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