Cloud Hosting

If youve been on the Internet for any time at all, youre probably aware that you can repurpose an old PC into an at-home server or NAS, which is shorthand for network attached storage. But when so many ready-made solutions exist, why would you? And how exactly do you turn an old PC into a NAS machine anyway?

To help you get started and understand what you can do with your old PC to transform it to a NAS, well go over all of that and more.

Purpose-built NAS solutions are great if you just want something quick and easy to use. But using an old PC as a NAS server offers a few advantages over a pre-built solution.

Its Cheaper If you already have an old PC lying around, then of course its cheaper to use than a dedicated NAS solution. But even if you dont, you can pick up an old workstationlike a Dell OptiPlex 9020for dirt cheap. Then, just add software and drives (discussed below) and youre done!

Greater Flexibility Repurposing an old PC to use as a NAS server allows you the modularity of a PC, both in terms of software and hardware. Want to add faster networking, a GPU for media transcoding, or additional SATA ports for more drives? Simply slot in an appropriate PCIe card. Plus, if you outgrow your old PC NAS solution, you can always build your own NAS/media server and bring over your PCIe cards to your new build.

More Powerful A pre-built NAS computer may be easier to set up, but theyre also less powerful. You dont need a lot of CPU power to dole out files over your network, but if you also want to use something like Plex, you might find an old computer can handle the job better. For example, a Synology DS218+ might struggle to transcode on a Plex server, while an old OptiPlex 9020 (running a 4th-gen Intel processor) will handle the job with relative ease.

If you want to turn an old PC into a NAS server, then youll need to figure out which operating system you want to use. And if youre planning on installing a new operating system on the computer, youll also want to grab a flash drive for this part.

When it comes to choosing an operating system for a NAS server, youve got tons of choices. Since selecting an OS can be a deep rabbit hole, well quickly go over a few of the more popular ones and cover some advantages and disadvantages of each one.

If youre repurposing an old Windows machine, you may be happy to know that you can also use Windows for NAS purposes. You can set up the drives in the computer to be used as network drives or use third-party software like Resilio Sync to use the computer as a personal cloud.

Read more: How to manage syncing across your Windows 10 devices

The main advantage of Windows is that its easy to use. If youre already acclimated to the Windows environment, then you wont need to learn much to get your system up and running. And if your old PC already has Windows installed, you wont even need to go through the trouble of setting it up (though a fresh install is certainly a good idea).

However, for all of its ease of use, Windows is not nearly as robust of a system for NAS as other operating systems. It lacks software RAID functionality, and frequent bugs and updates can cause a bit more downtime than youd like. Also, with all the telemetry and background tasks running, it isnt as fast or efficient as the other NAS-centric OSes.

One of the most simple and effective NAS operating systems is OpenMediaVault. Being Debian-based, its known as being one of the more beginner-friendly NAS operating systems and has an incredible range of hardware support.

Its also rather robust. Not only is it fairly capable out of the box, but it also has tons of official and third-party plugins available. In fact, the only real knock against it is that it might lack some support and polish that other NAS OSes have.

Another excellent choice for running your new old-PC-turned-NAS computer is UnRAID. Like OpenMediaVault, UnRAID is easy to set up and use, and works excellently as a NAS OS. In fact, theres a ton of overlap between the two.

One of the notable advantages of UnRAID is that it functions like a Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD) system, in that it doesnt stripe or mirror drives. Rather, it spreads files across drives with even parity and offers fault protection to guard against data loss. Unlike a standard RAID array, this makes adding disks to your NAS much easier, since you wont need to add multiple drives at a time in order to increase your NAS capacity.

Of course, there are some downsides to UnRAID compared to other alternatives. First, when drives are added to a standard RAID array, you usually see a performance increase. But with UnRAID, the additional overhead of adding a drive can actually cause a small performance hit.

