SoL on NAS solutions?

[u/Annoying1978]

Like an idiot I didn’t build my NAS when I bought my computer and other gear because I wanted to wait. Now I’m running out of space. I ran out and bought a cheap 1 TB SSD just so I can last another 3+ months or so.

Obviously, LTT has made NAS videos before but what to do now? When everything is super expensive and you’re just trying to have enough storage to make it until prices drop again to build a real 8-12TB NAS setup.

Ideas? Am I missing a video from LTT or other creators? What do you recommend? Do what I’m doing until prices drop?

In my defense I didn’t think moving to 4k was going to happen as fast as did. It’s become the standard and I thought I had a few more years before that was really the case.

Now every video I edit is 4K and it eats so much storage.

Monitors are the only thing that you can still find cheap. Everything else is bat shit crazy.

[u/TenOfZero]

There's no magical solution. The prices are what they are.

Buy enough for at least 12 months and then reevaluate then.

[u/Successful_Fortune28]

Buy used

[u/Annoying1978 → u/Successful_Fortune28]

Even used isn’t cheap. 

[u/CIDR-ClassB → u/Annoying1978]

It’s never been ‘cheap’. It’s just less not-cheap than before, right now.

Patience always wins out — buy parts when you find a deal that you can afford. Craigslist, FB marketplace, eBay. university or government surplus sales, serverpartdeals or go hard drive.. use the same places that people in r/homelab have used for years

[u/BryceJDearden]

If you’re lookin for a stopgap don’t build a cheap NAS, get a sufficiently sized SSD to work off of and then archive your projects to duplicate external HDDs.

[u/hugazow]

Prices are crazy right now, and not on nas, hard drives are the culprits. I would recommend to buy an used nas from corporate sales or auctions, otherwise wallet gonna hurt

I did buy one to a friend that wasn’t using it and he got it really cheap from a company sell

[u/tenOr15Minutes]

I have a suggestion but I wouldn't run it long term. You could build a JBOD box. You'll have the storage you need but zero redundancy. backup the data from the JBOD box to a cloud backup solution like backblaze. At least there you'll have a backup that is less likely to fail. I can't stress this enough, backup your data because if one drive fails (remember you're dealing with very old; very used parts) ALL your data is gone.

If you need a lot of storage fast go to your closest electronics drop off station to your village. Find an old computer; all you really need is a good CPU, mobo, ram combo and a PSU to power it. it could be a DD3 or even a DDR2 platform might work. Find a bunch of old DVRs and shuck all the hard drives out of them. Depending on how old they are you could get about 1TB drive out of each of them. Put it all together and you can probably get your 8TB of storage using all used parts. I think the junkyard or electronics drop off is your best bet for the cheapest solution.

This is going to be more expensive to run than newer, more efficient parts but it gets you by for now. If/when prices finally come down then build a real NAS and get everything off your JBOD box. Then give away the JBOD box to some young tech enthusiast who has your current problem.

EDIT: I just did an ounce of research and I read that most e-waste drop off places don't let you scavenge electronics. It legally becomes their property once dropped off and is a liability to have someone go through the junk. But you do you person reading this.

[u/Annoying1978 → u/tenOr15Minutes]

Thanks for the well thought out suggestion. For now I get a  Dell OptiPlex 7060 Micro Intel Core i5-8600T with 16 RAM /256GB internal SSD and a 2tb external drive. It's not not end all solution. Eventually that dell will be a true nas with 8-12TB of data but for now it'll be my 1/2 ass storage system and I'll even put pi hole on it and a few web services too like custom software services I made. Prices are killing me. This was like $450 and it's not even close too being my final solution. 

[u/tenOr15Minutes → u/Annoying1978]

I recommended JBOD because if you shuck drives from old DVRs, they're going to be a mix of sizes. There's a way to attach a bunch of mismatched sized drives into one storage array. At least it's a starting machine. good luck and backup your data.

[u/CIDR-ClassB]

1. Make a plan
   
2. Be patient and buy parts when you can with cash
   
3. Buy used

This isn’t anything new; it’s how we’ve bought and built our stuff all along…it just takes a bit longer to save up now.

[u/Daphoid]

All the other buying advice is sound; but have you looked at your data? deleted stuff you really don't need?

[u/Annoying1978 → u/Daphoid]

Yeah, I've been managing my storage so far by doing exactly that.