Non-Win-11 PCs to keep my eyes out for to convert into a NAS?

Submitted ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨hakase@lemmy.zip⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

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.

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.
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!

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lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Something to remember: NAS is just an acronym for Network Attached Storage. A NAS is not a specific product.

You can run NAS software on pretty much anything. My current NAS is a Mac Mini 2014 with a 4-bay USB drive enclosure. I’m in the process of building a more reliable NAS out of an old HP ProLiant ML110 G2 case - which is fully ATX compatible, strangely enough - with modern(ish) guts. It’s got 10 drive bays, too.

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- hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  How fast/reliable/cheap are USB drive enclosures? Maybe I should just go that direction instead of buying a whole new system for it. As long as the NAS software doesn’t require much overhead, I’ve got an old laptop that should be able to handle things well enough if that would work.
  
  Plus, then I could still grab one of these cheap Win 10 machine as a server box to run all of the services to go along with the NAS.
  
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  - lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    How fast/reliable/cheap are USB drive enclosures?
    
    For a NAS? Not very. Mine drops out periodically. That’s part of why I’m building another machine to house everything. The USB enclosure will not see “production” use after that.
    
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webghost0101@sopuli.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If you can boot an os from usb (basically the same for all distros) you can try proxmox.

There are these incredibly useful helper scripts that setup entire services in 1-2 copy pasted commands.

community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/

To explain what proxmox is its basicly virtualisation software, it can run vms but also lxc (light linux containers) and share resources very efficiently between all of them.

Its also very easy to setup raid and there own storage format is very efficient.

Jellyfin, radarr, sonar. They are all included ok the helper scripts, one command installs that will give each a dedicated lxc.

Its well documented to the point that any decent llm can help you learn whatever you need.

Personally i am very hands off with mine, the hardest part is choosing what ip i want and i rarely update or mess with it if not necessary.

For hardware i recommend plenty of ram (can Be bought and installed seperatly), more cores is usually better and internal graphics can save you some hassle depending on what you are doing (also allows you to dedicate a Big gpu to some services).

A good practical case is always a blessing when you need to check the insides.

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- hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This is amazing info - thanks so much! I’ll probably end up putting the server in the basement, so sound hopefully won’t be much of an issue.
  
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kokomo@lemmy.kokomo.cloud ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
jellyfin.org/docs/general/quick-start/ Here’s a quick start for Jellyfin, depending on which OS you wish to install, there’s also one line scripts that can set it up in LXCs (linux containers) that share the linux kernel with the host operating system, such as Proxmox… community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/ As far as *arrs, wiki.servarr.com here are some setup guides for the most common.

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- hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thanks so much! I expected it to be more complicated for some reason.
  
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  - kokomo@lemmy.kokomo.cloud ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    you are very welcome :) yeah it can be tricky at first but I’ve gotten used to seeking out docs haha. I hope you have fun!!
    
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silt_haddock@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Some of the HP DeskMini machines might be a good one. There’s a model that has 2 x m.2 for a little high speed network storage or as a HTPC.

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- hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Great recommendation - I’ll keep my eye out for one!
  
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  - silt_haddock@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’m not sure if they all do, but some models also support a daughter board for additional IO. Often it’s DisplayPort but I’ve seen ones with Ethernet and DB9/RS232 on AliExpress/ebay
    
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mfdoom@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
lookup Open Media Vault

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JASN_DE@feddit.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Gotcha, yeah, physical space was the main thing I was worried about picking up one of these used corpo boxes.
  
  Would something like the HP DeskMini mentioned in another comment be a good enough choice for a service hosting machine?
  
  I have an old, pretty big Antec tower from like 10 years ago that should have plenty of space for drives - I suppose I could reuse that for the NAS and just upgrade my main PC case to something more modern like I already wanted to do anyway.
  
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