How to Turn a PC into a NAS - An Idiots Guide

[Music] hello and welcome back and that's right today I want to show you how to turn a Mini PC into an ad it's as straightforward as that and in this video if you've got an old Mini PC that's knocking around in your home or in a drawer or from an old PC setup that you had at work or you're going on eBay now or your Amazon or your Craigslist or your Facebook and you are seeing many PCs knocking around at comically low price pricing especially compared with nas systems with lower CPU Powers inside them would be very attractive and in this video I'm going to show you exactly how to do it we're going to be utilizing this this is the ice magician Mini PC here it's got two nvme slots on board it's got a ryzen 7 CPU inside and on top of that it is riddled in USB ports which is going to be really handly for later and we're going to be showing you how to install both unraid and true NAD on this system not together we're going to do side by side parallel you should pick which one you go for but before we go any further before you guys jump into the uh comments and absolutely tear me to pieces fve this man let's get a few disclaimers straight off out the way number one this is not the same as this many PCs have come forward exponentially in the last few years in terms of efficiency in terms of pricing in terms of the hardware power they arrive with they are something else but at the same time these are not designed primarily to be Nas systems and what I'm showing you today is a way to convert this into a Nas but certainly for industrial users and business users and certainly for Mission critical data I'm not 100% certain I would recommend this setup for you this is more for enthusiasts for hobbyists or those looking to save yourself a few quid or just keep things sustainable with old Hardware that you've got knocking around and we're going to be utilizing external casings like this one which is a jbod 6 Bay from terramaster this is the D6 and this arrives with USB 3.2 Gen 2 connectivity there for all of our storage means but nevertheless there are lots of reasons why users probably won't find using a Mini PC as a Naz up their straza I'm going to do a whole dedicated video with pros and cons following this this video is about how to do it but to summarize very very quickly it's great in terms of cost sometimes because you can get some very good Hardware at a very cost effective price secondly uh sustainability in terms of utilizing Ro Hardware you've got Knockin around three a lot of modern Nas os's like unraid are incredibly power efficient which allows even modest 100 nicker mini PCS to be usable also on top of that a lot of more modern mini PCS again like the ace magician one here arrive with multiple M2 mvme slots for either os's for Scratch disc for dual OS es with props mock or as editing drives there and caching and on top of that a lot of mini PCS are starting to arrive with um USB 10 gig connectivity 2.5 gig Ean and even if they don't you can still take advantage of 5 gig to USB adapters and 2.5 gig adapters indeed many PCS in say Intel's Nook series some of which ared with Thunderbolt 3 means you can ATT even attach 10 gig ethernet to these system so those are the pluses the minuses uh let's face it the obvious ones if you are connecting via USB bear in mind that whatever USB architecture you're utilizing that's your maximum bandwidth for your storage secondly USB in some os's can be a little unstable depending on your setup and either an accidental disconnection or power over saturation can lead to a drop of USB storage these are all reasons why I wouldn't recommend this as a critical setup for a lot of users also Drive identity is a question to bear in mind with you USB storage devices occasionally sharing if they are USB Daz boxes sharing Drive identities especially ones that have got Hardware raid and that can be problematic in some Naas os's overall and of course bear in mind although these systems have become very power efficient in the last few years in some cases you are going to be running the PC on one power connection and your storage on the other so do bear that in mind so those are the pros and G out the way right now what are you going to need to convert a Mini PC like the ace magician one here into a now as well you're going to need a Mini PC there'll be links in the description to different tiered Solutions I'm going to stay with Ace magician one CU I've spent a lot of time looking at their portfolio because this is a system that is used on my home office uh for a standard editing setup that's right this is actually used to edit some of our videos um but on top of that they've got a good range of products there and I messaged them to lend a Mini PC for this video that's where this one comes from as well originally so right now for this we're going to be utilizing uh a ryzen 7 powered Nas system here but all the steps I'm going to show you today can be applied right the way down to some Billy basic seller on systems there alongside that you're going to need at least one USB drive if you're going to be doing what I'm doing or I'm run I'm going to be showing you how to install unraid and how to install tras you're going to need two USBs for that to try both of those out but one USB for unraid cuz unraid runs from a USB and true nowz you're going to need the USB just to install it so this is going to act as a bootloader which means you're going to have to Target the drive there if you don't want to overwrite the SSD that's inside you're going to need another SSD in this case you're going to need an M2 SSD to fill that second slot but if you are worried about losing the SSD that's inside your Mini