G+_Joshua Gaede Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 Watching all this synology stuff makes me wish they sold just the OS. Enclosures seem a bit out of my range for what I want for a home Nas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 It's not "just" something you install onto the harddrives. There must also be ROM in the boxes themselves. For example, the units are network discoverable without harddrives, and you download the latest version of the OS to the harddrives. Also, if you do a careful look in their comparison page, you'll see a lot of their features are tied to the hardware because that feature needs hardware support. There are significant smarts in the box you probably don't want to lose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 As Jeff mentioned, there's a lot more to the hardware. However, xpenology is exactly what you're looking for. From what I understand, Synology uses some open-source components that requires them to open-source the whole DSM. What's missing is the boot loader. Someonen (Jun) in the community has written a boot loader that gets you started. I've looked around and haven't found anything saying xpenology is "illegal", but I also haven't taken to time to read the DSM TOS or license agreement to know for sure. Xpenology runs fantastic, but definitely isn't without its issues. For example, it's recommended that you disable automatic updates as it's always possible one of the updates won't be compatible with your 3rd party loader - at this time, my DSM is fully up to date. Another example... Every Xpenology machine uses the same MAC ID by default and the serial number is based on that ID. Unless you change the MAC, I don't think you can have more than 1 Xpenology machine on the same network (MAC issues) and I don't think you can register it for quick connect (serial number issues). There are SN generators, but I haven't tried any yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joshua Gaede Posted June 4, 2018 Author Share Posted June 4, 2018 Thank you both. Jeff I guess I'm more of a person that likes to repurpose old machines or find others old machine and get good deals. No doubt they are fantastic machines, but I guess in the end I'm just a tightwad that is looking for something just for my household lol. Ben thanks for the info on the distro. How would you rate the reliability of it? In the end its a Nas so reliability is key for me. I'm leaning towards Freemasons due to the fact that I'm a tightwad as mentioned earlier but now I know I have options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Paul Hutchinson Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 Joshua Gaede There can be an economic incentive to use purpose made network appliances, energy savings. Depending on the price of electricity in your locality and the power consumption of the old PC's you may get pay back on the hardware costs very quickly. Back when I first switched I went from 800 watts 24/7 to 50 watts 24/7 paying back my investment quickly and then netting me a cost savings in addition to the easier maintenance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 Joshua Gaede Sorry for the long post... Nothing wrong with being frugal. I'm in the same situation. This has been running fantastic on my 10 year old Intel hardware for about a year now. I had 1 scare where I had another bootable USB drive in (Jun's loader installs to a USB drive) during a DSM upgrade and the install failed resulting in my NAS going away. After finding the new IP and reinstalling DSM, it discovered my drives and recovered all the prior configurations! With the Core2Quad processor, it even has room to run a few VMs. A couple months ago I setup a 2nd Xpenology server on old AMD hardware. It doesn't run as well, but good enough. On the other hand, a DS418 may pay for itself in 2 1/2 to 5 years. I think my old machine uses 150~200W of power while a DS418 takes around 27W. At $0.12 / kWh (national average), my NAS cost around $375 to run 2 years and the 418 cost around $56 for the same time. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dyP8I4Rw3g85vDU33op9O5tx89h5vNL6MMcPpTsy-io/edit?usp=sharing I still chose to go with Xpenology though, since it's easier to convince the wife that I need to spend $350 on drives than it is to spend $900 on drives+NAS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joshua Gaede Posted June 4, 2018 Author Share Posted June 4, 2018 Ok so power consumption for a 24/7 machine wasn't a consideration. That makes a lot more sense. Ben I'm a tinkerer so it sounds like a fun project. I just really have debate everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted June 5, 2018 Share Posted June 5, 2018 Yup. If you have the spair hardware, go for it! Even if you just have a couple 250 GB drives to put in it. It makes me want to buy a Synology NAS even more knowing how great the Disk Station Manager is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Fromtulsa Posted June 5, 2018 Share Posted June 5, 2018 Open Synology box, insert drives, plug in network connection, power up, and while setting up users and shares is a bit more complicated, it's not much more. One of those things, with low power draw options vs. old power-slurping WinTel boxes, it is difficulty to justify DIY, except for fun, if it is, and learning, Might want: Synology NAS Setup Guide: Based on DSM 6.2 by Nick Rushton Avaiable from Amazon for Kindle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Another cost savings reason for purpose build machines is not just the electric bill but also UPS sizing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Paul Hutchinson Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Ben Tyger Absolutely, I'd forgotten that benefit. My QNAP NAS is able to use a very small $50 APC UPS and along with an older NAS and my gigabit switch it still gets a long run time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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