I love my setup. My top-tier gaming PC not only brute forces its way through
modern game optimization, but it handles my Plex streaming.
>> Your what? I mean, what? I've got a great CPU with
lots of cores, and the GPU is great at transcoding.
>> [sighs] >> Yes. He's not wrong. And if you've only got
one PC, combining these functions is perfectly reasonable. But, if you're
looking to step up your reliability, not to mention the safety of your data
storage, a dedicated NAS, or network attached storage server, is the way to
go. And it costs less than you might think.
Not at the price I bought my hard drives at. I may have splurged a bit elsewhere,
too. >> Yeah, well, look, I can't do anything about the way that you dive into a new
hobby. But, you don't have to do things his way, because everything Plouffe
wants to accomplish today, sharing Plex with family and friends, off-site buddy
backup, not to mention good old-fashioned local file share, can be
accomplished on basic or even second-hand hardware. And if you're not
any good at this stuff, that's okay, because I'm not either. Notice I've
never done a single network or storage video in the last 5 years? No.
>> [music] >> So, we'll be learning together. But, not until we all learn
about our sponsor, Squarespace. Do you need a website to
help take your business or hobby to the next level? Well, Squarespace has a ton
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off your first purchase at the link down below. Here's what I've got: a computer
in the living room, a computer in my office, and me, a lazy pile of trash who
doesn't want to get up once I've sat down. I could use Google Drive or
OneDrive to share all of my documents across my computers, but I hate the idea
of sending things to the cloud when [music] all of my PCs could just be
connected locally. Also, both of those companies, Google and Microsoft, they
just kind of keep getting worse, [music] to the point where I might even be running Linux on my main gaming PC in
another year or two. The plan is [music] to pop a NAS down under my desk here.
It'll act as a central repository, and if someone wants to access my Plex
account while I'm gaming, it won't cost me any frames. I am well aware that I
could just buy an off-the-shelf box. UGREEN in particular has some really
compelling options. But, as soon as I started looking at anything with six
hard drive bays or more, I ran into the starting at monster. Also, since I want
this to be more than just a NAS, and I'm not sure yet of all the things I want it
to do in the future, a custom upgradeable build feels like the right
choice. It's also just more fun to pick exactly what I want, starting with the
CPU, an Intel Core i3 12100. And I'll
tell you all about it while I transfer all of the data from my two 8-TB drives
that I'm going to be upgrading from today. This ended up being an even
better choice than I initially expected. With GPU prices being what they are, I
asked the lab to run some encoding tests to see if I can get away without one.
And it turns out the 12100 is great when it comes to direct play, software
encoding, and can even use Quick Sync on the integrated GPU for great power
efficiency. Also, unlike AMD's 5800G or
the spare GTX 1660 Ti I would have used,
the Intel chip has native AV1 support if
that ever ends up actually mattering. Guess I get to save some power, which is
one of the reasons I spent a little more in the first place. There are much older
and much cheaper CPUs that would work fine for basic storage, but that would
come at the expense of some efficiency. Plus, you know, who knows what I want to
actually do with this thing, so I might as well buy modern-ish hardware. Let's
check out the motherboard. I chose the ASUS Prime B760M-A
D4. It's a little overkill, but it's got
2 and 1/2 gig LAN, decent IO, and tons
of expansion slots in an mATX form factor. And since it's a couple of
generations old, it's not that expensive. Now, you might be saying,
"Plouffe, you fool! That board only has four SATA ports." But, don't worry. I've
got a surprise tool that I'll show you later. Thanks, ASUS, for sending this
guy over. For memory, Work agreed to give me some on the condition that I dig
for our worst kit of DDR4. But, with how
things are out there, I'm not complaining. Capacity is more important
than speed for what I'm doing anyway, especially if I want to run a virtual
machine or two. And if memory ever does come down in price, I can always upgrade
later thanks to my four DIMM slots. What
I don't have that luxury for is storage. While I was planning this project, the
humble hard drive got hit by the same shortage that has rocked memory and SSDs
around the world. And it's at the point now where it's not even a question of
price. Many drives are just plumb out of stock. So, on top of the couple of 8-TB
I picked up from Weiler about a year ago, I had to ask my brother to buy me
four 8-TB IronWolf CMR NAS drives all
the way over in Edmonton for about 1,200 Canadian dollars. Now, this is another
area where you could definitely save some money. Unless you have multiple
heavy users working off of your NAS, you probably don't need CMR or conventional
magnetic recording. The alternative is SMR or shingled magnetic recording,
which is cheaper and uses less power while still offering reasonable read
speeds. The only downside is that it suffers during intensive write
operations, which those won't come up for me unless I ever need to rebuild the
data on my array in the event of a failure.