PC already that may be running Windows Os or something like that then you can create partitions on that using partition manager I'll recommend an application later in the video called mic R um but on top of that you can go ahead and just install a secondary SATA drive perhaps if your system supports s ssds like this one always run an OS from an SSD in every respect uh on top of that you're going to need somewhere for your storage as mentioned this is the D6 from teram Master a six Bas solution but there are loads of options out there depending on how seriously you're going to take turning an old PC or an old Mini PC or a new Mini PC I might add into uh a new Nas you can go for things like the uh qap tr004 this is a 4bay but on top of that it's got Hardware raid so the raid will be managed by the system alternatively you can go for things like this one this is the sain d8 this is an 8 Bay now this is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 device so it's got 1,000 Megs of throughput to deal with which this probably will oversaturate by a couple of hundred megabytes per second so just factor that in with a USB can connection finally you're going to need an HDMI monitor if you're going to be utilizing um either one of the nas 's we're going to use today but you may not need it longterm it's just so you can configure with this device on biops not biops on um on bios Jesus um on top of that you're going to need of course a keyboard USB keyboard to interact with the device but that's pretty much everything you're going to need so for now what we're going to do is hop over to my laptop and go through all of the tools we're going to need to download to turn this mini piece into a Nas right so in order to get the job done and installed a Nas software that we want to use on our Mini PC we're going to need quite a few little different kind of assets so let's get a hold of those first now in the description below there should be a link either at the top or close to the top to when I did the 100K video where I did a build of installing unraid or true Nas on your own custom DIY Nas find that article link below and either select unraid if you want to go through all of the assets and the links to everything think you're going to need to set up un raid for the first time alternatively use the same guide to install true Nows either way which one of one I those you use all of the assets we're talking about today and a handby hand walk through um of installing either true Naz or unraid onto uh your Mini PC is going to be available there below and I will go through it in this video but it's just in case you need the written format of that now obviously you're going to need a Mini PC this is the one that we're utilizing today arguably it's a little overpowered for what we're doing here but I think in order to show the true now side of things and for maybe a follow-up video on this this is probably a decent little one but I know you're thinking looking at that price tag that is way too high and you're right if you're going to go for a nice modest one there are a lot of different options there in the market for you to go for so for example if you go down to 159 quid you can get yourself uh running on an n95 processor there alternatively they've got ones running on a very familiar n n5105 processor again in it goes up a little bit but in the UK and Europe there are some affordable options as well as those third party options as well which bring the price down quite significantly or head over to eBay where you can get a hold of yourself some very userfriendly secondhand mini PCS arguably again I'm going to be focusing mainly on this Ace magician system here but it's just to let you know that there are mini PCS out there and indeed if you go for the ace magician stuff whether it's new or pre-owned there are lots of ways to pick up a very respectable Nas for between 100 to 200 nicker so moving forward from that I would say the first thing we're going to need is the operating system now this part of the video is going to be broken down into two different parts uh if you're going to be going for unraid you want to go over to unr's own website and from there download for Windows the link there at the top for the USB Creator but do bear in mind that depending on the USB drive you use some of the installation here is going to change and for those users I would recommend down here the manual installation method do yourself a favor and keep this tab open it may come useful later on if you're going for a traz installation for those users head over to traz where you can download a system image and again if you don't want to sign up to the community on this page don't worry just click no thank you I've already signed up and you'll be able to download the latest version of traz now these are pretty big files uh cuz they are images of true Nas there whether you go for True Nas core which is the original ZFS version there the long running one or you go for tras scale which is the Linux based version which has got a lot more app development going on now the last thing you're going to need regardless of whe you go for unraid or a traz installation and for unraid in most cases you're going to need a tool known as rofus rofus is what converts a Nas um installation CD DVD or or Blu-ray otherwise known as an image into a USB installer and this is the tool you're going to need to convert true naaz or very specific installations of unraid onto something that you can install inside your Mini PC like that so once you've downloaded those os's now we have to start converting them into a USB installer so let's start with tras we're going to start with tras cuz arguably it is the far more