Replacing NAS With Windows PC - Need Recommended Custom-Build Site

Hi,

I'm looking to replace my 5-bay QNAP NAS with a Windows 11 Pro PC. I'm not a DIY person so I am looking to use a custom build service but I am having difficulty determining a reliable site that builds quality systems and has a high customer satisfaction.

The PC will be strictly for storing my backups and no other use case; these are my requirements:

• All-SSD (NVMe) drives
• One (1) OS NVMe drive
• Five (5) 2TB NVMe storage drives
• 64GB motherboard memory

Do you have any recommendations as to which site from which I should buy? Again, quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction are important to me.

Thanks very much!

Do you insist on a lot of control over the individual parts...brand name, model numbers, etc?

"Reliability" is more of a crap shoot than you'd like, regardless of the "assembler".

Microcenter comes to mind. You get to choose from a fairly large stock of parts. I haven't heard of issues with their builds, but you can get unlucky.

6 NVME ports will limit your motherboard choices quite a bit. I think Asrock has one.

There are other boutique builders, but they might be beyond your budget, which is ?? And they may not go along with your 6 NVME idea.

Thank you, @FreeBooter!

I had visited Newegg before but was not aware of this custom-build service.

nuspieds said:

Thank you, @FreeBooter!

I had visited Newegg before but was not aware of this custom-build service.

Click to expand...

You are very welcome!

Hi @Fishmill,

No, I am not insisting on any specific brand or model, just the storage type, storage quantity, and motherboard memory requirements.

My budget is open, so whichever site can meet my requirements at the lowest cost is from whom I would order.

nuspieds said:

Hi @Fishmill,

No, I am not insisting on any specific brand or model, just the storage type, storage quantity, and motherboard memory requirements.

My budget is open, so whichever site can meet my requirements at the lowest cost is from whom I would order.

Click to expand...

I'd at least go to a Microcenter to see what they have in stock and maybe for a talk. They may not have a 6 NVME board on the shelves? I think you can examine the stock online for any location near you. I don't think they do mail order on systems.

They have limited locations. Very few in the western half of the US. I think they will build whatever you want for the cost of the parts plus X. I am not sure what X is. Prices generally are VERY competitive.

Thanks, @Fishmill!

There's one CA location and it is not that far from me.

For this custom spec, I definitely prefer to walk into a physical store, so this is very helpful.

Thank you!

nuspieds said:

Hi,

I'm looking to replace my 5-bay QNAP NAS with a Windows 11 Pro PC. I'm not a DIY person so I am looking to use a custom build service but I am having difficulty determining a reliable site that builds quality systems and has a high customer satisfaction.

The PC will be strictly for storing my backups and no other use case; these are my requirements:

• All-SSD (NVMe) drives
• One (1) OS NVMe drive
• Five (5) 2TB NVMe storage drives
• 64GB motherboard memory

Do you have any recommendations as to which site from which I should buy? Again, quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction are important to me.

Thanks very much!

Click to expand...

I forget exactly where I just read this article on why Windows 11 is a bad choice for NAS. Do a search. From memory, issues include:

• limited choice of filesystems
• difficulty of remote management, since desktop Windows 11 is not a server OS

Why are you dead set on NVME SSDs for a NAS?

x509 said:

I forget exactly where I just read this article on why Windows 11 is a bad choice for NAS. Do a search. From memory, issues include:

• limited choice of filesystems
• difficulty of remote management, since desktop Windows 11 is not a server OS

Click to expand...

So I'm on my second QNAP and I've loved them but the major issue I have is blink and next thing you know your device is end-of-life and no longer supported.

What really pushed me over the edge was an issue with one of their Backup apps such that it would not upload files greater than 10GB to OneDrive. That used to be the old limitation imposed by Microsoft but they had already increased the limit a long time ago. So I logged a support ticket with QNAP to fix the app so that it matches the Microsoft file-size limitation. Guess what? More than a year later, the continued response was that because my system was EOL, my support ticket was not being prioritized.

I ended up stumbling on Rclone and created a script to upload my files to OneDrive and output progress and on my PC I had a batch file that would parse the output file and report the upload progress. That all worked great until I had a file that would take more than 24 hours and then there was an invalid OneDrive token issue (Microsoft makes them expire after 24 hours and I never got the Rclone command-line switches that would supposedly auto-renew the tokens to work), which would result in the upload restarting (i.e., endless loop).

My computing is all Windows-based and I really just use my QNAP for storage of my backups. I use BitLocker to encrypt my PC drive and all USB data drives; similarly, for the QNAP, I use its encryption to encrypt the 5 HDDs. When I boot the QNAP and logon, I manually unlock the HDDs so that they become accessible from my laptop. Transferring backup files from my USB drive to the QNAP has always been painstakingly slow because I do it over the network; although I can directly attach a USB drive to the QNAP, it, of course, does not natively recognize and support BitLocker. There's a utility called Dislocker, but I was never able to get it setup.

I don't have a need to access my QNAP remotely (away from home) because when I travel, I take my USB backup drive with me and I also have the last 3 months of backups on OneDrive along with other critical files I may need to access remotely.

