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I am looking for a very cheap & cheerful NAS housing. Just gets the job done, with no frills.

I have found some, but they all run a 32bit Linux which limits the max disk size (to 16tB, IIRC). I would prefer not to have such a restriction.

I would prefer not have any raid at all (not even RAID 0), so that if one drive fails, I won't have major recovery problems.

Is there a cheap 4 (possibly even 2) bay solution in the UK (or with cheap shipping & customs duty) to United Kingdom?

Or would I be better simply using a cheap PC (or even a Raspberry Pi - if I can somehow attach that many hard drives) as a file server?

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  • 2
    Just curious how you'd resolve drive failures if not RAID -- software raid elsewhere? – Jeff Schaller Jan 4 '16 at 14:33
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    Just straight backups. It is slower that hardware raid, but I am very happy with Bvckup2 which monitors for changes and mirrors in real-time. An initial effort to copy the whole disk and then minimal copying as individual files are changed. Internal backup, external backup & off-site backup. To be sure, to be sure, to be sure – Mawg says reinstate Monica Jan 4 '16 at 15:12
  • I'm going to strongly recommend against not using any form of RAID. While I understand your intended solution, you're introducing a lot of complexity for not a lot of savings. Having a single redundant drive will give you a lot of protection and allow you to use your entire drive pool easily without having to manually deal with data management. – JMY1000 Jan 18 '20 at 18:54
  • Regarding the NAS hardware, what's your budget like (drives included?) It's almost certainly cheapest to roll your own NAS using something like FreeNAS, unless you're willing to deal with the performance penalty of just plugging USB drives into a Pi or something. – JMY1000 Jan 18 '20 at 18:55

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