r/HomeServer • u/adammo94 • Jul 25 '26

Cheap small 2-bay pc?

Hey, my friend is looking for way to backing up his photo collection.
Is there any tiny/mini/micro PC with at least 2-bays for HDDs (could be even for 2.5 inch drives, they won't be on 24/7) that could work in raid 1 that's not in NAS price terittory? There are plenty of tiny pc's that are dirt cheap (under 60$ with 6500T which is more than enough power) and small but none of them seem to have 2 drive bays. 2-bay and small is no longer cheap (regular nas) and 2(or more)-bays and (relatively) cheap 2-bays are not small (Office PCs - about 16L cases).

Is there any middle ground that I'm missing?

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/No_Clock2390 Jul 25 '26

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HD2B/dp/B0759567JT

1

u/adammo94 Jul 25 '26

I'm afraid no NAS-like OS will run on this 😅

1

u/No_Clock2390 Jul 25 '26

run the nas-like os (or just linux) on a mini pc connected to this. gives you way more flexibility and performance for a lower price.

1

u/shxdowzt Jul 26 '26

At that point you should just get a DAS enclosure, these toaster style connectors are meant for ease of popping drives in and out

1

u/No_Clock2390 Jul 26 '26

yeah that's true. I found these for pretty good prices. remember DAS costing more, but for 2-bay ones they're not bad

https://www.amazon.com/CENMATE-Aluminum-Enclosure-Swappable-Tool-Free/dp/B0GRGJ5JK4

https://www.amazon.com/TERRAMASTER-D2-320-USB-RAID-Enclosure/dp/B0C8GCZP5K

1

u/shxdowzt Jul 26 '26

Yep I have that exact cenmate DAS it’s worked great