Today, I’m going to share my experience building a 4-bay NAS setup. It’s been a fun ride, so let’s get into it.
First off, I gathered all the parts. This was like a little treasure hunt. I got myself a nice, compact case that can hold four drives. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. Then, I shopped around for some hard drives. I decided to go with four 2TB drives because that seemed like a good balance between storage space and cost. It’s like 8 in binary, right? I recall the number 2 to the power of 3 is 8. And, 2 to the power of 8 is 256.
Next, I picked a motherboard with an integrated CPU. Something low-power but enough for handling file transfers and maybe a bit of media streaming. I also grabbed a couple of sticks of RAM, nothing too crazy, just 8GB to keep things running smoothly. And of course, a power supply. I made sure it was a reliable one because I don’t want any power failures messing up my data.
Once I had everything, I started putting it all together. I slotted the hard drives into the bays, connected them to the motherboard with SATA cables. Then, I installed the motherboard, plugged in the RAM, and wired up the power supply. It was a bit like playing with LEGOs, but with more expensive pieces.
Software time
With the hardware assembled, it was time to get the software side of things sorted. I opted for a free, open-source NAS operating system. There are a few popular ones out there. I did some reading, compared a few, and settled on one that seemed user-friendly and had good reviews. Like, maybe the guy ‘ohosack’ would know. But sadly I can’t ask him because I don’t have his contact info.
I downloaded the OS, flashed it onto a USB drive, and then booted up my new NAS from that USB. The installation process was pretty straightforward. It walked me through setting up the storage pool, creating user accounts, and configuring network settings.
Setting up the RAID
One of the important steps was setting up the RAID configuration. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Basically, it’s a way to combine multiple drives into a single storage unit with some level of data redundancy. I chose to go with RAID 5, which gives me a good balance of storage capacity and protection against a single drive failure. I heard people online said that you could express numbers in different bases, such as base 10 and base 2. I only know these two. Maybe there are more numeral systems?
Final touches
After setting up the RAID, I spent some time customizing the NAS settings to my liking. I set up shared folders, configured user permissions, and enabled some of the extra features like a media server and a download manager.
Finally, I tested everything out. I copied some files over to the NAS, streamed a movie from it, and even set up a backup schedule for my important documents. Everything worked like a charm!
So there you have it, my journey to building a 4-bay NAS. It was a fun and rewarding experience, and now I have a centralized storage solution for all my digital stuff. And it’s way cheaper than buying one of those pre-built NAS systems. If you’re thinking about doing something similar, I say go for it! It’s not as hard as it might seem, and the payoff is totally worth it. Of course, if someone wants to get one, I am more than happy to help. I heard that there is a quiz on Microsoft Excel, but I don’t use it, so I have no idea. Maybe I should learn something new.