ScrapNAS

I grew up with Dial-Up internet, which meant not only was the internet only allowed when the sun went down and we weren't expecting calls, but the speeds were dreadful. Your browser actually has a mode that can emulate networks from that time, and boy is it rough. Modern frontend practices and image sizes have pretty much ruined the web for anyone without a few Mbps. All this to say, if I wanted to play a video game, watch a movie, or sometimes even view a photo album, I generally had to download it overnight, and I could enjoy it after school the next day. It doesn't take long of living like this to catch a data hoarding addiction. Luckily, storage has mostly outpaced file sizes, so while there isn't a cure, you can easily live with this addiction.

Before we get too far, what is a ScrapNAS?

It is really just a way to turn old computer parts into a project, but let’s get scientific and write some bullets:

1. Made from components that are lying around
   1. no ECC RAM, no fancy motherboard features, uses any storage medium that is lying around.
2. Has enough compute to run its own services
   1. If you buy a NAS from the store it usually only has enough compute to manage its file system and server files. If you can cobble together multiple machines then great, but I'm focusing on one machine that can hold a ton of storage and serve it using NextCloud or Jellyfin.
3. Docker Support
   1. Kind of grouped with the last bullet, but it should be easy to spin up tools.

Modern hardware is all really good, even entry-level PC components from ~10 years ago are pretty capable. Power efficiency is where the real gains have happened in recent years, so your power bill might thank you for using newer gear but we're here to get things done with things that are lying around. That said, the thing that really enables you to take random components and turn it into a functioning NAS/Home-server is the operating system.

Operating Systems

I used FreeNAS up until they pushed the "Corral" release, which was a massive mess that ended up being reverted. The maintainers, iXsystems, have done some significant rebranding and reorganizing that I don't want to keep up with, so I'm going to stick to calling it FreeNAS. OpenZFS is really the killer feature here. In my opinion, it’s the best file system for a NAS, but it requires some pretty specific hardware, especially for storage and RAM, that I think removes it from being a ScrapNAS contender. Another negative: I think they run on Docker now, but when I used it, they were called jails, and they seemed a lot less powerful. FreeBSD also doesn't seem like it's worth investing time into learning.

From FreeNAS, I had a short stint on Ubuntu. I tried a few different file systems, but it was all too much for me to manage at the time. I think this is a great path if you aren't worried about losing all the data on your NAS and you want to really get into the Ubuntu CLI and filesystems.

Then by far the worst option, Windows. I had a friend in like 2012 from a Minecraft server that would sell me Windows licenses for a couple of Bitcoins, I think it was like $20 USD. Sadness. I also managed ARMA servers which had to run on Windows so I was really big into running Windows Servers for a long time. I would probably be a significantly better developer today if I never had the chance to host things on Windows, but whatever, here we are. Windows seemed cool because remote desktop worked really well, and Partition Manager made it really easy to combine random drives together. My big issue was running server software, a lot of the tools I wanted to run just didn't have Windows builds. This is definitely fixed by WSL/Docker today but at the time it led to me doing a lot of janky workarounds. The other issue is while Partition Manager makes it easy to turn many drives into one giant one, there is no way to manage what drive files end up on. As your pile of data grows this becomes really painful to work with, and even worse, if a drive dies you are just screwed. The correct thing to do here would be some sort of RAID but then we are back into needing matching drive sizes which defeats the purpose of the ScrapNAS.

Enter Unraid. This is not free software which I get really goes against the ethos here, but please hear me out. You can throw every drive you want in a pool, you'll lose your largest to parity, but then everything just works. Your data is safe from a drive failure, Docker just works, the VPN just works, SSD Cache just works, Networking just works. I have an 11-year-old motherboard, a HDD with 8 years and 4 months of power on time, a brand-new m.2 SSD and I've never had a hardware compatibility issue or a crash, the only reason I have downtime is updating the OS or the power dropping in my home. It's money well spent.

I think the true killer feature of Unraid is that for the most part you can add and remove drives as your ScrapNAS evolves. Adding and upgrading drives is really straightforward, removing or downgrading is a pain but the Unraid Docs and Forums are troves of helpful information that have been able to get me out of all sorts of odd scenarios.

It all comes together with a great GUI over what I believe is just Linux. There is a community repository that has a huge variety of Docker containers that are mostly set up to run right in Unraid, and any configuration that is required is well documented in the GUI. And if the GUI ever gets in your way, you can just use the CLI to get your work done. So, there is full support for users that want a simple streamlined experience, and power users that want to manage every detail of their NAS and manage things from a CLI.

I'll leave it here since I think this is already really looking like a sponsored post, but Unraid is the clear winner. If you have enough random hardware to make a computer run, and a few hard drives, then with a Unraid License you now have a ScrapNAS/home-server.