Please don't fail me, hard drives. Please.
The plan was to tell you guys all about the stuff while I install the sleds, and
then I realized that these don't have sleds. They just have little rubber
stoppers that we're going to put on there, and then they've got these nice
front handles that you put on the front. So, if you haven't guessed it, the case
is a Jonsbo case, which we'll get to in a bit. If I was really smart, what I
could have done was waited a week or two before sticker bombing my hard drives.
Most failures occur at the very beginning of life or near the end. But,
let's face it, I wasn't going to put together a system that wasn't covered in
stickers. I'll live with my choice. And if I have to, I'll rip the stickers off
and RMA the drives. By the way, great tool for building a computer, LTT
screwdriver, lttstore.com. For my OS drive, I was lucky enough to
have a random 500 gig WD Blue kicking around. I took one look at SSD pricing
on Newegg and decided to use it. If it dies,
it dies. It won't be holding any of my precious Linux ISOs anyway. I also have
a 1-TB Samsung 980 Pro that I was planning to use as a cache, but Linus
told me that if I end up going with TrueNAS or Hex-OS, I may not have enough
system memory to properly take advantage of L2ARC. He recommended either using it
to store virtual machines or to simply sell it and recoup some of my project
budget, cuz yeah, these hard drives cost a pretty penny.
Now, it's time to answer the question of how I'm going to hook up all these drives to this little motherboard. Well,
[music] the case does have a nice backplane, but to connect all of that,
we're going to use an HBA, or host bus adapter card. The go-to brand for best
reliability is LSI, and [music] you can get them pretty much anywhere. Just be
cautious of counterfeits and make sure you get one that explicitly supports IT
mode. That way you can avoid flashing the card's firmware. With this
installed, one of my unused PCIe slots turns into eight SAS [music] ports,
which can be used for either SAS or SATA drives. And just what case can store all
of these hard drives? Only the Jonsbo N1 5. Okay, many others could. Hell, two
strips of acrylic could hold them all, but this is what I chose. It's massive,
but I wanted it for a few reasons. First and foremost, it's beautiful, and it
really vibes with my space. Second, it supports up to 12 3 and 1/2-in drives,
getting me a ton of room to grow into my new data hoarding obsession. And third,
cable management is going to be a breeze. Oh, and I like that it has USB-C
on the front. That's great if I ever need to ingest bulk data a little faster
in the future. Since we're not sucking back much power without a dedicated GPU,
I went with a little 500-W SFX power supply from Silverstone. I decided on
this and asked Silverstone to send it over before choosing the Jonsbo N1 5.
Could have used a regular-size unit, but this one will fit just fine. Besides,
you know, if you're building a NAS at home, you're probably building it in an SFF case, and so you'll need something
small like this. But, before I install the power supply, my copy's done. So,
I'm going to pop these last two drives in first. [music]
Minor issue, the adapter plate that came with the Silverstone power supply got
this lip on it, and it makes our screws sit really proud. And flipping it over
just looks wrong. And also, it's doesn't look like that's supposed to happen that
way. So, luckily, I work somewhere that has extra power supplies kind of just
lying around. That means I grabbed this MAG A550BN 550-W from MSI, and I'm going
to use this today. Luckily, this supports ATX power supplies, so I'm
sorry, Silverstone. Thanks for sending it. I'm sure it's a great unit. Let's
pop this in. >> [music]
>> Moment of truth, it's all put together. Let's see if I did anything wrong. The
monitor detects something. >> [gasps]
>> 1 2 3 4 5 6 drives. And then, where is
my SSD SSD? The system works.
