Hi all, I'm tired of upgrading my cloud storage plan every year, so I'm thinking of building a home NAS and shrinking my cloud subscription. I need at least 2 TB of space for our family's photos and large videos, with room to grow. I'm a complete beginner, so I'd prefer something easy to set up that doesn't need much tinkering.
The main goals are to keep everything safely backed up and let the whole family view and upload from their phones, even when we're away from home. I'd also like good photo software with automatic phone backup and easy search.
What would you recommend for hardware and software at this level? Is a prebuilt like Synology a better fit than a DIY build for a beginner, and which photo app works best for family use? I'd also appreciate advice on safe remote access and whether a small cloud plan is enough as an offsite backup.
Thanks in advance!

I have an external USB3 HDD that I'd like to utilize for network storage. Does someone make a box that takes in USB power, lets you connect a USB drive, and then plug it into the ethernet as a super simple shared drive?

My router doesn't have USB ports for this function so I'm wondering about alternatives that aren't investing in a full-blown NAS as I'm not interested in redundancy or extreme performance for this particular use.

I have an old NAS drive that I can no longer access to delete data. Tried everything. I don’t need to get the data. I just need to delete/destroy the data/drive before I send the drives to be destroyed. Any idea how I can do this? Thank you.

I recently bought a DXP 4800 Pro and set it up with 4x 8tb drives and installed unraid.

I ran it for about a week, spending the first few days bouncing my data from drive to drive to set up an XFS array, as my data was previously all BTRFS.

I got docker setup and began running it as my Jellyfin server and Home assistant etc.

sadly, one morning I woke up to find it had turned off over night and would not boot up.

initially I thought it was a broken PSU as the led was blinking soft blue. however, when disconnected from the NAS, it shows full blue, so I believe the Nas has suffered a hardware failure like a short.

removing all drive cages did not resolve.

I am now in a position where Amazon can give me a refund and I find myself with a few options and a few concerns.

1) I could pursue a warranty fix via ugreen. I have attempted to reach them, but their communication has been poor with no follow-up after the initial messaging.

2) I could return this to Amazon and pick up another unit (same model)

3) I could buy another brand.

4) I could build my own. I have building experience, and would probably stick Debian on there and mergefs etc. as long as it has the grunt to handle transcoding on the processor and is power efficient I'd be happy enough.

My concern with ugreen is that despite having the best specs for the value, I worry they have achieved this with poor QC and I don't want the worry that the unit might barely survive it's warenty period.

Has anyone else been a similar position and if so how did you handle it, i.e. balancing specs, price, performance and efficiency etc.

Ryzen 7600x

B650 aorus elite ax

16gb of ddr5 vengeance

850w corsair psu

2x Seagate 4TB Enterprise Capacity HDD 7200RPM SATA 6Gbps 128 MB Cache Internal Bare Drive(ST4000NM0033)

rosewill internal hot swap drive enclosure

256gb oem samsung nvme for boot

thermalright peerless assassin with lcd $37 dollar model on amazon

With the parts listed, mostly upgrading my son’s computer to a X3D cpu and other stuff lying around, I’ll be building a home NAS to support PLEX and iCloud back up. Figured I would post it here as a quick quality check. This will be headless and in my IT closet.

Hi is there other OS besides Ubuntu to use for my NAS? I honestly use MxLinux but I don't know the configuration for using it as a NAS.

Hi all, and thanks in advance for your advice and patience. I would say I'm not very tech-literate at all. But I'm looking for a secure way to store and access my files that will not be reliant on companies like Apple (I can be a bit paranoid).

I'm a writer, so backing up my work is really, really important. The work is part of my profession, but it's also extremely sensitive and personal. I'm sure you get it. I'd also like to store all my old videos and photos, so that I don't have to worry about it all only being on my phone (which gets very full and then slows down).

Is getting an NAS the best way to go about this? If so, what's the simplest and cheapest (I'm not rich, see: writer) option, while still remaining secure?

I also have a little trouble understanding some of the threads I've been looking at. If you wouldn't mind ELI5, I'd appreciate it. Apologies, I know that's probably frustrating!

i just bought this used microserver, I'd Like to turn into a Home Nas Server ,add it to my office and also share to my Home network , other Devices. .The system has already been upgraded to the max allowed. Since getting it I installed 3- 1 TB , 2- 1 TB Totaling 5 HD's .# 5 is installed instead of cd drive HD's. .. I'm computer & hardware savvy ,no questions there ....This is my first server so is it a simple as just Download True Nas to the thumb drive or do I have to use hp software and aa rade. what's the difference between nas and raid??

