run a bunch of VM's for whatever I want to populate my network with as well as NIC's for separate VLAN's so I can isolate things from eachother however and whenever I want. Not saying everyone should do what I did -- my point is that grabbing an older PC and some parts can get you a NAS plus almost every other thing you can think of wanting on your network. You can spin up a VM to do nothing except serve up random witty oneliners within HTML tags when someone connects to port 777 on it - if that's your jam. The sky isn't the limit - you are ;-).
Great video! I actually built my own NAS just a week ago using a $20 Intel NUC I found on Facebook Marketplace lol. I already had some extra RAM and a 2TB 2.5" hard drive lying around, so I didn’t have to worry about additional costs. For the record, old mini PCs are a great choice due to their low power consumption, especially since they'll be running next to a router 24/7 😉
That is more like it, the broke bastard build 😂❤ all I can afford 😅
And it is still better than a cheap brand name nas :)
Tho I would go for a processor with "quick sync" it makes it go from "this is useful" to "this is awesome"
And before some idiot starts talking about ECC memory, the solution is to go cheaper, do not use memory above DDR4 and do not use ZFS, it is a fucking budget nas, not a google server for video editing.
That gave me a ton of ideas. I will definitely get me a server following your footsteps. Awesome video
Fyi, the HP Elitedesk G2 800 SFF has roughly the same specs, can also be gotten for cheap, and there's a 3D-printable HDD caddy, that allows for four(!) 3.5" HDD's + a 2.5" SSD. It'll even allow for good room for PCIe devices, one of which will be necessary for all the storage, but will also allow for fast networking and/or a couple of NVMe drives.
literally not a single person cares, Ivan. 🤡
@@helljumper912 Why are you like that?
I picked up that exact system (including a flat panel monitor, keyboard, and mouse but no hard drive) from a local university auction last year for less than $20. I threw in some more RAM and a terabyte SSD and now it's my Proxmox server.
IIRC, the G2 supports up to skylake CPUs. So there's no hw acceleration of HEVC by integrated graphics
@@romanm.4763 True, but I just used a separate cheap mini PC for that purpose.
I think something like this is good for someone to learn how to setup and operate a NAS. Wouldn't put anything important on it mind you, as used drives can be rather sketchy, but still a pretty decent setup to learn on and play around with.
With one more disk TrueNas has got you covered in case of disk-failure.
You use this as a starter system, and build up as you get the budget & hardware.
@@SenileOtaku Exactly 🙂
Definitely a GREAT intro level homelab and NAS setup
Great job..just glad to see you didn't do what some other youtubers by getting cheap hardware...then whipping out a few thousand dollars of "sponsored" drives
Definitely not a mega powerhouse...but definitely more than enough for entry level homelabbers!
Keep em coming!!!!
I like bringing my previous build out of retirement for a NAS build. A great low-budget suggestion. Thanks.
I would keep in mind the power efficiency of the motherboard and cpu and implementing tiered caching with spin down enabled on hard disks. the electricity cost of a 24/7 365 server adds up.
Totally agree - if running 24/7 it might be worth to spend more money on an efficient build to save long-term.
Yup, there is a 3th Sata , just add an SSD for the OS , use NVME to cache and spin down HDDs. Idle power consumption is around 20 watts, and fast as a gazelle.
But it was meant to be a $100 server. Tossing out comments like "oh, you should be using all these whiz-bang features instead" drives the price up very quickly.
Sometimes you have an extremely limited budget to do the build, and putting up with a few pennies more per month on electricity is a very acceptable trade-off.
@@SenileOtaku how much does turning on a setting that spins your drives down after inactivity cost?
As for the screws for the HHDs. If you have the bag of screws from a case, there are plenty of HDD/SSD mounting screws. Just grab a couple from there. Over the years, I have quite the number of extra screws.
If you aren't a dinosaur like me, just order some extra case (& Motherboard) screws online or pickup at Micro Center (if one if nearby).
With Nvme-cli under linux, one can shrink usable spase and increase spare cells of a nvme drive.
4 days ago I bought the same machine for the same purpose. But it was i5 7500 and ram was only 4GB. I bought the machine for £27 + £10 shipping.
Nice job describing what you did. Very easy to understand. My main concern with servers is how much power they draw when left on all the time. I am setting up a webserver on a micro computer that uses only about 6 watts. But webserver files are small and there is no need for the hard drives.
I just use a Zimaboard with a few extra upgrades, like NVMe adapter. Allows me to use two NVMe drives (one M.2 one NGFF), a 3.5" HD, and two USB hard drives. All I bought was the device, adapter, and the two NVMe drives. I threw a couple of 5TB Western Digital game drives I had into the USB ports and gutted a Seagate external hard drive for the 3.5".
next you can go dumpster diving and make a 0$ storage server :D
thank you for simple explanation. easy for beginner to understand. Good luck
Amazing work! Building a storage server at such a low cost is very impressive. This is perfect for beginners like me who want to learn more about servers
Great project. I enjoyed watching. I can't believe that you put it together for that little money. GOOD JOB.