straightforward of the two now head over to your download section and from your download section go in and find rofus double click the rofus installer there that we've done right there and it will open up in a new window if you've gone for the dotexe version you've got the portable one that just you can just carry around or the standard version which installs it if you're running Windows 10 you will be asked for this warning to do with smart screen in in Windows 11 that does not appear but you will have to give permission just realized I ran out of USB ports I've had to remove the camera but what you want to do as soon as rofus is open here is to get your USB that you're going to be using for true and install it inside your machine like so the USB should appear right here do bear in mind everything you're going to do right now is going to format that USB now make sure it's got the sufficient storage again I've gone for a 32 gig module here I've gone for a SanDisk um mini SSD there uh mini uh USB I should say but there are loads of options in the market any USB will do and in the case of tras you're only going to need to use it this once so next click select and then from there head to your download section and find true Nows which is what I've done there and then click open as you can see it's saying it's an an OS hybrid file let it install there and leave everything by default the default options will be absolutely fine and then from there click Start and it will begin turning that true naaz install um boot loaded um uh CD image into something that can run from the USB drive as you can see it's warning us all the data will be deleted and depending on the speed of the USB drive and the speed of the port you've connected the amount of time this will take will differ and that's really it if you're going for the true na installation look at the um bottom of the screen where the chapters are and you can skip ahead if you choose however what if you are someone that wanted to go for the unraid OS installation what if you want to run um uh unraid on your Mini PC as your Nas server software of choice it runs containers be and you've still got access to ZFS on those pools for those users you're going to have to go about things a little bit different so if you downloaded the the USB Creator earlier and if we head into the USB Creator what you can do is double click that tool it will open up in a new window and then from there it will double check what versions of unraid are available and you select which one you want to download and from there give your server a name give it an IP you can leave all this as default for now but then you will need to select the USB drive that you've connected and as you can see the USB drive I've installed here is incompatible and that's because some USB drives are unlisted or incompatible with the unraid flash USB Creator now if you're seeing your USB drive as compatible just go ahead and click right and you'll be fine but if you're using an SSD and believe me with this there are a lot available on the market that you can't use if you see this screen here here is how to get around it come out of the USB Creator and then from there head into that manual installation method I mentioned earlier on from here you're going to need to download the original zip file of unraid this is unraid in its original form go ahead and download unraid in its zip form like so click the word zip it will open up invite you to download and go ahead and it will now gradually download andreid as a zip file which you're going to need to move over manually to that USB now while it does that in the background what we need to do now is head back into our PC open up this PC and from here we need to rename and rebadge the USB now when you connect the USB drive for the first time you might be lucky and the drive immediately appears as an available drive for you to play with if it doesn't chances are you're going to need to format that drive for the first time if you're a Windows user head down to the bottom and in the search area type the word disk part and then at the option that appears there click it and it will open up with that admin wres requested the uh the dis part uh control area here in the system 32 window go ahead and type the words list dis as you can see there is disk 2 even if the drive doesn't appear in computer it will still appear here go ahead and select disk 2 once you you've done that and you've selected dis 2 and you know that is the USB that you've connected go ahead and type the words clean that will allow you to clean the SSD of all partitions the next thing you need to do by clicking exit is head back down here and again and this time put Disk Management and once you start writing Disk Management select the option create and format hard disk partitions from here it will show every available drive on your machine you want to select the USB right click the drive or if the drive isn't accessible right click and select the option to uh initialize and then from there click new simple volume a new window will appear shortly that allows you to configure this drive for the first time from here go back into the this PC or my computer section and when the USB drive is arrived right click and click format make sure you give the drive the name unraid just like I've done here give the drive the name format uh unraid and then click Start it will format the drive and you'll have a new area of storage that you can use but just make sure that drive is called unraid in capitals once that's done head back into your download section once again and find that downloaded zip file there of unraid right click and whether you're using Ren ra or just simple zipping extract