All right. Overall, I feel pretty good about this build. Yeah, it was almost
$2,000, not counting my two old 8-TB
drives, which is a lot of money. But, most of that budget went to the storage,
which, one way or another, I was going to pay [music] for anyway. Have you
looked at the cost of cloud storage these days? And that's only going to go
up as drives get more and more scarce. At least I've kind of locked in on my
pricing. [music] But, this was the easy part. I know how to build a computer. I
I of do it for a living. >> [music] >> The hard part is the software element of
turning a computer into a NAS. The way I
see it, I've got three options: TrueNAS, Unraid, or Hex OS. TrueNAS seems to be
the best bet for power users, but [music] I don't really know if that's
me. Unraid is pretty flexible in how you utilize your storage. Pretty sure you
can also just chuck in kind of whatever size drives you want and it'll figure it
out. But, Linus really recommends Hex OS. And because I was able to get a
license because I work where I work, it was kind of a no-brainer. So, I've got
my Hex OS media right here. We're going to try to install it. I've never done
this before. We'll see how it goes. I went to Hex OS's website, followed their
instructions to flash my thumb drive with some media. This should be easy.
That's the reason I picked Hex OS. So, I'm really hoping it is. I'm going to
hit save and exit here, and away we go. All right, we're going to select our USB
partition two for our boot device. Start Hex OS installation. All right.
It's doing something. Uh install, shell,
reboot, shutdown. I want to install or upgrade.
Okay, install Hex OS to a drive. If desired, select multiple drives to
provide redundancy. Hex OS installation drive are not available for use in
storage pools. That's fine. Okay, so I'm just picking which ones to select and
then pressing space bar. Oh, pressing space bar to select. So, not big backup.
That's going to get wiped. Um I want this 500 gig WD. This will
erase all partitions and data on SDH. That is fine. Proceed. Yes.
Enter your TrueNAS admin user password. Root password login will be disabled.
Extracting. Extracting. Creating data set. Creating boot pool. The Hex OS
installation on SDH succeeded.
Please reboot and remove the installation media. That should be all
it takes to install. Now, I should have to set up my actual storage pools and
whatnot. Let's do it. Let's get started. We'll guide you through setting up your new
server. All right, cool. Looking for servers. If you recently installed Hex
OS, it should automatically be detected when this device is on the same network.
And then if this doesn't work, I'll hit the having problems button. Okay, we
gave looking for servers a few minutes here and it's not finding anything. This
is the sort of thing that normally it'll detect it within like 10 to 30 seconds.
We give it an extra few minutes, you know, just in case. Uh but I'm going to
click having problems. Troubleshooting steps. Make sure that the server is
running and has an internet connection. Check. Ensure the device you're using is
connected to the same local network. It should be. Check that mDNS, multicast is
enabled and functioning correctly on both devices for proper discovery. If
the above are correct, then try restarting the server. If you have a custom network configuration, try
entering the IP manually. Let's enter the IP manually because if I was at
home, I'd probably try just restarting it, but we have a pretty
different network than like what my home network is going to be like. Try to
connect. Looking for servers. A new server is detected. That's great
and it matches my IP. Perfect. So, I'm going to claim that. I'm going to enter
my admin password. Claim server error. You do not have any licenses available.
Elijah. All right, day two. Elijah got my code from Hex OS squared away and I
should just be able to hit get started here. And this time it should work. Zero
SSDs of six and six HDDs. Yep, that's
correct. I don't know why that's a warning. This drive has existing Oh,
very cool. Okay, so luckily I backed up all of my data, but I like that it's
telling me that two of my hard drives actually have data on them and it lets
you know they're going to be wiped. Storage pools. 40 terabyte usable
storage. It automatically configured to the RAID Z1 or RAID 5. I'm not sure
which, but uh 40 terabyte, one drive can fail. Yeah, that sounds good to me.
