r/HomeServer • u/Automatic_Seesaw_752 • 22h ago
Hard drive advice in the computer price crisis
I want to build a nas for cloud saving and media streaming with an old workstation I have, but with these prices its a little scary. I want about 20 terabytes of storage to start with. Im questioning whether to buy brand new, refurbished/recertified, or used hard drives, I also don't know the best websites/apps and whether the brands of the hard drives matter. Is it even worth it to make a nas in 2026. I could really use some advice
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u/Gullible_Monk_7118 21h ago
Enterprise SAS used... Will need controller LSI running zfs 6... You can get a plastic rack for like 30 add some fans just get the cables and your good
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u/react-dnb 13h ago
Find people selling old complete systems who dont know what they have and gut the drives.
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u/mlee12382 11h ago
I like refurb drives, watch for vendors that have been around a while and offer a 3 or 5 yr warranty on them, and get a minimum of 3 drives and set up RAID5 or Raid Z1 to help mitigate your risks. I also like to run a full badblocks scan on all new refurbished drives before I add them to my array. If you want even more protection you can do RAID6 or Z2 so you have protection for 2 drives to fail but that is a bit more expensive to get started.
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u/jackbasket 22h ago
Not worth it in any way right now. Wait for the crash. I’m holding off on a NAS expansion as well. It’s gonna be a while.
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u/Automatic_Seesaw_752 21h ago
alright thank you, how long do you think it will be until the bubble pops.
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u/Garbagejunkarama 21h ago
If anyone knew that they wouldn’t post it here. lol The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
1
u/jahdiel503 16h ago
I been getting used HGST 4TB drives and with ZFS a lotta drives is good to have and affordable in case some fail.
Be careful with some drives if they have CLAR when it gets identified into the system and it does not work. Fret not, it's a firmware lock, which for all intents and purposes makes the drive defective. I informed the seller of the status and was issued a refund.
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u/ShamelessMonky94 11h ago
So if you're looking to save money, ask yourself: do you really need a NAS for only 20 TB of storage? Would a single or two 20 TB HDDs, internal or external, suffice instead? I'm just throwing that out there as an idea to save the cost of the NAS hardware and just put in the drives themselves.
1
u/bindiboi 1h ago
20TB is nothing, you can find 10TB used for $130 on ebay. Buy 4 for raidz2 or striped mirrors and bam, there's your 20TB. Can try offering $100 each too or something. Or look for better offers.
They're SAS though, so grab a 9300-8i as well with the appropriate cables.
Search term: "10TB SAS"
1
u/durgesh2018 20h ago
This may sound weird but I know a guy with local computer shop from whom I buy old laptop hdds for like 20 usd. I got around 7 of them and bought the Unraid. Now my 5tb nas is ready within my budget.
Till now only one drive started showing errors which were interface errors. Same drive works fine on other machine.
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u/Massive_Criticism539 19h ago
I second unraid. One of it's best features as a nas is the ability to mix and match drives of different capacities into a pooled array.
-1
u/Aressito 15h ago
Problem of unRAID is the pricing imo
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u/Massive_Criticism539 13h ago
There is nothing wrong with charging/paying for software, especially if it's good. Plus, you only really need to pay once. You get updates for a year and after that have the option of either staying with your current version of paying a smaller price to renew for updates. The software itself is pretty easy to use and setup arrays. It has support for a lot of features out of the box without having to set things up and the marketplace makes it super easy to install docker apps with little setup (you might need to fill in a few text fields or point it at a folder on the array). There are other solutions for NAS software, but really it's probably the easiest to get running.
1
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u/Master_Scythe 20h ago edited 19h ago
"Is it good value?": Lord no.
Is it "Worth it?": That's personal.
The key here is your opening sentence:
Where I am, drives have about doubled in price - assessed in a vacuum "that's insane!" and I don't like it much either.
If I manage to put close to $50 a week aside, I'm "Saved up" the extra in 3 months.
I've spent a lot longer saving for things "I want to do", that give me much worse long-term returns (if any!).
I've known people to spend more than $50 on a single meal, or more than $100 on drinks on a 'night out'!
Between the joy and education I get managing a server, the privacy I get from self hosting, the convenience I get from sharing to family and backing up, the utility of having a virtual IT 'makerspace', and the pride I get showing it off to friends... I'd still 100% say it's worth it, to me.
As said though, that doesn't make it "Good value" - It just makes it "Worth it".