files from extract files make sure you find the USB drive you created earlier with the name UNR select that as your destination and then click okay once you've clicked okay and extracted the content of that zip this is what you'll see you'll see a list of drives and folders all available on that USB drive now you may see this folder here known as EFI with a minus on it what you need to do is make sure you delete that a symbol it's very important and it will help allow this to run first time on the majority of BIOS the next thing you need to do if you're running in a Windows system is double click make bootable if you're running a Linux system double click Linux and if you're running a Mac system double click this all of these will result in the USB being converted into a bootable drive a lot of that is to do with the drive being listed as um or its format I should say and the file indexing system that is used by the drive but make sure that you remove the minus from EFI and you make the drive bootable using the dot bat file here depending on your OS and that's all you need to do from this point head to uh eject the drive and eject the drive like so and now we just need to make our way over to the Mini PC and show the physical installation so now we've got an unraid installation file ready and we have a traz installation file ready now the next steps are going to differ depending on which one of those two you go for now if you're going for a true Naas installation you're going to need to make sure that you have a destination on this system that you're going to be installing true NS now all mini PCS when you buy them because they always arrive with Windows and stuff included arrive with an SSD inside that you can use for your operating system now if you want to you can just format that drive and install your Nas OS on there now if you do that you're going to end up losing that OS now what I recommend doing is one of two things number one is to boot the device up like normal without the USBs and install an application a free trial version of an app known as macrum now macum or macrium allows you to create clones of boot drives or change the size of the partitions now again we'll do a dedicated video on that soon but I'll link to the software below but that will allow you to put both your true Naas installation on this and a partition to put your uh Windows OS to still live inside this but that's not really recommended now for everyone else that wants to turn a Mini PC like this Ace magician one into a Naz I would recommend installing a new SSD and this was one of the two reasons aside from the hardware that I went for this system cuz this system has two M2 mvme bays and that allows me to go ahead and install a second OS SSD into this which is what I'm going to use to install up true Nas now the drive you use will depend on the mini PC you go for the majority of mini PCS that have been released in the last couple of years tend to arrive with M2 mvme Bays so you can go ahead and get yourself a very affordable M2 mvme Bay there's not much point in most modern mini PCS going above gen 3 drives and going for at least a 120 gig drive or go for larger if you depending on the OS Choice you're going to go for the scale of which you're going to need that OS in terms of long-term use or if you're going to be utilizing multiple os's and something like prox MOX which allows you to run multiple os's side by side now if you're running older mini PCS down this or you're converting to old computer you've got knocking around chances are you're going to need to use a SATA based SSD these have dropped down substantially in price in recent years and this is an SSD we used in our data recovery video from the local refurb it store known as CX and this cost us £21 for a 120 gig OS SSD so again your options open but just bear in mind that more modern mini PCS either tend to arrive with multiple M2 mvme slots or at least support of M2 mvme as a whole and if you're going to go for a trz installation you're going to need an SSD for the operating system to load onto now what about unraid users what do they need to do well if unraid is the operating system you're going to choose to use on your Mini PC to convert it into a NZ you're not going to need that SSD that I just mentioned sure you can use that SSD as a scratch disc you can use it for caching you can utilize it to improve the performance of your unraid raid connected array but you don't really need to because unraid runs from from the USB and that allows you to just run the USB where it lives in the memory loaded and boot loaded from the USB and then the system resources can be dedicated to the containers dedicated to the storage now what I'm going to do is attach both of these USBS you don't have to do that but that will allow me to show you either one of the installations in BIOS just going to go ahead and Pop That panel back on if you're going to use a Mini PC like this for your Nas and you were already going to use I was a larger direct attached storage or Dad's storage array with or without the raid don't connect it yet make sure you come back to it later which we will but for now don't worry about the need to connect your storage what we want to do is set up the primary in our system first and then afterwards we'll attach our storage so I'm going to go ahead now and attach the keyboard to this I'm going to attach the monitor to this don't power it on just yet because I'm going to have to show you how to get into BIOS Okay so our Mini PC is all connected we've got the device connected to the local area network which is on the same local area network as my test machine here some mini PCS either won't have an ethernet port