Amazing video, im new to all of this so this is a perfect start for me to dip in and get my feet wet, i cant wait to start buying the parts and set up my very own storage system!
About the smart data, it can be reset so it is not trust worthy. 7:20
Important thing about the HDD speeds, you get 115 mb\sec because your file was allocated in TrueNas RAM cache and been written to the HDD after.
Nice. I'm doing something similar to this with a Prodesk 600 G4 (i5-8600). It's not all sweetness. The system is VERY slow to boot because HP and the proprietariness makes it less than perfect. Mine uses a flex-atx 180w PSU that only outputs 12v. This is a PITA, although not unsolvable. That CPU cooler sucks and isn't straightforward to replace. It's a lot of power use for two HDDs, all the case will take, and recasing is a nope. It's been a great learning machine though and it's good enough that once I'm done playing, I intend to give it to My Mother to browse on.
zip ties were the first thought in my mind. excellent video Matt!
Great video for anyone on a budget to get to know how to build your own server. However, the fact you are on a budget, you need to consider the power running costs, especially with energy costs these days. If you intend to have it plugged in and running 24/7/365 then you're going to be using a lot more electricity than a dedicated modern unit. It may cost a few £'s more but get the most energy efficient (less wattage) that you can and think about what you actually want from it. Mini pc's , raspberry pi's can do the same job in most cases, if set up correctly. Spending wisely and efficiently is the key to a budget server which includes the ongoing costs.
It was a **BUDGET** build, don't you people get that? If you don't have the extra cash, dealing with a few pennies more a month on the electric bill spreads the expense over a longer time.
My two oldest drives have over 10 years power on time. Might be time to retire those
Ditto.. It seems to be a real lottery sometimes. I've had new drives that have failed after 6 months, others that last a couple of years and a couple of real methusala's that just go on, and on and on....
I retired my oldest drive at 13 years old this year out of my 2011 Hp laptop. It still spins up, but it took about 7 minutes to get the laptop up to operating speed. You probably have more run time on your drives though
bro you are still here to make videos, very nice. ive built my own pc 4 years ago coz ive watched your how to build a pc video. thank you man ❤
Back to my price bracket😍😍😍😍,love it
That’s pretty much where I’m at price wise for my current budget NAS, minus a bit of storage.
HP prodesk g2 mini pc with i3-6100t and 8gb of ram - $28
256gb 2230 NVMe drive - $10
1TB SATA SSD - $30
4TB WD blue CMR drive and external enclosure - $65
Total cost - $133
Everything except the hard drive was off eBay or Facebook marketplace
Excellent project! I'm a cheap guy too. Thanks.
I have a old dell I found someone was going to trash I want to turn it into a NAS as well but I don’t have the know how I wish you lived in Southern California that would make a good video helping a subscriber with their NAS project
If everything you're going to be playing media with from the server supports the file formats and codecs, and has DLNA support, all you need on your media server is DLNA. The server simply has to... serve files. The client device, smart TV, phone, laptop/desktop, tablet etc handles the playback on itself. No need for transcoding on the server. With a basic DLNA server even a 32 bit x86 thin client running Open Media Vault with Mini DLNA will do the job. Of course it's a bit more effort to setup 32 bit Open Media Vault so a 64bit system is better.
I never get rid of old PC’s… this may be a good use for the most recent “old” pc.
I am looking to do something like this - Aliexpress to the rescue.
There are a320 kits with 16gb of ram, a ryzen 2600, and an A320 mb for just over $100 that make a good base to build from.
3:07😂😂
I thought I was the only one who does this, I do it with my HP compaq home server too😂😂
Do you know expensive running costs are on this. I’m planning on basically recreating this, but don’t know if it’s that cheap for electricity. Thanks
I did nearly exactly the same thing as you. I had an ewaste dell optiplex with an i5 and installed TrueNAS scale. It works ok-ish but it is fairly slow. I suspect the specs on the unit I used were worse than what you used which is likely why it is much slower. But it does work so I shouldn't complain about a free NAS system.
Duct tape and zip ties... The true OP tools of mankind 🤣🔥
I'm thinking about rolling my own NAS and have come across OpenMediaVault which, with a Bmax mini PC B1 Pro and a 1TB M.2 sata 2280 SSD, I can use to build a headless NAS for about $150. The OMV OS needs a screen for the easiest configuration but afterwards runs from a browser.
