As someone who's been making YouTube videos and filming things for fun,
I've been thinking of a storage solution.
When I was first making YouTube videos,
I would upload my videos, and then delete the original video files to save hard drive space.
So my videos are saved on the internet unless I delete them.
It's kinda like cloud storage but for free an anybody can view them.
Speaking of cloud storage,
why didn’t I just use Google Drive,
why didn’t I just use Google Drive, Dropbox,
why didn’t I just use Google Drive, Dropbox, Mega,
why didn’t I just use Google Drive, Dropbox, Mega, Mediafire and etc?
I could've used these but they are paid services and the free amount of storage isn't enough for what I'm doing.
In November 2022, my aunt gave me her 1TB external hard drive, and that was a game changer.
I used it to store old family photos, some music, and my YouTube videos that I keep on making.
An external hard drive is an internal hard drive just with a case around it
and it comes with this usb connector,
that way I can carry this with me anywhere I want and I can access the data on it using the usb connector
but that’s not ideal and it’s usually a hassle.
So what can I do now?
Thanks to the internet, I learned about something called a NAS
which stands for “Network Attached Storage.”
A NAS is a metal box, basically a computer, which has stuff like cpu, ram, and hard drives bays all in one box.
You can connect it to your router via ethernet and send your data to a network which you can access wherever you want.
It’s what people call a “personal cloud” because:
you can scale or it replace a drive if it dies and YOU have control over your data,
so no company to spy on your important files.
Just like computers, there are tons of prebuilt NAS boxes floating on Amazon,
but because I don't have the money and because I want to,
I'm building my own NAS using what I already have, a laptop and some hard drives.
For this video, I am using my 2009 Toshiba Satellite L455-S5980 Laptop,
what a mouthful.
It has an Intel Celeron T300 1.8ghz processor,
4gb of ram (upgraded),
and a 512gb 2.5inch SSD (upgraded).
Which is quite slow, but it’s all I have.
So I have the laptop as a NAS, now is a good time to discuss what hard drives I am using.
I am using 3 Seagate hard drives.
I have a 2TB external drive that costs $60,
a 4TB external drive that costs $89
and a 6TB Expansion drive that costs $120.
In total, it costs $269 USD for the hard drives.
This is not really a budget build, but it’s whatever, it’s what I have already.
That’s cool, but where am I gonna put my NAS at?
My room of course.
This area used to have a lot of Legos on it, but I had to clean it up to be able to put the NAS here which took quite a while.
So I have the computer, the hard drives, and the ethernet cable all connected.
Speaking of the ethernet cable,
many moons ago, my dad bought a long 75ft cat8 ethernet cable
which connects to an ethernet switch in my parents room,
then it goes into a hole in the wall and up into the attic.
The cable comes down from this hole that was used for a TV cable in my closet, to under my desk and then to the computer here.
So I have the stuff setup, now it’s time to make it work.
The operating system I’m gonna be using for this video is Ubuntu Server and CasaOS.
The reason why is because I’m following a Tech Hut video.
Yeah...
I have tried TrueNAS and OMV before, but I’m trying this out because it seems easier.
First things first, I went to the Ubuntu server website and downloaded the iso image just like any other operating system.
After it’s done downloading, I burn it to a USB stick.
And after that, I put it in to the computer and I install the OS.
The process was really simple and I didn’t really have to follow a tutorial for this one.
Also, make sure to uncheck the LVM group because it splits your drive into multiple partitions.
After it’s done installing on the old laptop, I went to my main computer to ssh into it.
You can do that by typing: ssh, space, your username, the @ symbol, and the ip address of your server.
Once that’s done, do a simple sudo apt update, and then install Casa OS by copying and pasting in the curl command.
Now just sit and relax, it’s doing all the work for you.
After CasaOS is done installing, copy the link that it gave you, aka your ip address, and paste it in to your web browser.
You can just type it in if you want.
The CasaOS login screen should pop-up, type in your credentials and viola!
This is CasaOS.
The first thing I did was to format all the drives just it case and after it’s done,
I had to refresh the page because it didn’t show for some reason.
Anyways, I went to the default files app, pressed on one of my drives, then went back to the devmon folder, and then right click → share my drives.
I couldn’t figure out how to rename the drives in CasaOS
but at least I can just mount and rename it in my file manager,
and there also is a way to merge all your hard drives in one piece,
but I had some issues with that in the past, so I didn’t bother.
When I typed the ip address into my file manager, Dolphin, the shared drives appeared.
And for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, speed.
When copying files from my backup hard drive to the NAS, the speed is pretty slow at around 10mb/s.
This is not really surprising as I am using low end hardware, so of course, it took many hours for me to copy everything into the NAS.
Anyways, since it’s a NAS and it’s in my local network,
I could connect it to my main desktop as I’ve already shown you, my HP laptop that I use mainly for school, and my Android phone,
although I had to use another app for this because the default one sucks.
Cool, but there’s one more thing that I need to do, and that is to access it from anywhere in the world.
Well, I don’t travel much, so from my school.
This was the most complicated step because I didn’t really know what to do, so I followed a YouTube tutorial by BigBearTechWorld.
It was pretty complicated at first, I lost a couple of braincells, but after doing it, I understand it now.
So basically what I did was I installed Tailscale on the NAS using the curl command,
the Tailscale connects to my Google account as well and it gave me an entirely different ip address.
I used the curl command to install Tailscale on my HP laptop
and I used the Android app to connect it on my phone as well.
Since the devices are in one place, I can use the different ip address for the NAS and I can connect it anywhere I go.
But yeah, I’m done!
I can store footage onto it until it runs out or one drive dies and I can also access it from anywhere in the world.
It’s amazing to see how a laptop that could’ve been thrown away can be used for a NAS, essentially putting it to some use.
For now though, this is gonna be temporary.
I don’t really like the speeds of it, and also the hard drives are all gonna die in the future anyways.
Some things just don’t last forever.
But yeah, this is my server.
My name is Luke, and I am out.