Introduction
What is a NAS?
NAS is the acronym for ‘Network Attached Storage’ and that is just what it is. Storage that is directly attached to your network, thereby allowing you to access its content from all your smart devices. In this article, I’ll take you along the road of setting up and configuring your own NAS, even for a small wallet. It sounds so simple and it is. But it is also something that can make your every-day digital-life a lot easier and more enjoyable.
Having a NAS in your household allows you to have a centralized storage for all your backups, media files and documents. This again gives you the ability to easily access them from all your devices, may it be your smart TV, your phone or tablet, your computers or game consoles and what else comes to mind.
Some of the first words that scare most people away from setting up a NAS themselves are ‘Linux’ and ‘network’. While it might not be something you have experience with, I guarantee it’s all very easy and quick to do.
What about the hardware?
So how does it work and what exactly is it you ask? Well, a NAS is technically just a PC like any other, some might also refer to it as a server or computer. In the end, it is the operating system that is the factor. The whole idea behind it is to have a centralized storage for all your files. To archive this, it has to be running all or most of the time and there are some key features we need to look at:
- Low power consumption
- Headless usage (no keyboard, mouse or monitor required)
- Small form factor and silent operation
In my opinion, there is the perfect device on the market for just that. It’s cheap, it’s solid and at many times you even get mail in rebates or cash-back on them. But more on that later.
What Skills and Tools do you need?
To set up a NAS? Actually not many. You will need the following skills: Use the screwdriver that is included, Able to attach a cable to a plug, and you will need to be able to read and use a website.
There are a few other small things that you’ll need in order to follow this little guide to setting up an HP microserver, but not much. You need a MOLEX to SATA power adapter, a SATA data cable and either some duct tape or a 3½ inch to 5¼ inch adapter. You will also temporary need a USB stick, a Monitor and keyboard during installation. And that is pretty much it, so you see, everybody can NAS.
The perfect device
For this job, Hewlett-Packard has created the perfect line of microservers. The N36L, N40L and N54L, also known as G7 microservers. The only difference between the three models is the CPU speed. Slower doesn’t always mean cheaper, so check prices on all three devices before you commit. On my last purchase, I found that the N54L was the cheapest of them all, but any of the three will do fine for a home NAS.
It has 4 cold-swap bays for your storage hard-drives and a 5¼ inch for either your boot-drive, extra hard-drive(s) or anything else that fits. In most cases, and in ours here, it will be used for the boot drive.
The G7 microserver comes with a 250 GB 7200RPM HDD included and that is just perfect as a system disk for our new NAS. If that wasn’t enough, it also has 4GB ECC memory included in 1 module with room for a second.
Inside it has two PCI-Express expansion slots, one x16 and one x1. The single also has additional control ports for HP remote-control cards.
It even comes with tools included, nothing extra is really needed. It can be run straight away with what’s in the box, but you will of course also need some hard drives as storage for all your files. You can start with one and upgrade later or you can fill it up right away, the choice is yours.
At the time of writing, the N54L can be had for €153 in Germany and £131 in the United Kingdom making it a real bargain. I couldn’t find it cheaper than $357 in the US making it less of a deal over there.
Package and Accessories
The HP N54L comes in a very simple cardboard box only printed with the name and a representation of the server on the front and back.
On the side of the cardboard box, we find a small sticker with the model and serial number. The box doesn’t offer much information besides that.
Opening up the box we see all is securely packed in spacey Styrofoam and with the accessories on top.
Unpacking the accessories, we find power cables for the UK and for Germany/EU, a small manual and update instructions.
This is really something I never heard about and way more better than external HDD, which you need to take with you everywhere.
But… I instantly have a question for this. You mentioned NAS works as a pc, so it should have Mobo, right? And furthermore, is there any possibility to RAID all hard drives? 🙂
While I can’t speak to a hardware raid on this device (I’m not that familiar with it).. I built my own NAS around OMV, and OMV supports various software raid levels on the storage drives no problem.
u can build pc and run omv on it. but i hate this idea, fans are noisy. if you dont mind about case, use arm board (i used banana pi) and get sata multiplier and u have board with 4 sata ports, hdmi/rca video, gbit lan, 2 usb, IR – you can also add GUI, mouse and keyboard and use it as backup comp 🙂
That’s what water cooling is for. Kits these days even come pre-shipped with coolant in them with no assembly required. There’s really not any excuse anymore.
water cooling kits have also fan included, but not this fans are noisest, i mean psu fan, in cheap units you have noisy fan, and if you can afford for better psu, you can afford for really good 4disk qnap/synology/bufallo
Believe me, fans are cheaper than a soho NAS. A good PS will set you back about $70 and a good fan maybe $15. A watercooler cost me less than $50. You are still not in the kind of money you would be in for a QNAP NAS when empty they run around $250 and then you need to populate it with NAS class drives.
Truth is it does have a mobo and there are numerous implementations of a NAS device, either in a DIY solution with the FreeNAS operating system or ready-made boxes from well-known manufacturers..
Also did a piece on the subject: http://low.tech-iq.org/11-problems-you-can-fix-with-a-nas/
I attached, after instalation, two SATA HDD, but i cannot setup Mirroring with these two. The main OS is on a IDE HDD and I want to setup those two HDD as RAID. Why I cannot do this?
Very good lessons.
Enjoyed studying this, very good stuff, thanks.
I’ve been trying to find any information on how to access the shared folder from outside your home network. That to me is the whole point of a NAS, yet I’ve not even found a mention of it besides using a VPN. I see no explanation of how to find the NAS remotely. Anyone know a tutorial that covers this?
You can actually do that quite easy, for any system, not just NAS. It requires 2/3 steps:
– Get a dynamic DNS account (no-ip.org, dyndns, etc) or check if your router already has one of its own
– Set up the DDNS in your router, making it sync.
– Forward the ports for the function you want to share in the router. That could be 80 for HTTP or 21 for FTP. (With UPnP enabled, this will be done automatically for the services you tell to use it on your NAS)
If you want access to it from the file explorer, you can add an FTP connection there too in Windows – that way it’s like a local shared folder, even though it’s remotely.