Nice job. I will be building such a server soon, probably copying all your picks! Thanks
You should try big discounted new refurbished HDDs, sometimes you get lucky and get new non-furbished
Thanks a lot for the idea !!! Can I use this kind of server to back up pictures from my phone? Like google photos? What would I need to do? Me and the kids naturally
I made one from an old broken laptop, the screen was gone. HP Pavilion media one with place for two HD´s of 1TB and booting OMV from a USB. Works well and dose not use a lot, I did the same on a old Dell computer with 4 HD´s and a small HD for booting. Power is a lot more but gives more choices of how you want your HD´s been used.
These types of videos really be like "this is how i built my $100 gaming pc" and then go on to say "i installed this 7800x3d i found in the trash, 128gb of ddr5 ram from todays sponsor dickass racing, rtx4090 i got off craigs list from a granny selling her sons old belongings, and then i spent $100 on rgb fans"
🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for the video. Just a heads up the Amazon link you posted for the drives appear to be for SAS drives and I don't think that HP listed would support them. Might need to swap that for a SATA drive.
Thanks Matt! You’re video was very informative and helpful
Very good video.
The only thing that would be better is another harddisk so that you can run TrueNas with RaidZ1 but there isn't room for one more drive and the number of sata-ports is limited to 3.
For this reason I chose a Fujitsu Celcius W530 chassis that does't have these limitations an is about the same price.
Oh, and added another 16 GB of Ram 😉
wow, just the video I needed! I almost went with the zimablade!
i learned the basics on a old netbook running with 1gb of ram and an intel atom n270 with a 160gb harddrive and a 32gb usb drive as the boot drive
I am looking to do this with an old HP SFF PC that I have lying around. My pfSense firewall is presently a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF PC with an i7-4770 and 8 GB RAM. So far, I just have an old 160 GB SATA HDD for the storage, but I will probably upgrade it to an SSD at later time.
What is that case at the very beginning of the video? It looks like one of the Fractal Define cases, but not 100% sure. I need to get my hands on something like that. Don't wanna pay the external multi HDD enclosure or pre-built NAS box tax.
Nice project but I'd go with 2.5 Gb/s as I am spoiled with it already. Good video, I may make something like that to play around with, I have a real NAS already but that could be fun.
Hi, planning to do this setup. How does it hold up after few months?
Very informative! Subject material well chosen.
Bought this case off of Amazon it comes with 2 sata cables and an ssd, so all you need is another 8gb stick and 1 more sata cable.
The NAS is not the problem.
The energy that the system need is the problem.
Using standard hardware, absorbing 60w to 90w constantly, will make your electricity bill bigger.
This is why you want to spend 500$ for a dedicated 15w prebuild NAS.
OR _at least_ use a raspberry driving 2 hard disks. that makes more sense.
I guess I found the build I needed for my personal cloud!
Thanks for all the informative content.
How can I add/install a GPU to my TrueNAS Scale installation and ensure apps can use it e.g. Photo Prism, Nextcloud, etc.
Damn. This was such a good video. So much beginner friendly. Such a cool video.
Excellent video! Liked and Subbed.
Just took a Dell XPS from work and pulled a couple of my 3.5 out of a 1U server as it’s cheaper on power with the i5 then the old Xeon + raid card.
I have a another Dell chassis with unraid idles under 30 W with five drives
A NAS should have drive bays! Anything else is just stupid. Just buy a cheap tower with lots of 5.25" slots and insert bays. The pick a cheap motherboard with lots of SATA ports. I have one myself with 9 bays. Cheap as chips.
Is it 100$ cheap as chips?
@@jabbathegoole What are you talking about? It's maximum 20 USD per bay. Did you go looking for the absolute most expensive one you could find??
@@dtesta no it was a legitimate question why do you think I'm on this video I'm broke
@@jabbathegoole Well, then just use something like a crappy computer and USB to SATA adapters for a NAS. That's what I started with. USB to SATA is like 3 USD.
Idle power usage?
Was wondering if you could have stolen some space on the HDD for swap instead of using the SSD - though I guess 44% health means just over half the write endurance used, in a position where it probably gets less action than usual
The issue with all those really old systems is power consumption. What were your power consumption figures?
Lovely tutorial. After buying a Synology NAS, I would rather go down this road. The CPU is very weak it takes ages to do anything.
Quick question, what is the power draw when idle for this server?
Love it, I might put a bit more into it but this is great for a guide .
Great video, very informative!
Is this kind of setup capable of running plex / jellyfin and stream full 4k movies on a single user network without issues ?
I’m just now getting into a home server. I do have laying around a bunch of 1tb 3.5” hdd’s. But I can’t seem to remember if my sas abdapter is if it’s to mini sas or just regular Sata. But I plan on building them into a file server and converting them into one drive. I belive I have 8tb’s in 1tb drives all together. So I’m just going to get a 12tb hdd drive to have as a back up.
oh boy, those seagate hard drives are not going to last.
A nice server to start with, my usual requirement for domestic use is low power, as this type of kit usually ends up turned on 24/7, so a Raspberry Pi, or Intel N100 based box.