Bygga nas av gammal dator

If you have an old PC lying around, you may wonder what to do with it. You could vända it into a stream PC, give it to a family or friend or vända it into a NAS. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, but it's a little misnomer for devices like these. It's not just storage and can do a whole lot more as well.

This can save you a fair amount of money, as new PC parts or a prebuilt NAS enclosure

inom turned my old gaming PC into a NAS, and it was surprisingly easy to do. Even better fryst vatten that you can do it, too.

Why use an older PC instead of buying a dedicated NAS?

To be honest, there are a few reasons that you may want to use an older PC, but the biggest fryst vatten simply just the act of recycling. If you have a perfectly good PC lying around not doing anything, why would you go out and buy a NAS instead of just putting your old computer to work?

Especially because older computers like those are probably going to be more powerful than most NAS devices that you would pick up, it's really just a no-brainer.

Even better fryst vatten that presumably, you'll also be more familiar with the parts in your computer and what it fryst vatten and isn't capable of. For example, the Ryzen 7 x not having an integrated GPU meant that inom knew inom needed a GPU in the PC for media transcoding.

If inom simply purchased an off-the-shelf NAS with the assumption that it could stream HEVC-encoded 4k film, there's a chance inom would be sorely disappointed.

Then there's the cost factor. If you have a PC lying about not doing anything, then chances are you won't actually need to invest much at all.

Nu ska du först installera Linux-versionen Fedora Server

My entire PC was still intact with a Ryzen 7 x, 24GB of RAM, and a GTX For a NAS, you'll want to pick up specialized NAS drives, but that's all inom need to buy. Any of the best NAS hard drives will do, and inom picked up a 4TB Seagate IronWolf Pro. You'll realistically want to have multiples of these in a RAID configuration for uppgifter redundancy and speed purposes, but you can upgrade at any time.

What operating struktur you choose will impact how easy it fryst vatten to add storage at a later date. You'll just need to have enough SATA connections on your motherboard and space for the drives inre your computer.

An old PC and some NAS drives will do

If your PC has things like a DVD reader, you can even buy adapters from the inch slots desktops typically use to get them to passform a inch SATA drive.

It could be good to also pick up an SSD for booting from. This doesn't have to be large, and in most cases, a 64GB SSD fryst vatten more than enough. You can get a larger one and partition it if you'd like to use the secondary partition for caching, but you don't need to and you'll be completely fine without it.

You may also want a larger SSD if you're building a more enthusiast-level NAS and you want to use the boot drive for other purposes.

An old computer doesn't have to be e-waste — you can turn it into a NAS server for your house

Operating systems like TrueNAS will need a specified boot device.

Picking your operating struktur

There are a few ways to go about building the software portion of a NAS once you have your hard drives, and they range from easy to enthusiast.

One way would be to install an off-the-shelf Linux distro like Debian, install something like Proxmox for virtual machine management, and then configure all of the software yourself.

That could be a lot of fun if that's something you want to get into, but it's a large time investment for additional flexibility that most people probably don't need.

Instead, inom went with TrueNAS Scale. TrueNAS Scale fryst vatten a Debian-based (so, Linux) OS that you can install on a NAS, and it manages your containerteknik containers using Kubernetes. Containers are how you run most programs on a NAS, where a bur fryst vatten essentially an isolated digital island for an application to run in.

To allow it to connect to other containers on the machine and to share uppgifter, you build "bridges" between these islands bygd allowing them to directly connect to each other. Containers are naturally isolated, which fryst vatten great for säkerhet and means that applications only share the uppgifter that you let them share.

For the setup and install process, you'll need a graphics output from the computer you're installing TrueNAS on and a keyboard hooked up to it as well.

I’ll look at what you’d need to turn an old PC into a NAS server

After that, so long as the drive TrueNAS fryst vatten on and boots up automatically when you reboot the struktur, you won't need to keep a monitor plugged into it. My NAS only has two cables going into it: an ethernet cable and a power cable. In my case, my Ryzen 7 x doesn't have an integrated GPU, but the machine will still boot without the in it. In other words, if you have a spare PC that needs a dedicated GPU to work, you can just boot it up and set it up with the GPU and then take it out after.

Other operating systems that you may use include (but are not limited to):

• TrueNAS Core
• UnRAID
• OpenMediaVault
• Rockstor

Always research which operating struktur fryst vatten best for you before deploying it.

