[SOLVED] Home Server or NAS advice needed

[khodex1997]

Hello I have an old pc sitting around just missing HDD's and a PSU (Here's the rest: link)

I wasn't sure which I should make, a home windows 10 server or a NAS. The idea of having a small box that acts as a NAS that I can hook up to my UPS sounds really nice but at the same time it would be nice to host my own server for games like minecraft but I don't know how to do that on a NAS or if its even possible. I also thought maybe it would save money to reuse my old pc along with it using windows 10 instead to make things easier.

I'm looking for advice on whether I should get a new smaller pc(maybe ITX) that I use to NAS with a NAS OS or if I should use my old full tower and use windows 10. Even maybe if I should use my old pc with NAS?

Also is this a good HDD to get for this project? The reviews keep complaining about bad sectors or failing drives but everywhere seems to say seagate drives are best for NAS. I was going to buy 2 of these.

One other thing is I was watching linus's video about home NAS and he mentioned using a non-raid HBA card to properly monitor data and disk health. Obviously I would put one in if I'm using a NAS OS but If I'm using my old pc with windows 10 do I need that still? (I tried googling what it is and it just seems like a card that manages storage so the CPU can focus on other stuff like streaming?)

I appreciate any help! I've never really done anything with NAS or RAID so this is my first time in this area.

 

[popatim]

I avoid drives with 256MB cache. They are usually only good for archival tasks. They read well, usually, but have write issues to to using Shingled Magnetic Recording.

 

[khodex1997]

I avoid drives with 256MB cache. They are usually only good for archival tasks. They read well, usually, but have write issues to to using Shingled Magnetic Recording.

What should I look for in a drive? hoping to find a nice HDD on sale for black friday/cyber monday.

 

[popatim]

If this is going to be transferring data over a gigabit network the 5400-5900 rpm drives are usually ok unless there are several concurrent users on the same drive.

These days I take the model# of the drive and google it with SMR and see if it comes up as being an SMR drive.
For something that you will write to once and then mainly just read from, SMR is mostly fine. Again, the ones I look at are not 256mb cache.

HGST still makes PMR drives I believe. The others are a crap shoot, esp in the larger sizes.

 

[USAFRet]

I used an old PC and a basic Windows install as my house NAS box for several years.
You don't need any special RAID card or anything.

Shared folders, mapped drive letters, and off you go.
These days I use a dedicated NAS box..QNAP.

 

[khodex1997]

I used an old PC and a basic Windows install as my house NAS box for several years.
You don't need any special RAID card or anything.

Shared folders, mapped drive letters, and off you go.
These days I use a dedicated NAS box..QNAP.

In the video he uses a non raid card to choose where everything goes. Would it help though?

 

[USAFRet]

In the video he uses a non raid card to choose where everything goes. Would it help though?

I just had appropriate mapped drive letters for each drive or folder.

M for Movies/Music
S for "Shared Stuff"
Each house PC had the same mapped letters. "Save it to the S drive" went to the same place from each system.