Hello, i am considering purchasing a NAS soon and i wanted to ask how i could connect one to my machine without connecting to a router to use it as a local back up of my files?
A NAS is by definition Network Attached Storage. If you want to connect it to your computer, I think the term is DAS, Direct Attached Storage. And connecting that depends on what kind of I/O your computer has.
ah ok fair, from what i know a DAS might be cheaper since from what i’ve seen 4 bay nas’s can get to like 300/500ish, although can DAS’s have RAID or some other way of data loss protection?
Sure, software RAID should work there no problem.
You can wire a NAS directly to your machine with an ethernet cable. You will just need to set the IP addresses manually.
Direct-attached storage will be cheaper but you will often have to manage the array yourself. You also need to think through cabling complexity.
ye i was thinking of doing that, but also if i did go the DAS route how would i manage the array? since like i’m not gonna be say streaming things from it, just gonna be a box filled with photos etc
Some DASDs actually have a interface that let’s you configure a built-in RAID controller on the device.
However, a lot of the cheaper ones either have a really low quality RAID controller or just expose the underlying disks to the hosts. Then you treat the disks like normal disks on the hosts and use software raid.
Pay special attention to how the device is connected. Some actually have a separate cable for each disk but most have a single cable that exposes all the underlying devices. If you are using software RAID, make sure whatever that cable is carries enough bandwidth to be performant. The bandwidth requirements are much higher with software RAID because it is writing more data across the connection.
Honestly if you mainly want to save money you’re probably better off just using and old PC or getting one for cheap on Ebay and then putting some hard drives in it and installing a NAS OS on it like TrueNAS (or also just regular Ubuntu). The most expensive part will be the drives anyway. That’s what I did with my first NAS. Got an old PC on Ebay for 50 Euros, put some used hard drives in and installed Ubuntu on it using ZFS.