on the rear or have an ethernet port and Wi-Fi connected in most cases the Wi-Fi drivers are already going to be built into the buyer so it will still appear on the local area network later down the line however in order for us to set this up as a network attached storage device would either unraid or true as we need to get into something called bios bios is ultimately the screen that shows us all the system information and from there we have to tell the system to no longer boot from its internal drive we need it to either boot from the USB for unraid or to boot for the USB from tras so what we're going to do is got the device connected up we've got it connected to my monitor for you it'll be your monitor there and what I want you to do is get ready on your keyboard and get ready on the delete delete key now depending on your own Mini PC the following key that I'm using is delete but for you it may well be the F2 key the F12 key or the delete key as well so a little bit of trial and error may be useful to you you can spam all three if you choose me personally you tend to find it's F2 or F12 it just happens to be delet on this system so as soon as I boot the system I'm going to go ahead and tap delete and it will flick us over to the screen here so I'm going to go ahead head and start clicking delete and on my screen here I'm seeing a black screen while we're going into the boot sequence and tapping the delete key will take us into BIOS as you can see here this is our system we find out a lot more about it what we're running on the available memory that kind of thing what we need to do is head over to boot now as you see here we've got the windows boot manager which was that OS that the system arrived with but we've got two different USBS now for me partition one here that is our unraid installation and partition two here on the other USB is our true naaz installation depending on which one of these you're going to go for things are going to differ somewhat slightly but it is recommended if you're going to be going for unraid to go ahead into boot option one click enter and select the USB that's got your UNR installation in my case partition one and we want the system to always boot from that USB first not only will that mean that moving forward the system will always boot into the nas software but on top of that we still managed to keep the original Windows installation without overwriting it now for True Nas things will be ever so slightly different if you want to install true Nas on this system what you need to do is go to save and exit and go down to the button and select the drive that you know the USB that has the true Nas installation the reason being we're only going to use this USB the one time in order to install true Nas on a storage media in the system after that we'll have to return to bios and then make sure that the true NZ SSD is the default installer so for now let's show you the unraid installation so now we've got the unraid partition set to one we can either reboot the system or head down to partition one here and just go straight into boot override this will now reboot the system and as you can see we're now loaded in to the unraid OS boot manager here go ahead and click enter from here it will now start transferring that unraid installation and boot that we created earlier and what it will do is now load unraid from the USB into the system memory after a short while the system will fully Boot and here on this black and white screen of text here it will give us the IP with which to find our true Nas system on the network environment as you can see it's now completed and what we need to do if we want to access the true Nas installation from our desktop PC what we need to do is head back to the web browser on our local computer so in my case I will go ahead and move the desktop here to the top head back into the web browser as you can see here and then from here you need to find the nas on your local area network now we've already got the IP from earlier but if you didn't get the IP or sometimes your system disappears from the local area network I strongly recommend downloading this tool Advanced ip scanner it'll be linked in the description and it's completely free use this tool to search your local area network and it will scan the local area network for all of the devices which will include the nas in question with unraid installed you'll find the unraid Nas and then from there take the IP when it appears and then enter that into your web browser let's take give it a moment to find the NZ on the system there we go it's found it there at the bottom click down and we can go ahead and double click there and the new tab will open showing us our unraid installation when you first set up unraid for the first time it will ask you to create a password I've already done that but after you've created it go ahead and log in and there you go you're now on UNR here on your desktop PC I'm using an older generation version of um un raid I need to do some updates for on my USB but your installation will be brand spanking new and it will show your available Hardware your system information and effectively how to begin setting up your unraid server on your Mini PC for the TR installation we're back in BIOS and what we need to to do is head down to that USB as mentioned earlier that as our true Nas installation partition two go ahead and select enter here after that it will go into the true Naas boot loader here on screen and from here go ahead and click enter from here it will begin the installer for traz and this is why we needed to have either an additional SSD for our trow installation or overwrite the original SSD that's inside traz needs to live