Maximum PC - UK (2019-09)

R&D

66 MAXIMUMPC SEP 2019 maximumpc.com

JONNI BIDWELL, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

OFF-THE-SHELF NAS units are easy to

come by, but they’re often underpowered,

overpriced, or otherwise disappointing.

Many of them run some kind of Linux

(usually on quite modestly powered ARM

hardware), and it’s pretty straightforward

to build a Linux box, and cram it with as

many hard drives as geometry permits.

You may even have enough spare parts

lying around to get most of the way there

(we did). You don’t need anything special

hardware-wise (4GB of RAM and a CPU

sometime from the last decade is fine),

but several large hard drives help. Many

consumer-level NAS devices come in

attractive small form factors, and thanks

to their low power consumption, don’t

require noisy cooling. So, we thought

we’d try our hand at mimicking this.

If the prospect of using Linux makes

you cringe, don’t worry—we’re going to

use the fantastic OpenMediaVault, which

(all going to plan) means you won’t have

to touch a command line, and everything

can be controlled from a friendly web

interface. Next-gen filesystems, RAID,

and LVM don’t need abstruse incantations

(or sacrifices) at the terminal. Best of

all, OpenMediaVault can be customized

and added to as much as you want. Read

all about it at http://www.openmediavault.org.

The Plex extension (available via the OMV-

Extras.org repository) is particularly

great, and will turn your NAS into a full-

fledged DAAP media server. Beyond that,

OMV can run Docker images, so you can

host any popular Linux application you

like, whether it’s Nextcloud, Mastodon,

BitTorrent, or anything else you care to

name. OMV is also based on Debian Linux,

so you can do pretty much whatever you’d

do there with it.

THE CONCEPT

LENGTH OF TIME: 2 HOURS

Home on

the RAID

LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM

Build your own NAS box, with stuff you have lying

around, and the magic of open source