NAS software

M

meetdilip

Adept
Hi, I am thinking about converting my desktop into a NAS. I do not fancy much, only an external data storage unit that can act as a media server to other devices at home. What are the options ? Thanks.
 
You have a few options.

alternativeto.net

TrueNAS Alternatives: Top 10 Similar NAS Systems | AlternativeTo

The best TrueNAS alternatives are OpenMediaVault, XigmaNAS and Unraid. Our crowd-sourced lists contains more than 10 apps similar to TrueNAS for Linux, Windows, Mac, Self-Hosted solutions and more.
alternativeto.net
rigorousthemes.com

10 Best FreeNAS Alternatives

If you’ve been looking for a way to keep your data safe and secure – regardless of the device you use or your location – you’ve most likely come across Network Attached Storage (NAS). NAS is a great…
rigorousthemes.com rigorousthemes.com
www.how2shout.com

11 Best Free and Open source NAS or SAN software

NAS- Network Attached storage devices helps to solve storage problem and here are the some best open-source NAS operating systems in 2019-2020 for a DIY box
www.how2shout.com www.how2shout.com

OpenMediaVault and amahi are easy to use. Best for low power systems. Easy to add plugins and 'apps'.
Then you have truenas core (renamed from freenas). Lots of features, plugin store, use docker. Bit more hands on diy.
Unraid is quite good too but its paid. Generally easier to setup and use compared to truenas.
See the above links for more options.

 
OMV is probably the best free option. If you are adventurous and have compatible hardware then you can also try and install the Synology Disk Station Manager also known as Xpenology. If successful, you would have one of the best NAS interfaces in business.
 
I recently tried unRAID and OMV and settled for OMV. Unraid was no simpler than OMV and was paid. The biggest challenge I faced was setting up reverse proxy and opening things to Internet.
 
TinTinSnowy said:
Do you guys underclock/disable cores to reduce power consumption for x86 old system based NAS?
Click to expand...
I have an i5 2500k system. I didn't see any appreciable increase in my power bill with it turned on all the time. So i didn't bother with underclocking. Why take away the ability to speed up when needed?
 
Thanks all. Let us say we use Open Media Vault, do we have to format all the HDDs involved ? I have 3 500 GB HDDs.

My use is strictly home-based. To learn and set up a media server / file sharing system for home devices. So I would like to make sure that the NAS is not going to be accessed outside the Home network.
 
baccilus said:
I have an i5 2500k system. I didn't see any appreciable increase in my power bill with it turned on all the time. So i didn't bother with underclocking. Why take away the ability to speed up when needed?
Click to expand...
i did this calculation years ago so basically the amount of power this consumes in a year around 6k in power(atleast my ryzen machine does) if starting from scratch its best to use a cheap 25w U based nuc/mini pc or a raspberry pi. i know people say usb drives go bad but imo just buy 2.5 inch sata drives and put them in 300 buck usb to sata cases. for a home backup/media server this works very well. These machines can be had for cheap from olx or factory corporate recyclers. or get a raspberry pi.basically over 3 years one will endup saving 15k plus for thin clients/pi's replacement parts are cheap af. I run esxi and instead of just running omv i run bunch of operating systems.
 
That is very useful. But has anyone actually measured? Because these systems have good power saving features and my guess is that calculations are not very accurate, and we usually calculate conservatively to avoid bad surprises.
 
skt907 said:
What kind of speed were you getting? Could you stream 2K videos?
Click to expand...
skt907 said:
What kind of speed were you getting
Click to expand...
I could stream 1080p smoothly on the raspberry pi 3B which had the shared usb 2.0 + 10/100 bus that too with a 10 year old seagate external drive with 30 mbs or read write. Never tried anything above that. The pi4 with its usb 3.0 and gigabit Ethernet should be much better at streaming. i3,i5 U/T processor nucs are even better. Anything with usb 3.0 and a decent processor in the last 10 years or so processor can stream 4k fine at that point your wifi is where all the magic happens bottlenecks arise.
 
I am using Raspberry Pi 4B as my NAS, Media server, DNS.
  1. Media Server: Currently, I am using an open-source software Jellyfin which acts as a media server. It starts a web server and has a very beautiful UI which is customizable as well. It does not need to create an account like other software as Plex does, and it puts you in control of everything. It uses a media library from an external hard drive.
  2. NAS: Currently Using SAMBA Server which hosts entire external hard disk as NAS. Just need to add a network location with the path in the windows. Also can be accessed from mobile.
  3. DNS: Pi-hole is open-source software that blocks ads on all devices connected to that local network. It acts as a DNS, and it maintains hosts/domains used by adverts and blocks them from getting resolved. This helps in blocking ads on every device that is connected to the internet.
  4. Media File Conversion: I am using open-source software Tdarr to convert all the files to H264+AAC encoding with an MP4 container. Rpi is not powerful enough to transcode files into web compatible encoding on the fly for multiple users at the same time. So I transcode all the files beforehand. This software checks the media library and converts all the necessary files into required encodings and containers.
I am currently using a headless distribution of Raspberry Pi. Just to reduce the load on the CPU. Also, some cron jobs help to mount the hard drive at the startup and also update these apps regularly so I do not need to do anything.
 
Back
Top