Almost done. We've collected everything we need to get your server up and running. To make it easier to find and
identify your server, you should also give it a name. You know, most of ours
are named after little municipalities around town. I'm going to name mine after where I'm from, Yellowknife. So,
let's do that. Uh and yes, this is going to wipe it. Finish setup. Initializing.
Preparing drives. Welcome to Hex OS. Here are some shortcuts. Configure
storage. Configure users. Add folders. Install your first app. I'm on the
dashboard. Uh everything seems to be running normally. I've installed Plex. Once I take this
home, I'll actually sign into Plex and get all that set up. Uh but that happens
a little later. I just want to make sure everything's, you know, running properly. My RAM is working. My hard
drive pool has got 38.19 TB of uh storage available. Uh folders.
Okay, so the other thing that I'm really worried about because networking is not
my strong suit. Permissions. I hate
figuring out permissions in Windows. It is terrible. I am terrified of trying to
do that in Linux without running into issues. A huge part of why I'm going
with Hex OS, that I've said multiple times, is this should be brain dead easy
and I should just be able to make folders and assign users and we'll see
if that works. So, the next step is taking this home, making sure it
connects on my local network, and getting Plex installed.
So, let's go. All right. It's been 1 week since you
got a NAS. How's it going? Pretty good so far. The whole experience was uh a
little easier than I expected, but also much harder at the same time. Okay. Now,
before we get any further into that, what operating system did you end up
going with that was easier and harder than expected? I ended up going with Hex
OS. Really? Cuz I was going to say like it wasn't that long ago. Investment
disclosure, I'm an investor in the company that makes Hex OS. It wasn't
that long ago that we and everyone else under the sun recommended Unraid [music]
for its simplicity. I know. And even even then watching, cuz I watched a
bunch of videos on installing and how to do initial setup and everything, TrueNAS
was definitely like, "No, I don't want to do that." >> [laughter]
>> And Unraid was definitely the more simple looking option. But then I watched a few Hex OS videos and it's
about 1.0 now. Almost. >> Almost. So, I figured, "Okay, fine."
Plus, I get the key. Right. Okay. So, I
didn't pay for it, which makes a massive difference. [music]
Um but I really did go with that route just because I thought it would be the
easiest. Well, Unraid's a paid option, too. Yeah. So, they're both paid either way.
>> Yeah. Hex OS still just seemed the easiest and it kind of was. What wasn't
easy? Cuz I already know a lot of answers to that question.
>> Okay, so the install went fine. I took it home. It ran into issues exactly
where I thought it would. Windows file sharing stuff. Really? Yeah. That's one
part of my Hex OS NAS at home that does work perfectly. The funny thing is, I've
got two main desktops that I'm hooking up to it, right? Yeah. My living room PC
Yeah. that I went to do second, it was fine. [music]
Literally just logged in with the credentials, no problem at all. My desktop PC, the one I wanted to do
first, was an absolute nightmare [laughter]
to the point where I spent like an hour or so troubleshooting and I got to a
point where everything I was looking at was telling me to like buy Windows 11
Pro and enable stuff. And I knew that was wrong. >> What? I knew that was wrong. I knew that
was wrong. >> No. No, no, no. I knew that was wrong. Okay. So, I enabled SMB protocols. All
my private network uh stuff was working fine. Everything was seeing everything.
Yeah. So, I could see the machine on my network, but I couldn't access any
folders. I couldn't do anything with it. Do you want to know what happened?
>> Had to be Windows credential manager. Pancratz went there first. We had to
open PowerShell and he had to change uh
SMB client configuration setting requires security signature. It was set
to true. We had to set that to false. Why was that set to true?
>> I have no idea. This isn't even a pretty fresh Windows 11 install. That's so
weird. >> I reset my computer like 6 months ago or so. So, it's not even an issue with your
NAS. No. This was an issue with your desktop. >> Yes.
Why is SMB still like this, Microsoft?
>> One in a million chance? You're the guy.
