A home NAS built from spare parts shows the real server bottlenecks
A home NAS was built from spare and secondhand parts. The storage came from eight Toshiba 3TB that were going to be discarded as e-waste, while the RAM and CPU came from an old . The was bought on eBay, but it did not have enough SATA ports for all the drives, so an HBA card was added.
The drives were grouped with RAIDZ4, and the system now stores a Plex media library, Launchbox ROM files, and backup copies of independent documentary footage. A 10Gb NIC was installed in both the NAS and the gaming PC to speed up file transfers, with average read and write speeds of about 750MB/s. Ethernet had to be installed in the room because the router was downstairs.
The next priority is redundancy, because this is currently the only NAS in use. One possible plan is to reuse a Promise R4 unit with 10TB as an offline backup, while the larger goal is a small multimedia studio for 3D animation and storytelling.
Key points
- Eight reused 3TB became a home NAS.
- An HBA was needed because the lacked enough SATA ports.
- The NAS stores Plex media, Launchbox ROM files, and documentary footage backups.
- A 10Gb NIC setup reaches about 750MB/s read and write speeds.
- The next practical step is redundancy, likely through an offline backup.