somewhere inside the system so go ahead and select the first option and then from there select the target drive as you can see inside we've got the USB drive we have got the new SSD that I've installed and we've got the original operating system Windows drive that the Mini PC from a magic arrived with so you can either choose to tap enter there if you want to overwrite that drive or go ahead and select enter here to create a new installation of traz on a new SSD you've installed tap enter and and so I tap space bar and then enter as you can see it's warning you that this will overwrite the content of that nvme this is to be expected but make sure you've got your data backed up go ahead and create yourself a new password to access your traz server bear in mind that the password to l in on a true now server by default is generally the username root r o t and the login password abc123 but you're creating a brand new root password if you're running a new Mini PC like the O magician here we're utilizing go ahead and boot from UEFI it will be just the same but for older devices booting direct from bios is recommended the next option is to do with swap partition for memory overflow in truez and most users don't really bother with it and I don't recommend it either in this particular installation this particular installation this particular installation sorry everyone I bit my lip earlier on and it's absolutely killing me can you tell so from now on it will now begin installing tras on that targeted SSD drive the amount of time this will take will depend on the SSD that you're choosing to use as well as the system USB that you're using in the power of the system itself once it's done will revert back to the traz installation window whereupon we want to return to bios so we can get the system to boot now from our newly installed um uh uh true naaz SSD and then we can move on to the last section of this video assigning that storage to both true naaz or unraid depending on the installation you want to opt for as you can see the installation has been successful let's go ahead and click okay and what we want to do now is shut down the system we could go for a reboot but we want to make sure that we can get back into BIOS as that's going to be critical for what we do next we want to make sure once the system reboots or at least poers down that we go ahead and reboot the system rapidly spamming in my case the delete button to make sure we get back into BIOS so we can make sure that the new M2 mvme with traz installed can go ahead and run out uh installation so now we go ahead reboot the device and this time tapping delete get bios to reboot and we're back in and this time head back into the boot option there and where it says boot option one tap it and this time select where true Nas in installed so from this point click true Nas there at the top and then when you save and if you exit and save the changes this time when we re boot click okay this time the system will boot directly from our new traz SSD we can let it time out or we can click enter but otherwise traz is now going to boot for the very first time which will allow us to go in to true on our desktop PC now while it does the first time loading of this as mentioned earlier but just in case you skipped it it's worth highlighting that in order to access TR NZ you have two different ways to do it number one you can use the HDMI output and a keyboard video Mouse setup like the one you're looking at alternatively as traz is booting up what you can do is head back to your PC that's connected on the same local area network as the um Nas and the PC at the same time and once again return to that um uh app known as advanced IP scanner that I talked about earlier on Advanced ip scanner will scan the local area network and luckily it's just we've absolutely locked it that the same IP that we were using for unraid earlier is still being used now in the same system for tras I thought maybe cuz we put it on Dynamic it wouldn't but luckily it has from here go ahead and enter the login credentials you created earlier along with the root account and that's it traz is now installed on that additional drive and you can access pretty much all of the system resources that your Mini PC has on offer to you now before we get to the storage part of the video I do think it's worth highlighting that in order to continue right moving forward you are going to need to shut down the system and make your way back into BIOS in order to make sure that that true naaz SSD is the default loading drive on that Mini PC otherwise the next time you reboot your Mini PC it's simply going to revert back to either loading from that USB drive or from the original SSD that the Mini PC may have had that has windows installed go ahead and make your way back into the HDMI output go ahead and reboot the system and then from there make sure tapping in my case the delete button to make your way back into BIOS just like you did earlier on from bios make your way back over to the list of drives and this time from here just make sure that that SSD is set as the priority option one if you want to go ahead with traz being the default installation if ever you want to revert back to the windows installer just go ahead tap enter and select the Windows boot manager to load from the original SSD inside your Mini PC there and that's it so now you know how to install unraid or true Nas onto a Mini PC but next up what about adding that USB storage because your Mini PC is an ads isn't going to be that much use if you're not able to attach your but bunch of storage so let's make our way into one then the other to show you exactly how to add USB storage bear in mind from this