Upgrading a HDD based NAS ??

Hi all,

I am thinking of doing the above and was looking for some advice on cost and what kit would be required.

I am currently using an large tower HP server (running Synology OS) with about 4TB of HDDs in it (non-RAID). It is being used as a Plex server, torrent client and document backup location.

I am thinking about what it would take, in terms of rough cost and kit, to turn this into a more "wife pleasing", much smaller and more energy efficient, box running off SATA SSDs (or even, budget permitting, NVMe) with as many of the same bells and whistles as my current setup.

In terms of the very cheap option, I am assuming a Pi is not powerful enough to run a NAS off multiple SATA SSDs (presumably over USB) ?

Anyone got any thoughts and/or experience of doing it ?

Edited by AdamBrunt (Tue 30-Jan-24 09:45:53)

large tower HP server

current specs

In reply to a post by Taras:

large tower HP server

current specs

Valid question .... without digging out inner specs / invoice then - the immediate specs I can see through the OS UI - its an HP ProLiant Microserver running 2GB of RAM

Are you finding you have limitations with your current setup apart from its size? have you looked at off the shelf products from the likes of Synology and QNAP as they have vastly improved over the last 10 years.

Edited by PCJM40 (Tue 30-Jan-24 11:34:17)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Are you finding you have limitations with your current setup apart from its size? have you looked at off the shelf products from the likes of Synology and QNAP as they have vastly improved over the last 10 years.

Good questions.

So, the current system does exactly what I need it to do [ and in fact, thinking about it ... it's actually a Pi that is the Plex server not the NAS ] it's just a big piece of kit which is quite noisy sitting in a room that is, recently, being used more and more as a bedroom.

My main issue with the likes of Synology / QNAP products, from what I can tell, is the cost. £300+ (bearing in mind I'm looking for at least a 2 bay solution) for just the enclosure has got to be beatable, right ? I am also presumably a DIY option will be more upgradeable / customisable in terms of the apps that it can run

Edited by AdamBrunt (Tue 30-Jan-24 11:56:17)

If cost is a high priority then you are likely to knock something up yourself for less, I have always bought off the shelf so don't really know much about DIY costs but I know the last NAS I bought was a 4 bay and it set me back about £600 and the disks were another £600.

I'm in the same situation, running two N54L microservers (10+ years) which are fine ATM but will likely swap to an Aliexpress N100 NAS board build to save costs when the HDDs start failing.

The price of solid state storage is reasonable now and I would like to move to 10gbit or at least 2.5gbit.

In reply to a post by smouty:

The price of solid state storage is reasonable now and I would like to move to 10gbit or at least 2.5gbit.

When I bought my current Synology NAS, I also bought the 10G/2.5G add on, so I'm now interested in upgrading my switch. Unmanaged 2.5 G switches are coming down in price fast at the moment it seems.

8 port 2.5gbe rj45 unmanaged switches are around £60+ on amazon, some have 2x sfp+ cages and or basic vlan tagging

I'm looking at ryzen 5500gt/5600gt and a 7600 for two servers.. One media nas and one for a nvme nas...... (i think)