Is there a reason you don't want to use an old PC and install a giant drive or series of mid sized drives? You could keep some e-waste out of the bin that way and save tons of money not buying hardware you might not even need.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
45 points (90.9% liked)
Selfhosted
46685 readers
312 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Size and noise I guess.
(Alternative below) Buy 5 - 7 years old computer with decent specs (i5 i7, 16 gigs ram, don't care about hard drives but prefer ones with ssd) for about 60 - 100 bucks. Buy 250 gigz+ ssd (if it's not included) and any desired number and sizes of nas grade drives (this is where you don't want to save money if you want this full fledged nas). Don't forget UPS! Install TrueNAS. Profit... Ok not profit but enjoy. For movies definitely jellyfin (keep your distance from plex really). Audiobookshelf for audiobooks but also ebooks! Amazing software that one.
Alt. Buy raspberry pi, two usb hard drives, install open media vault and same apps as above. Setup data duplication from one drive to the second one with rsync (directly in omv ui). Omv is not as polished as true nas but its cheap and it lets you dip your feet in homelabbing first, in two to three years you will gain experience and vision to do your dream homelab (or at last try 😀) if the pi is not enough.
Prebuilt is almost always the wrong answer. That holds true in way more fields than just technology as well.
The phrase "bought versus built" comes to mind.
You can almost always build exactly what you need for less money or headache than you think.
Will you maybe spend a little more than buying some cheap one-off? Possibly. However, the best part of building it yourself is that you'll also typically know exactly what you've got, and if you use off-the-shelf parts, replacements and upgrades are easier in the long run.
TCO. Total Cost of Ownership.
Going to throw you off your trail by recommending Stremio + real_debrid/premiumizer/torbox + torrentio for movies and TV shows plus for torrenting. You have to pay for real-debrid/premiumizer/torbox but the other 2 are free.
Calibre for ebook management
Silent and fanless: look for a Monsterlabo case. It is all heatsink. Buy a fankess power supply, or buy a PSU that is overrates for the load and fanless under 30% load.
Its the setup I have. I can render video and other work loads and you don't even know the system is on
Yes. Synology will do this fine. They’ve been cunty recently so I recommend QNap.
I recommend adding Tailscale for remote access.
I conveniently was given a Synology ds412 by Amazon many years ago (and being as I had just been fired from the phone job with them due to a "mistake" in hiring me, I figured I'd keep it. Also learned that when you work security, don't piss off secretaries while doing the job, even as a contractor). I still use it. Not powerful, but it serves up most video alright, and is ok as a download space.
I got an Aoostar WTR Pro for this exact purpose. I went with jellyfin over plex due to plex enshittification, haven’t had any issues yet. You can find smaller NAS devices if you want. I avoided Synology because something felt off, and now they’re enshittifying too.
I like the people suggesting to build your own, that’s my next plan.
Synology NAS’s are amazing, can’t recommend them enough. Their software is what makes them so good.
You can run Plex server on them, can run docker containers for all your *arr services and even a container with a VPN for torrentin (all depends on the model obviously).
It's an unpopular opinion here, but I agree with you. I've been running a single disk Synology for a decade or so, replaced the original one about 4 years ago.
The software is pretty sleek and it would fit OPs requirements perfectly. I don't care for some power hungty Intel based PC sucking kWhs of power each day, just to host some media.
Mine boots up at 19:00 and shuts down at 01:00. It has a built in Torrent client that even my partner can use.
Do not promote these Synology jerks.
Synology's software is awful. Simply controlling NFS shares is an exercise in insanity, and don't get me started on ACLs.
Further, synology is a real bastard company currently trying to enshittify hardware (disk) upgrades, among other terrible practices:
https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/1kmx5td/can_we_still_trust_synology_users_catch_quiet/
Full disclosure, I myself am running an old ds211j for backups. It's way out of updates, and there isn't much of a 3rd party image collection for synology hardware, but it works fine and lives in its own locked down subnet.