Other than performance issues, UnRAID does have a drive limit of 30 drives in a single instance. For most, this shouldnt be an issue, but it is a limitation nonetheless. And finally, UnRAID is a paid operating system, so if you arent prepared to shell out money for an OS, then you might want to look elsewhere.

If youre looking for a powerful, fully-featured NAS OS, then you might consider TrueNAS. Formerly split between two versions (FreeNAS and TrueNAS), TrueNAS has rebranded itself and split into three editions: TrueNAS Core, TrueNAS Enterprise, and TrueNAS Scale.

You can find a comparison between the three here. But to sum up the differences, TrueNAS Core and TrueNAS Scale are free, community-driven operating systems (with Scale also receiving professional support) that are hardware-agnostic. TrueNAS Enterprise, however, is a paid version limited to iXsystems hardware only.

TrueNAS is a staple among NAS administrators, providing features like bit-rot detection and correction, multi-level encryption, and support for a range of cloud providers. TrueNAS also uses the OpenZFS file system, a powerful open-source file system that combines speed and protection against data corruption.

Of course, TrueNAS isnt completely without fault. Because its a more robust operating system than other NAS OSes, it does require more powerful hardware. And because TrueNAS Core is based on FreeBSD, it doesnt have the widest range of hardware support (though TrueNAS Scale is based on Debian and may mitigate this issue).

Intel X520-DA1,10Gb PCI-E NIC Network Card

As mentioned before, you can always upgrade your hardware to accommodate your needs. Well go over a few different types of hardware you can add to your old PC to help increase its functionality as a NAS server.

Intel X520-DA1,10Gb PCI-E NIC Network Card

Depending on your setup, your computers network interface could bottleneck the performance of your NAS, leading to slower file transfers and network streaming. By adding a faster PCIe network card, you can easily increase your NAS network throughput.

Read more: NIC Cards: What Do They Do?

GLOTRENDS M.2 PCIe NVMe 4.0/3.0 Adapter

If you have an older computer but want to take advantage of newer and faster storage technology, you can find PCIe to M.2 drive adapters. These allow you to set up faster cache drives, or just increase the speed of your storage for faster access to files.

If youve got spots for more drives in your case than you do on your motherboard, you can easily add more SATA pots to your old PC with a PCIe SATA controller expansion card.

Add hard drives where the DVD/CD ROM drive once was

Unless the old PC youre using is in a case with a lot of 3.5-inch drive bays, then you might be limited on storage. However, you can always ditch the computers old DVD drives in lieu of more storage with a 5.25-inch to 3.5-inch drive adapter. And they come in all sorts of sizes, from single drive-to-drive adapters to three-to-two drive adapters and four-by-3.5 inch adapters.

Turning an old PC into a NAS is a great way to add storage and backup capabilities to your network. But you can also utilize other software to allow your NAS to do more than just host files.

If youve ever used Dropbox or OneDrive, then you know just how useful having cloud storage can be. But if you dont want to trust your data in the hands of corporations, you can host your own personal cloud on your NAS. With software like Nextcloud, ownCloud, and Resilio Sync, you can easily set up your own personal cloud to keep your files on your computers and phones synced to your NAS.

Smart home tech has surged in popularity over the years, and its easy to see why. With the ability to control everything from your phone (or with your voice), smart home tech allows you to fine-tune your home to your liking.

But with so many devices split between different controllers, hubs, and apps, there are alternatives like Home Assistant, Hubitat, and Homebridge that allow you to connect everything in one neat little package. And you can easily add these to your NAS with little overhead to increase the usefulness of your humble little network storage device.

In todays streaming-oriented entertainment environment, its hard not to mention that you can also use your NAS as a local media streaming device. Gone are the days when you had to manually transfer video files to individual computers, thanks to popular at-home streaming software like Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin.

This can allow you to consolidate your media collection on your NAS, and give you the freedom of streaming not only in your home, but also remotely. And whats not to love about being able to access your media from anywhere without having to load up your devices with hundreds of gigabytes of media files?

Here is the original post:
How to Turn an Old PC Into NAS - GameCrate