I currently have a networked Windows 11 PC that I use for file storage (via Windows Shares) and Jellyfin (including needing to transcode 4K x265 10-bit video files on the fly if the requesting client cannot natively decode them).

The hardware is:

• AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (from old PC)
• 32 GB DDR4-3600 (from old PC)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (bought to help with the transcoding)
• 2x M.2 SSD (boot and storage)
• 3x 7,200 IDE HDD (storage)

I hear a lot about NAS' for file storage and Jellyfin from places such as LinusTechTips and Gamers Nexus.

I am happy with my hardware and Windows 11 and do not wish to buy a NAS or change to Linux.

However, my question is, in theory, would a NAS have served my purpose?

Would it have been cheaper (UK £) than buying the CPU, RAM and GPU I currently have above?

Or would you say I made the right choice (in my specific circumstance) in buying a PC containing consumer hardware? (even assuming I did not use hardware from my old PC)

He usado dispositivos NAS de varias marcas, y algo que he aprendido a apreciar es lo fácil que es acceder a los archivos cuando estás fuera de casa. Tuve una experiencia frustrante con el acceso remoto en otra marca, así que me alegró descubrir que este modelo de gama media lo gestiona bien a través de su aplicación móvil.

He grabado un vídeo donde muestro cómo configuro el NAS, incluyendo el acceso remoto desde mi teléfono. Lo comparto aquí por si le resulta útil a alguien que esté eligiendo o configurando un NAS:

¿Qué tal ha sido el acceso remoto en el NAS que usas?

My MacBook is on macos 27.0.1 , it is connected to my NAS server through SMB. In the past two days , when I try to copy a file from my NAS to the mac internal drive , the file vanishes immediately after the progress bar disappear and the transfer is finished. This happens to multiple files . Additionally , some files on the server is missing in finder when connected through SMB but are visible through Webdav.

Everything is was perfectly normal before this , I don’t know what is happening. I had already restarted everything including my macbook , NAS and Router , but the issue persisted. Anyone knows why and now to fix it ?

Please help.🙏

I think my Synology DS918+ may have bit the bullet, which is rather depressing since it was lightly used. But I'll know more once my third party power adapter arrives on Monday. If I need a replacement what do you guys recommend?

I only use my NAS to host my movie/TV Show library. Kodi for local, Plex for remote. If I get another Synology I shouldn't need to transfer everything from scratch, I can just migrate everything into the new NAS? Looking at the DS423+ or DS925+ but there seems to be drawbacks to both. The DS423+ seems to be more Plex friendly and is cheaper, but it supports less RAM than my DS918+
The DS925+ seems overpriced to me for what you get, but maybe you folks disagree.

I like the Synology software, but I definitely think the hardware should've lasted longer considering how little I used it. So maybe I'm better off going with another company and just transferring everything from scratch. It looks like I can buy better hardware for cheaper elsewhere. Do you guys recommend anything else like a UGREEN DXP4800 Plus or TerraMaster?

Hey everyone,

I ran out of space on my ALL SSD NAS and seriously did not want to spend $280 on a new m2 nvme stick...

So I wanted to share with you all a NAS build I did on top of a $34 HP EliteDesk G3 I got from ebay. The total cost obviously was not $34, but if we exclude the HDD drives which I already had, the build was only $53.

• I got an m2 adapter for $10 on amazon
• a small form m2 nvme 128GB on ebay for around $13 (and funilly enough also sold the 240 SSD it came with for $13) just as a boot drive for truenas
• A 10GbE for $9 on AliExpress (Intel X540-T2 ) and yes, they do get a bit hot, but it's been working fine for over a year now. I got two of those, and had them connected peer-to-peer until I saw a switch with 2 10GbE ports for $70 on amazon (which also gets hot lol, but that's 10G though)

The full video of the project is available here: https://youtu.be/ALiHzOHvVIQ?si=4WF13HCyDQ47S4Ra

P.S. this was just a fun project to see what I could do with a cheap old PC, not an enterprise-grade NAS! And yes, if you do not have old HDDs lying around you will have to multiply the $53 by at least 10!! But then again, that is true for any NAS you buy (UGreen, Synology, Lincplus, etc)!