Synology’s software is awful. Simply controlling NFS shares is an exercise in insanity, and don’t get me started on ACLs.
Strange, I've had no issue controlling NFS shares or ACLs. Have set up 4 Synology NAS's, with shares out the wahzoo. No problems. User error maybe?
Further, synology is a real bastard company currently trying to enshittify hardware (disk) upgrades, among other terrible practices:
That disk upgrade thing was a mountain out of a molehill. All they are doing is reserving some of their disk health features for synology branded disks because they're the only ones they can verify meet their standards for their software.
That disk upgrade thing was a mountain out of a molehill. All they are doing is reserving some of their disk health features for synology branded disks because they're the only ones they can verify meet their standards for their software.
Then explain why one can successfully use and old synology to "mark" drives as "authentic synology" and move them into a newer DSM model to use them. This means the mechanism amounts simply to marking disks and not binning disks or any kind of actual hardware selection. Which in turn means that "certified" Synology disks are nothing more than disks with a Synology signature. And not even in firmware, but on the platter.
And that is the "molehill" everyone is calling Synology out on.
As explained ad nauseum on various yt channels, having a hw compatibility list makes sense for users likely to buy support, like business users. It makes little sense in a home market where users are both more likely to buy 3rd party disks and will not likely invoke official Synology support.
But add on top of it that there is no functional hardware difference between certified and non-certified, and it becomes pretty clear that Synology is to be avoided.
Then explain why one can successfully use and old synology to “mark” drives as “authentic synology” and move them into a newer DSM model to use them.
Because they have to have a way for legacy users to maintain functionality. Going forward though, new drives in new devices are handled differently. It's basically a quality control type thing - they're providing the support and warranty for them, so they're only "guaranteeing" that their checks work on their drives. That makes sense. They don't want to be on the hook for saying that a drive that isn't theirs was perfectly healthy and then it drops dead an hour later and you lose all your data.
As explained ad nauseum on various yt channels, having a hw compatibility list makes sense for users likely to buy support, like business users.
Again though, the disks still work. The compatibility lists simply tell you if they are officially supported and will get certain features.
But add on top of it that there is no functional hardware difference between certified and non-certified, and it becomes pretty clear that Synology is to be avoided.
But add on top of it that there is no functional hardware difference between certified and non-certified, and it becomes pretty clear that Synology is to be avoided.
Avoiding them because of missing a few proprietary synology disk health checks is such a strange thing to do lol. You won't get synologys disk health checks if you were to make your own server, so why is not having them on a synology a deal breaker?
Skip the NAS. They all suck. Roll your own server out of literally anything. Install jellyfin. Enjoy
Same thought! I tried a NAS once and it was just a slower, more locked down version of a regular server I could build myself.
I'm not sure I fully understand the point of a NAS. I guess, is it supposed to be an off-the-shelf server for non technical people?
People are using NAS for things they aren't meant to do. They are a storage service and aren't supposed to be anything else. In a typical data center model, NAS servers are intermediate storage. Meant for fast data transfers, massive storage capabilities and redundant disk fault tolerance. We are talking hundreds of hard drives and hundred gigabit connection speeds inside the data center. This is expensive to run, so they are also very energy efficient, meant to keep the least amount of required disks spinning at any given moment.
They are not for video rendering, data wrangling, calculations or hosting dozens of docker containers. That's what servers are for.
Servers have the processing power and host the actual services. They then request data from a NAS as needed. For example, a web service with tons of images and video will only have the site logic and UI images on the server itself. The content, video and images, will be on the NAS. The server will have a temporary cache where it will copy the most frequently accessed content and new content on demand. Any format conversion, video encoding, etc. Will be done by the server, not the NAS.
Now, on self-hosting of course, anything goes and they are just computers at the end of the day. But if a machine was purpose made for being a NAS server, it won't have the most powerful processor, and that's by design. They will have, however, an insane amount of sata, PCI-e channels and drive bays. And a ton of sophisticated hardware for data redundancy, hotswap capacity and high speed networks that is less frequent in servers.
