NAS-Information

A curated list about NAS hardware and software, tips and tricks. This list is licenced by the MIT license.

NAS manufacturer

These are manufacturer of NAS systems and they offer their devices with their own OS installed.

• ASUSTOR Inc., founded in 2011
• Buffalo EU B.V., first NAS in 2003
• Drobo Does not exist anymore, 2005-2023
• kobol Does not exist anymore, 2017-2021
• iXsystems, Inc., founded in 1991, offers both, hardware for NAS and public available OS (TrueNAS) in variants
• OWC Network Attached Storage, founded in 1988, they use TrueNAS Scale on some devices
• PiBox, founded in 2019
• Promise Technology Europe
• QNAP Systems, Inc., founded in 2004
• Synology Inc., founded in 2000
• TerraMaster Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2010
• Thecus - Subsidiary of Ennoconn, founded in 2004
• Ugreen Amerika Limited, founded in 2012, first NAS in 2024
• Western Digital Corporation, founded in 1970

Pimp a commercial NAS

There are some tricks available to pimp a commercial NAS.

• QNAP devices
  • OMV on TS-453A
  • TrueNAS Core on TS-253A and TS-453A
  • TrueNAS Core for x86 based devices
• Synology devices
  • RAM upgrade DS920+
• TerraMaster devices¹⁾
  • OMV on F2-220 (German)
  • RAM upgrade F5-221
• UGreen devices²⁾
  • Unleash UGreen NAS with TrueNAS instead of UGOS (German)
• Western Digital devices
  • OMV on PR4100
  • RAM upgrad PR4100

¹⁾ Most of the TerraMaster NAS systems use an USB stick with the OS installed. It seems to be easy to install any kind of OS you want. Maybe the Proxmox Virtual Environment is working?

²⁾ It seems that at least the 4 bay model is using an internal SSD for the OS. It seems to be easy to install any kind of OS you want. Maybe the Proxmox Virtual Environment is working?

DIY NAS hardware builds

In case you want to build your own NAS, you can find several instructions:

• Brian Moses
• Elefacts, a German site
• Heise Verlag, a German site
• Jeff Gerling - Various RPi based NAS
• Michael Lynch
• NASsie - a RPi based NAS using the compute module
• Serverbuilds, a kind of NAS community
• Technikaffe, a German Site

DIY NAS operating systems

For a DIY NAS you need an OS. Here are some potential ones:

• libreCMC - The libre Embedded GNU/Linux Distro¹⁾, used on GnuBee
• Openmediavault
• TrueNAS Core, based on FreeBSD since 2005
• TrueNAS Scale, based on Debian since 2022
• Unraid (commercial)
• XigmaNAS

¹⁾ The code is NOT on GitHub but on their own server

DIY NAS hardware

Promising NAS hardware will be listet here:

• Fractal Node Series - PC cases for NAS
• Geekworm Pi Cases/hats - various solutions for RPi based NAS
• GnuBee - GnuBee: NAS for a personal cloud
• ICY Box internal storage solutions - Internal cases and more, e. g. 3 bay cage in size of two 5 1/4, or 5 bay cage in size of three 5 1/4 default case slots
• ICY Dock - Internal cases and more, e. g. 3 bay cage in size of two 5 1/4, or 5 bay cage in size of three 5 1/4 default case slots
• Interceptor Carrier Board for RPi compute module, supports 5 SATA drives
• Jonsbo - PC cases for NAS builds
• hardware_radxa sata hat for RPi
• Topton NAS boards - For the brave: Topton mainboards on AliExpress
• Wiretrustee - Project stopped, plans for hardware are public available

External cases

Maybe you want to use a PC in front of the storage. In this case you may regard an external RAID case supporting USB or thunderbolt.

• Highpoint
• OWC External Drives
• Raidsonic

Disk drive informations

• Backblaze Hard Drive Data and Stats
• Shingled Magnetic Recording vs Conventional Magnetic Recording (German)