So, not wanting to change my backup strategy (e.g., split files greater than 10GB) and wanting seamless and similar access to my backup storage (including the ability to seamlessly interface with a Bitlocker-encrypted USB drive), as an interim solution, I bought a NUC. After creating my backups to the USB drive, I plug it into the NUC, then I run a script on that it copies the files to the QNAP and then to OneDrive. Windows handles the OneDrive syncing of multiple files at a time and there are no token expiration issues!

But, as I stated, the NUC is an interim solution and I want to replace it with a full-blown Windows-based storage PC and that will allow me to transition off the QNAP and be all Windows (with BitLocker encryption)-based. Yes, I admit that I will miss the true hardware-based RAID 5, but for my simple Use Case, Windows Storage Spaces will suffice.

NavyLCDR said:

Why are you dead set on NVME SSDs for a NAS?

Click to expand...

Strictly for performance.

nuspieds said:

So I'm on my second QNAP and I've loved them but the major issue I have is blink and next thing you know your device is end-of-life and no longer supported.

Click to expand...

Synology.
windows for a 'nas' probably wont end well
use RED drives from WD. its just for storage, not a daily driver OS... and you'll end up replacing those ssds because of # of writes sooner than later

I Have to Agree NVME for remote storage will gain you very little and cost you more in replacements over time, that's not what they are designed to do.

WD Reds, are way better, NVME OS drive, Maybe Some SSD drives.

As for OS, there are plenty of Linux NAS OS's FreeNAS, TrueNAS, even OpenMediaVault if you want something easier to setup. Windows 11 would be a pain to maintain.

you have a specific requirement "Custom-Build".


I prefer "green" (low power-consumption), compact and low-cost. hence my NAS mainly have taken HP 800 G4/G5 DM or SFF, which bought from ebay, pricing from $40 - $90. Intel i5 8th/9th gen CPU, 16 GB RAM.


HP 800 G4/G5
DM offers two M2 NVMe SSD slots. one SATA SSD slot. very compact.
SFF has upto 5 M2 NVMe/PCIe SSD slots. 3-4 SATA SSD slots. enough room for upgrade.



(HP vs. Dell
HP has better performance. more USB ports (USB3.0/3.1/3.2). more graphics ports (three), more SSD slots (NVMe/PCIe/SATA all)

OS can be either Linux or Windows. Only you need to do, is to add your storage. (xTB SDD)

my previous post was here

dacrone said:

Synology.
windows for a 'nas' probably wont end well
use RED drives from WD. its just for storage, not a daily driver OS... and you'll end up replacing those ssds because of # of writes sooner than later

Click to expand...

I actually started to look at Synology while I had my first QNAP because that's when I encountered my first EOL issue. But in the end, when it came time for me to buy my new/second NAS, I chose QNAP because of familiar territory (i.e., setup was easy and quick because I was repeating what I had already done on my first NAS).

But, as a reminder, I have come to the conclusion and acceptance that I am not using all or most of what a NAS has to offer; the one and most important feature I know and benefit from is the hardware-based RAID 5. When I bought my first QNAP, I had TwonkyMedia running and then I played around with Plex but I stopped with all of that because my Use Case is truly just to store my backups.

My backup strategy is that, on Fridays, I make monthly full backups the week of patch Tuesday and incrementals on all other weeks. I backup my PC to a portable SSD, then I copy the backups to the QNAP, then I copy the backups from the QNAP to OneDrive, where I maintain only the last 3 months of backups, then I power off my QNAP.

I write way, way, way more often to my laptop SSD than I do to my QNAP and I have never encountered the write maximum on any of my PCs. My PC upgrade/replacement cycle is about every 4-5 years. The upgrade/replacement cycle for my USB backup SSD drive is even longer, at 6-7 years, and for which I have also never encountered the write maximum. Thus, I have no concern whatsoever about the write maximum for a Windows-based SSD NAS because my upgrade/replacement cycle will be around 6-7 years using it for weekly backups only.

Aramil said:

I Have to Agree NVME for remote storage will gain you very little and cost you more in replacements over time, that's not what they are designed to do.

WD Reds, are way better, NVME OS drive, Maybe Some SSD drives.

As for OS, there are plenty of Linux NAS OS's FreeNAS, TrueNAS, even OpenMediaVault if you want something easier to setup. Windows 11 would be a pain to maintain.

Click to expand...

Ease of setup is not a requirement; rather, it's the seamless and consistent setup and configuration process that's important to me.

As stated before, my computing environment is Windows and setting it up and configuring it is much faster and easier for me to do than for some other OS. Setting up and configuring and Windows-based NAS would essentially be nothing for me whereas setting up and configuring a new QNAP or Synology would be more time-consuming.

But, again, regardless of how much time I save for setup and configuration because I am more comfortable and experienced with Windows, my key Use Case calls for implementation of BitLocker encryption and seamless integration/interoperability with my existing USB BitLocker-encrypted SSD drives.

Yes, I agree, if my Use Case matched the traditional usage of a NAS then HDDs are the way to go; but it does not and I'm truly just looking for another PC with large storage that I only write to on a weekly basis.