Howdy, I've pretty much reached a limit on my backups. I'm up to a 16TB hard drive for one and even that won't last long. Larger drives are much more costly. A must have NAS is quickly approaching. I've been searching around and find some things confusing. I'm hoping someone can clear up that confusion. I'm also debating what path to travel down. I'd also like to keep costs down as well. That said, I don't mind paying a little more for one that would offer a much better option.
Path one, buy a NAS, possibly used, that has no drives. If possible, I may even replace the OS that comes on it or upgrade if I can. I'm not looking for fancy, or even RAID. Just looking for a two bay NAS that will work. First, what is a DAS? Is that totally different than a NAS? From what I've found, a DAS is not what I'm looking for since I want a ethernet connection and the ability to control things over the network. It seems DAS lacks that feature but not real sure. I'm not sure I can upgrade the software/OS on a DAS either. Next thing. Let's say a NAS comes with two 4TB drives for a total of 8TB of capacity from the factory, using LVM or similar software I assume. Is that limited to that capacity or can I for example replace one or both drives with for example 14TB drives for a total of 28TBs of capacity? If one does that, let's say it uses LVM, can I somehow move data as well or is that beyond the abilities of a NAS? Could it be done inside my computer for example? Does this vary by brand or even model? Path two, I've researched building a NAS using a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB as another option. They come as parts, cases too, but the newer and faster models of Raspberry Pi 4 with more ram seem to work pretty well. The old slower models with small amounts of ram don't fair as well. While I want a descent speed, I'm not looking for or expecting it to be blazingly fast. I just wonder, if from a upgrade and expansion point of view, if building a NAS would be better. I've also noticed, it seems all Raspberry things come with a display port. That means I could hook up a monitor and mouse/keyboard when needed. That could be a bonus. Heck, I may can even put some sort of Gentoo on that thing. :-D One reason I'm wanting to go this route, I'm trying to keep it small and able to fit inside my fire safe. I plan to buy a media type safe that is larger but right now, it needs to fit inside my current safe. Most of the 2 bay NAS or a Raspberry Pi based NAS are fairly small. They not much bigger than the three external hard drives and a couple bare drives that currently occupy my safe. One thing I'd like to have no matter what path I go down, the ability to encrypt the data. My current backup drives are encrypted and I'd like to keep it that way. If that is possible to do. I suspect the Raspberry option would since I'd control the OS/software placed on it. I could be wrong tho. One last thing. Are there any NAS type boxes that I should absolutely avoid if I go that route? Maybe it is a model that has serious limitations or has other problems. I think the DAS thing may be one for me to avoid but I'm not for sure what limits it has. Google didn't help a lot. It also could be as simple as, avoid any model that says this in the description or uses some type of software that is bad or limits options. Thoughts? Info to share? Ideas on a best path forward? Buy already built or build? Thanks. Dale :-) :-)