Raid controller not registering

Hello I'm working on setting up a NAS to use for plex and cloud storage. I'm using some old part as well as new.

Parts list:

Intel Core i5-7500

ASRock B250M Pro4

2x Silicon Power DDR4 3000 8GB

WD Black SN750 250GB NVMe M.2 SSD

WD Blue 500GB 3D NAND SATA SSD

HBA LSI IT Mode 9211-8i \*NEW

2.5Gb PCIe Network Card with Intel I226-V Chip, 2.5GBase-T Network Adapter NIC, \*NEW

4x 8TB seagate ironwolf HDDs \*NEW

I'm having trouble with my HBA as it doesn't seem to be getting power. I've swapped PCIe slots with the NIC as that has been working fine, but no success. I've updated the Bios to the most recent version which was 2018.

Is the HBA not compatible with my MOBO?

any help or insight is much appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I’d like to transfer and back up the photos from my phone to my Synology NAS. I’d like to do the same for my wife’s phone.

We’d also like to be able to view the photos stored on the Synology NAS directly on our phones, of course, only via a secure connection.

How do you back up your photos? Do you use Synology’s app, or do you use a third-party solution? What would you recommend?

Best regards,

Marc

A lot of people are saying to update home servers, is there something I need to do or will UGreen push a fix?

I just got a brand new WD elements desktop 12TB external Hard Drive to back up my synology NAS , but before doing that I want to run a extended smart test on it to make sure it is good.

I downloaded WD Kitfox and run extended device self test (I know wd elements is not officially supported but it is detected in the software plus WD doesn't offer any other diagnostic tools for it) , and now it is stuck at 10% progress for an hour now , should I keep it running or abort the test ? Also is there any software that can do extended smart test ?

So I recently bought a UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT. Started putting it through its paces. Nothing intense. Literally just basic file storage. No VM's, no docker containers, no nothing. But since this is the first time I'm using a NAS from Ugreen (was a Synology refugee), I'm actively monitoring the thing, making sure it's working as it should.

So I decide to run a virus scan and next thing I know, I'm seeing temps being reported of 52C within seconds (so I assume it will go up from there) on the drives. WTF??? I go to the NAS and sure enough, the thing is ROASTING. You can literally see the air shimmer around it. Touching it was super hot of course. I look at the fan in the back, it's working. I check the fan settings on the UGOS OS, it has 3 settings, quiet, auto and high. No fan curves. Just 3 settings to choose from. The default is auto (which is what it was on). So I set it to high to bring the temps down. Ok, helps to bring down the temp by a few degrees. Only now it's super loud. OK, fair enough. I don't have an issue with noise so long as it saves my drives from melting. Especially in this economy where a 22TB drive costs about $2000AUD.

But something doesn't add up. I never had this kind of excessive heat on auto mode on my Synology 720+, despite it also having a virus scanner, multiple docker containers running etc. I go to check the official Ugreen documentation. According to this:

https://ai.ugreen.com/blogs/how-to/fix-nas-temperature-problems

Ugreen (in their infinite wisdom) has decided that:

UGOS uses 80°C for the CPU, 55°C for HDDs, and 70°C for SSDs as cooling-protection thresholds. When a component reaches its threshold, the system displays a notification and switches the fan to Full Speed.

I don't know what kind of lunatic decided this was an appropriate fan curve for HDD's, but they're clearly insane. I can maybe buy the 80C for the CPU and the 70C for the NVME's (although both those figures are pushing it for NVME health), but the 55C for HDD's BEFORE the fan kicks into high gear??? There's a reason why Unraid starts throwing out alerts at the user if a HDD breaches the 45C barrier. HDD's going above 50C when the machine is not under massive load is craaaaaaaaaazy. I would think that this is gonna wear out my drives that much faster too.

Am I the crazy one? I've set my Unraid system to keep 8 HDD's to below 40C and it does that just fine no matter how much load I throw at it. Obviously that's a custom built machine with far superior cooling capacity. But the context here is my Synology 720+ that was able to handle more load than the Ugreen, without roasting the ever loving bajeezus out of my drives.

Was really hoping to make the switch to Ugreen. But with this unbelievably bad temp management, I gotta go back to Synology.