>> [laughter] >> With it working. Yes. What's the first
thing you did? I started backing everything up, which took a while. It
was like 8 terabytes worth of data, but it was awesome. Like I just I set the
transfer going and I didn't even worry about it. >> require security signature anymore. So,
it's all good. >> [laughter] >> I've got Tailscale set up and running
now. I just finished that as well. Want to explain what Tailscale is for people
who are not in the know? Tailscale is basically a way to SSH into your machine
and add uh virtual networking to uh other users. So, that like if my cousin
wants to go on to my NAS, I give him my Well, he has his own Tailscale and then
he logs in and through my invite and gets access. >> And you can do that without opening up
ports. Indeed. Traditional way that you would allow someone else to access a
resource that's on your internal network. >> Yeah, it's much safer. But the funny
thing is, what really has been enjoyable about this whole experience is I feel
like I'm learning stuff about computers again. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Like I
actually like Oh, networking's a whole new Pandora's Box, though. I'm well
aware and it was a terrifying one for the longest time. But now that I have
like my own I mean, it's not really a home lab, but now that I kind of have my own little home lab, I'm like, "Oh yeah,
I'll try that." Like whatever. I'll set this up and dig through troubleshooting
guides and spend a bunch of time doing it and it's enjoyable cuz everything
works. And if it breaks, it's not the end of the world cuz I know how to set
it up again. With that said, there's a big difference between, "Yeah, this is a
pretty good experience for me and I enjoy working on it." And
>> "This is something I would recommend to my family and friends or my parents."
Where are we at right now? If everything had gone as smoothly as it was supposed
to It's a big if. 100% it is. I would be
okay with helping my dad or someone else
who's less tech literate set this up in their home remotely with me being
remote. The setup and everything was really simple. Yeah. The UI is good.
It's really easy to use and navigate. But as soon as they get into some kind
of error >> [laughter] >> that the documentation isn't going to cover, like what I encountered, like
sure, I know how to fix that now going forward and so that's something that's added to my own troubleshooting
repertoire, but like Yeah. I wouldn't expect them to do this on their own
assuming there's something that goes wrong. If the process is perfect or like
perfecter than it is now, yes, I think
this is something even my sister or my dad could do. Now that that's all
sorted, it's fine and it works great and like I'm just doing whatever I want. The
flexibility overall of everything has been [music] so nice. Yeah, like I just you know I
make sure that whatever I'm working on is on my NAS instead of on my desktop
locally and then I can just move to the couch and open the file there. And then
oh I'm halfway done and now I want to sit at my desk with like music playing or something, I just go over there. And
you're on Tailscale. So if you wanted to go to a cafe and work on it there,
boom. It's pretty cool and you never worry about okay, I'm in the middle of
this draft and coffee spills on my laptop, it's gone or I'm taking all of
this personal information and I'm synchronizing it with some corporate
cloud service somewhere. You own your freaking data. Yeah, that's
the bottom line with a NAS. Which is a huge deal to me. Is it more work than
subscribing to you know Google One? I
mean yeah, it's more work, yeah, but like in the longer time you can pay
yourself to do that work in the money that you will eventually save not
subscribing to someone's service because it's just math. Eventually if you're
going to use that storage, eventually you must pay for those hard drives.
100% whether you buy them and put them in your home or whether you pay for
Google to put them in a data center somewhere. And now I've got all my digital photos
backed up somewhere safe. I've got other files like everything. With that said, a
single NAS offers redundancy but is not
in and of itself a backup. So the next level would be that I've talked to the
priority for me as kind of an activist investor that they implement buddy
backup. Yeah, and so that's intended to be a feature where for no additional
subscription fee, you and a buddy like
me and Plouffe could be like okay, here. I bought an 8 terabyte drive, here you
go buddy. You buy an 8 terabyte drive, you give it to me, here you go buddy. We
put those into our NASes, we now have some extra space and we can set aside an
encrypted folder that can automatically
synchronize. But yeah, right now it's just I feel like I can breathe easy
knowing that everything's backed up and like yeah, it's not a 321 fully cuz I
don't have a offsite yet but once that's there, I will finally actually be
practicing what I've preached to so many people [laughter] over the
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If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the build that we did for Mark
Rober actually. I'd say that's a pretty good modern take
on a like balls to the wall home NAS.