Make sure you use a filesystem with snapshots, it'll save a lot of headaches.
So what you can do hardware wise is either any usff pc with 2 drives (used Lenovo's are fairly popular), or diy build with an Intel n150 board and some drives. Both are usually very silent since they don't have active cooling. If you spend the money for ssd's then it's completely silent.
Wouldn't go with off the shelf nas, since it's a trend to move more and more behind subscriptions and you never know how long you'll have a feature.
For Software:
I'd definitely go with jellyfin. Plex is commercializing hard.
Remote access is easy and secure with tailscale
For ebooks calibre-web
Music and torrent i don't know enough to suggest anything
Base system maybe some truenas and all services as containers
Music
I've been using Navidrome for a while now and it's been great!
I collected this data from another thread that might be useful: https://lemmy.ml/post/30234916
| Type | Name | Extra | User |
|--------+------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------------|
| MiniPC | ASUS 4-Bay | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | HP Microserver | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | HP microserver | Homelab | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | HTPC | Nobara | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | ITX NAS | Unraid | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | Jonsbo N4 Case | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | Minisforum X1 pro | OpenSuSe | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | ODROID H4+ mini pc | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 1B | Photoframe | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 3 | PiHole | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 3A | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 3B | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 3B | | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 3B | Kodi | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 3B | Kodi | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 4 | OpenSuSe/Docker | [email protected] |
| MiniPC | RaspberryPi 5 | RpiOS | [email protected] |
| Server | HP ProLiant DL360 Gen9 | | [email protected] |
| Server | HP Z440 Workstation | | [email protected] |
Edit: well fuck me for trying to help...
Thanks dude. I'm not sure what I'm looking at though. As I mentioned in the top post, I'm new to this and it's not my hobby.
You listed hardware, but gave no context how good it is for my needs - I think that's why you got downvoted.
ah no worries, I was just surprised by it. Yeah it's a hardware list for NAS/MiniPC/selfhosting as vetted by other Lemmy users
What's the point of using table formatting when you wrap it in a code block
I know right, fuck that guy
My HP Z440 was cheap on eBay and kicks ass. Only weird hitch about it is it won't boot without some sort of GPU in it so I got a GTX 970 on Facebook for like $20.
How much data do you plan on storing? If you're going to stay under a couple terabytes then you could get away with one of the Bmax or GMKtek mini PCs for under a couple hundred bucks. They're silent, decent amount of RAM, often have a slot for a second SSD and they're tiny enough to throw anywhere.
I myself have one being delivered today, but on Amazon there's a GMKtek mini PC with an Intel N150, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD on sale for $195. Plex and Jellyfin support the Intel Quicksync engine for transcoding and you can fit several containers/apps in 16GB
If you grow out if it down the road then you'll have a good idea by then what hardware you need to upgrade to.
Thank you for the tip. Regions sucks, its 350$ for me :(
Edit: and its 195 through gmktec website
preferably something with WOL that goes silent and fanless when not in use, or something I can shut down with a button
Recently I saw a Traefik plugin that can send WOL packets to a machine when a service that is hosted there gets a network request. It also shuts down the device when it's not in use. You can set it up with a low power always on thing, like a rpi. I also have a buddy that set it up in a more diy way without Traefik so it's definitely something that can be done and will save you a lot of electricity in the long term.
As for the NAS, if you want to start small and cheap, there are N95 mini PC's for like 100-150$. Attatch an external multi TB drive to it via usb and viola there is your first NAS. It will also draw way less power than a full tower PC and still be basically plug and play.
You can do surprisingly much with very little hardware these days. And because the cost is so low you can upgrade later to exactly what you need. Only by trying out will you find out what you care about and want exactly. Online people keep suggesting their own personal preferences.
view more: next ›