I built a tiny NAS using esp32 and an SD card for stardance challenge is NAS and this is my Github repo if you're intersted

https://github.com/karimsm16/a-lightweight-NAS.git

taking a look , and reviewing it would mean a lot

I've been looking for a while, but haven't bought anything yet. The prices all over seems really high. Stumpled upon a Halloween sale, is this common or a good idea?

https://link.amazon/B01LEnlSQ

Been toying with the idea of making the switch and wondering what others who made the switch may have run into in terms of endurance concerns over time.

Hi, I am toying with the idea of building a server/NAS system for storing pictures and files and maybe hosting game servers or media streaming to other devices. I have some hard drives which I dont use anymore and a small ssd that could fit an OS. I never built anything like this, but I did build multiple gaming pcs for myself and family over the years so I hope it wont be too difficult to figure out. Ive watched some youtube videos and Ive seen people build just NAS, and some build a whole server with hefty storage and for my use case I think the parts im looking at could easily run a dedicated server if needed. So far I am looking at the intel core ultra 250k+ bundle from microcenter and the Jonsbo N4, I could also repurpose an old Coolermaster Mastercase Pro 5.

Drive prices bounce around so much that the "sale" badge on a product page is close to meaningless, so I did the boring thing and recorded every NAS and enterprise drive's price daily for the last 2 years, then measured how often each one is actually below its own recent baseline (a real dip that recovers, not just the normal trend drifting).

A few things that surprised me:

- Consumer NAS drives (IronWolf, Red Plus and the Pro versions) go on sale more than 3x as often as enterprise drives - roughly a month out of the year versus only about 10 days. If you're buying an Exos or Ultrastar, waiting for a "deal" mostly means waiting forever; they barely move.

- The depth is similar though - a typical sale is around 10% off the baseline, and the deepest ones get to about 30%, on both tiers. So enterprise drives do drop, just rarely.

- IronWolf Pro discounts the most often of anything in the list; the big enterprise lines are the flattest.

For consumer NAS drives, waiting a couple of weeks for a dip is worth it. For enterprise, if the price is decent, buy it, because you'll be waiting a long time for a meaningful discount.

Interactive chart and the sortable table are here:
https://www.nasdisks.com/articles/nas-drive-sale-frequency/
The raw numbers are free to download.

Method, so you can judge it: "on sale" = a day's best price landing at least 5% below that drive's own centred four-week median, which catches real dips rather than the slow price creep.

Quick disclosure: it's my own site https://www.nasdisks.com/ and the buy buttons on it are affiliate links to cover hosting expenses. Everything's free: the chart, table and dataset.

What's everyone paying right now, and has anyone caught a good dip lately?

I’m an amateur wildlife/nature photographer and often go away on longer trips. I shoot with a Canon Rebel T7 and sometimes a drone, so I come back with a mix of photos and video.

My routine is pretty basic: copy everything onto my laptop, go through it, keep the decent shots and delete the rest. I try to do that fairly soon, especially with video, rather than pay to store hours of footage I’ll never use. I’m not doing much serious editing yet — mostly reviewing, selecting and copying files around.

I’m thinking about getting a NAS at home for the keepers, with a cloud backup as well. Would that make the copying and backing-up part less manual? Or would I still be doing pretty much everything on the laptop first, then moving it over afterwards?

The other thing is I’d like to leave the laptop behind on some trips. It feels like a lot to carry when I’m mainly using it to empty cards and look through footage.

What are people using to back up camera/drone cards without a computer? I’m fine using my phone, but I’d want to check the files copied properly and ideally have two separate copies before clearing a card. Internet access isn’t something I’d want to depend on.

Would be good to hear from someone who’s worked out a setup they’re happy taking into the field.

Version: 0.64.2 (10114574)

time="2026-10-19T23:28:54Z" level=info msg="No configuration file found. Loaded configuration only from environment variables"

time="2026-10-19T23:28:54Z" level=error msg="Error disabling foreign_keys" error="unable to open database file: no such file or directory"

time="2026-10-19T23:28:54Z" level=fatal msg="Database could not be opened!" error="unable to open database file: no such file or directory"

I copy/pasted the compose file and updated the directories and such. after running docker compose up -d it said I should remove the version parameter, so i did. It shows up in portainer as "restarting."

Anyone know what I did wrong or missed?

Thanks!