NAS that doesn't format or duplicate the HDDs

[6pack]

My old celeron nuc is too weak to play most videos now so I'm thinking of making it into a dumb data server. Problem is, most of the days is on mixed format drives. Some are portable external drives with either NTFS or ext4 file system and others are 3.5" hdd with NTFS or ext4 file systems.

The nuc doesn't have any hdd inside. Just 4GB DDR3 ram and was running Libreelec through a USB stick. It has 4 USB 3 ports. So I can attach about 6 USB drives to it through a powered USB hub.

How do I go about this in the simplest way without spending money? The max I am willing to spend on this is for a 256GB SSD. Install some Linux server on the SSD and use Samba or NFS to serve files. Or is there a NAS os that runs from USB stick and doesn't need to format drives etc?

 

[gourav]

You should try Tiny Core Linux. Should be possible to run off a USB stick and does run Samba. Failing this, you can get a used SSD, even a 128 GB one will suffice.

You can also try Raspberry Pi OS for x86 systems. Since it's the same OS, that runs on Raspberry Pi, it should be pretty light weight. https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/raspberry-pi-desktop/

 

[30fps101]

Ubuntu/debian/rhel server with nfs and samba.
If you don't want to reformat then mergerfs would be great option with snapraid if you need redenduncy. Try to stay away from NTFS use xfs or zfs if you have same capacity drives.a

 

[ibose]

Install some Linux server on the SSD and use Samba or NFS to serve files.

Yep, any linux install either on SSD or on a USB drive should suffice. If you are comfortable using command line then even Debian minimal will suffice; just configure Samba and ntfs-3g and you are good to go -

Samba NTFS drive sharing on Linux - Mitevski

Reading time: 7 minutesI would start this post with “What is a Samba share?”. So to save me some trouble explaining here is a snippet from Wikipedia about the SMB protocol: In computer networking, Server Message Block (SMB), one version of which was also known as Common Internet File System...

kmitevski.com

If you need a Gui then there are so many lightweight options which run off a USB drive - Puppy, Slax, Slitaz, TinyCore ...

 

[ajaykamath]

My old celeron nuc is too weak to play most videos now so I'm thinking of making it into a dumb data server. Problem is, most of the days is on mixed format drives. Some are portable external drives with either NTFS or ext4 file system and others are 3.5" hdd with NTFS or ext4 file systems.

The nuc doesn't have any hdd inside. Just 4GB DDR3 ram and was running Libreelec through a USB stick. It has 4 USB 3 ports. So I can attach about 6 USB drives to it through a powered USB hub.

How do I go about this in the simplest way without spending money? The max I am willing to spend on this is for a 256GB SSD. Install some Linux server on the SSD and use Samba or NFS to serve files. Or is there a NAS os that runs from USB stick and doesn't need to format drives etc?

You don't need to do anything, Libreelec itself works as a NAS. You can set any USB connected devices to be available over the network by enabling samba.