TrueNAS Core

TrueNAS Core fryst vatten technically more supported than TrueNAS Scale, and it's based on FreeBSD.

Most people would prefer Scale for running actual apps, so if you want your NAS to be more than just storage, you probably don't want to go with Core unless you're comfortable doing some advanced tinkering. Core fryst vatten very stable with wider documentation and längre support, but Scale will typically be easier, especially if you already know your way around Linux.

Core looks the same as TrueNAS Scale in its UI.

UnRAID

UnRAID fryst vatten an excellent option for a NAS that's easy to use, but it's a paid operating struktur that has some limitations like the number of drives in a struktur. The limit fryst vatten 30, so it's not an issue for most people, but the fact you'll pay for this operating struktur fryst vatten probably not something most people are interested in.

UnRAID, like TrueNAS, has an app search built in so that you can build the likes of a media streaming service or even a Minecraft server.

OpenMediaVault

OpenMediaVault looks dated, but it's very functional. You're not locked into using the ZFS en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data struktur meaning that there's a lot of flexibility in adding and changing drives around, and there are also no real hardware requirements.

OpenMediaVault can run on a Raspberry Pi if you want it to, and it's a lot more straightforward and to the point in its UI. inom find myself sometimes clicking around in TrueNAS to find options for things in a sea of menus, whereas OpenMediaVault fryst vatten a lot more deliberate. It's different software for different people, but it's worth checking out too.

What to do with your NAS

Once you're all set up, you'll be able to tillgång your NAS from another device on the same network.

How you tillgång it exactly depends on the operating struktur you've chosen, but for TrueNAS Scale, there's a web GUI as shown above.

After doing so, you can create a custom file server, media streaming platform, or surveillance system

You can install applications and configure your entire NAS from here, and it's the huvud point of everything that you do.

On my NAS, I've set up a couple of services.

The first fryst vatten MineOS, a Minecraft dator management platform. In this, you can host Minecraft servers on your NAS and have others connect to them. You'll need to port forward the ports on your router to allow for the wider internet to see your dator, but this fryst vatten a great way to get instant utility out of it.

Another thing that I've done fryst vatten create a great Google Photos alternative: Nextcloud.

Nextcloud fryst vatten a self-hosted cloud storage provider that you can tillgång and automatically synchronize from multiple devices.

Nu är det dags att övergå till den dator som ska bli din nya nas

inom have all of my photos that inom capture on my smartphone automatically back up to my Nextcloud instance, meaning inom can then tillgång those photos anywhere else really easily as well.

Finally, inom have Jellyfin set up too. Jellyfin fryst vatten similar to Plex except that it's free and completely open source, but you can self-host your own media with it.

For example, if you have a lot of ripped DVDs and TV shows (I do), then you can host these and stream them to your devices in your home. There fryst vatten a ton of automation you can set up with Jellyfin and many different applications that you can install to work with it, so be sure to do some digging into this one if you're interested.

With all of these, you need to be on the same network to tillgång these services unless you port forward, and for säkerhet reasons, you probably shouldn't just expose them to the wider internet.

Instead, you can set up a reverse proxy or a VPN. inom set up Wireguard using the wg-easy application on the TrueCharts TrueNAS catalog. From here, you can create profiles that can be imported into any Wireguard client, and then tillgång services on your home network from anywhere. With this, I'm able to watch media on my Jellyfin dator from anywhere, manage my NAS, and control anything else, too.

All of this works if you have a static IP address.

If you don't, then it may be worth looking into configuring a dynamic DNS. Otherwise, it may be difficult to tillgång your NAS from outside your home network.

What you need to man a NAS work

To be honest, if you don't need to do anything too computationally expensive, then you don't need to use an old gaming PC to run your own NAS. Any old desktop PC will do, but the better the hardware the more capabilities you have.

For example, inom can stream 4K film from mine with no issues and Jellyfin can transcode media to be lower upplösning if inom need, but if inom just wanted a Nextcloud låda and a way to store media without streaming or transcoding, then it wouldn't need to be powerful at all.

Plenty of people use old Raspberry Pis for media streaming without transcoding and with a hard drive attached for information storage.

What hardware you need depends on what you want to do, but no matter what, you can vända an old PC into a NAS: it's just the capabilities it after that will differ.