point it will make a huge difference whether you're using an external USB connected system with its own rate support or if you're using a device that has no raid support at all otherwise known as a jbod or jbot let's start up with unraid now this leads us to one of the biggest differences between using unraid with a Mini PC or even custom laptop or anything like that or using truear now if you're using un raid you head into the main area and from here you can assign discs either as general storage disc par discs or utilizing them for actual storage in pools now the main difference between traz and UNR is that if you attach a USB jpod device to unraid in terms of storage every single drive in that that jbot will be available and visible again there are exceptions to this rule depending on the external enclosure you go for but as you can see here this USB 3.2 Gen 2 connected enclosure or has which has a drive in most of the Bays shows every single disc across the system including those internal M2 MVM that allows us if we choose for example to go ahead and assign 310 TBS for example slap them inside then we can add ourselves a par disc if we choose there at the top as well as assigning individual discs throughout into our area of storage thereby creating our new pool all within unraid now how does that differ to utilizing truear whereas when you connect a an external USB case that has either a hardware raid or software raid already pre-built as we've done with the three 10tb drives as you can see now it can see 18 TB the reason being we've got three 10tb drives and a raid five already utilizing the external USB's own storage that still means that we only attach one but those drives would be in their own raid and where that sits in the grand scheme of things you wouldn't want to create a raid with a selection of drives that have a Raid inside that kind of cluster raid in this USB configuration wouldn't be recommended so I would just recommend immediately going straight in and creating just calling it raid Vol or Raid pool all either way you would be able to select that carry that over and even though it says there's no par uh there's no uh redundancy there is redundancy within the USB device just make sure if you're using traz that you go ahead and use an external raid device an external USB storage device that has a raid and if you're going to go ahead and use unraid then you can use jbods but just make sure you use a par disc for that recovery when needed and there you go that is how easy it is to turn a Mini PC New or Old into a Nas of course it's not perfect if you are a business user if this is going to be Mission critical data I can't recommend this setup but if you are going to be utilizing a Mini PC to then allow you to repurpose all kinds of Hardware that you may have at home whether you're a DIY Enthusiast in the world of Nas or just someone that's owned PCS for a while this can be appealing just remember the big takeaways of this video one if you are going to go true Nas you got to avoid using jbod you've got to go for something with either Hardware rate included or at least filter in to something that where you can attach drives in a far more integral fashion because USB storage isn't the same as internal storage with prone to Dropout and of course bandwidth question marks with regards to connecting devices over USB unraid there isn't the same kind of limitations yes still you shouldn't really be using external storage as integ storage but I think if you are someone looking to convert mini PCS like this one unraid might be a better option for you particularly when you look at some of the container stuff and how a lot of the storage can be a little bit more containerized and composited across the array but of course with unraid now rolling out with support of ZFS pools maybe that's not going to be enough for you thanks again um to a magician for supplying today's unit for this video you might see this in a couple more videos coming up and on top of that do take mind of a lot of the links and the guides that we talked about throughout the course of this video as well as looking at some of those other um applications and services whether you're going to be using a Mini PC as an NZ or just looking for a way to sort of tune up a lot of your network setup there now we're going to be working on a follow-up video to this talking about four or five good straight to the bullet point reasons why this is a good idea and five reasons not I'm sure a lot of you have had an absolute field day in the comments telling me what a horrendous setup this is and you know what you're right but trust me do a Google plenty of people are wondering about how to turn old Mini PCS Old Mac Minis and more into the next open source Nas setup and for those guys I hope this video helped you but apart from that thank you so much for watching have yourselves a fantastic week like subscribe usual stuff free advice section free support Discord Community Forum coight patreon early access to the videos the monthly uh seminars and videos that we do along with exclusive access the content early but apart from that thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 34,814

Keywords: diy nas case, custom nas enclosure, unraid nas build, truenas nas build, custom nas case, custom nas, byo nas, How to turn a mini pc into a nas, how to turn a pc into a nas, how to turn a pc into a server, how to make a nas from an old pc, how to turn a computer into a nas, mini pc into a server, mini pc nas, mini pc nas guide, nas pc conversion, pc into a nas, make your own nas, nas made from old hardware

Id: hGGK4St-c4A

Length: 42min 32sec (2552 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2023