I know literally nothing about home servers/NAS, but with all of the cheap non-Win-11 PCs that should be hitting the curb soon, I think now’s the perfect time to try to grab one on the cheap and give the whole thing a try.

  1. What should I be looking for in a used PC for this sort of use case? Specs, etc.? I think I’d like to do at least 3 hard drives in some sort of RAID config (whatever that is), but room for more would be welcome.

  2. Does anyone know where I would be finding these PCs? How would I know what a good price is? Are there centralized websites that sell this sort of used tech, or should I mostly be scouring Facebook Marketplace for local businesses getting rid of stuff on the cheap (in which case I’ll need to know what specs I’m looking for and how to price them reliably)?

(3.) My tech knowledge is at the level of running Linux Mint exclusively for the past year or so, but not even being able to get my Mint computers visible to each other over my local network after a few days of trying. With that said, can anyone point me to a super basic tutorial (like, idiot-level) for how to set up a NAS/home server, how to set up containers on it (whatever those are), how to set up a RAID array on it, how to get Jellyfin/Radarr/Sonarr, etc. working on it, and how to make sure that it’s visible on my network? I realize that this is a huge question that’s somewhat orthogonal to my main point for this post, and that there may not be exactly the resource I’m looking for, but I thought I’d ask anyway.

Thanks!

  • JASN_DE@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    While any machine that provides storage through the network can be a NAS, you’ll probably want at least some level of extendability. Your biggest problem with OEM machines (think Dell, HP, Lenovo) will be s lack of SATA ports, in combination with not enough power outlets and not enough space to put the actual disks in the case.

    That’s the reason I usually build my own machines for those purposes, and depending on what’s needed you don’t even need high-end parts, at least for a “NAS-only NAS”. My NAS works on a 2 core/ 4 thread Intel i3, which will be enough for the foreseeable future. But it also only provides storage, all the rest (self hosting my services) happens on another machine.

    TrueNAS works well for me as a NAS OS. AS far as I’ve seen it also provides direct container support or virtual machines. It you want an all-in-one machine, that might be worth looking into.