Pre-built NAS models are the default choice for a lot of people just getting into the NAS world. Popular brands like Synology and Terramaster offer a good starting point with great hardware and software combo that is ready to go. You just have to pop in a couple of drives, and you’d be good to go. You are greeted with an easy-to-use interface that holds your hand every step of the way. It feels more like setting up a Windows laptop than putting together your own desktop from scratch.

But all that convenience comes at a price — and I mean real money. All the features and software come bundled with the enclosure as a package, one that is locked down in what is often a closed ecosystem. And you must pay a premium to get all that, even at the entry level. But I found a way to get the same effect of a real NAS at a fraction of the price, and here’s how you can do it too.

The heart of a NAS

Look further inside if your answer was the enclosure

If you just think about it, the real heart of any storage box isn’t the enclosure but the drives that run inside it. While NAS devices work with special hard drives that are designed to work non-stop, their enterprise variants are even more resilient and last way, way, way longer than anything else. They do come at a slightly higher price for all the features they offer, but it’s well worth the reliability gains.

But wait, I didn’t have to pay that premium either.

When people first hear about used hard drives, the first instinct is fear. But enterprise drives are built different. Unlike consumer HDDs that are meant for a couple of backups a year, they are built to run 24/7 in large servers, tolerate heavy vibrations with dozens of drives running in a single rack, and are more tolerant toward less-than-ideal airflow.

The wildest part is that you can get a 12TB or 16TB enterprise SATA drive for a third of what a brand-new one costs. I know, you’d wonder how much life it has left still — and that was my first question too. I sure wouldn’t compromise on my own NAS’s reliability to save a few bucks.

The checks that sealed the deal

I wasn’t going to keep them without testing anyway, so I gave the aftermarket drives that I was interested in a go. They did sound a bit louder than I expected, but I wanted to be doubly sure before making a call. I ran a burn-in test and confirmed the SMART tests, which came out healthy. Even though those drives had clocked lots of hours in their previous lives, they still had a lot left in them, especially since my use case was much lighter than a full-fledged data center.

After running these tests, I bought four of them, and they all cost me just a little over one NAS HDD at its retail price. This proved to be a great start to my NAS setup on a tight budget, which I took almost as a challenge.

Why it makes sense

There was a solid cost incentive

The Synology model I was eyeing crossed well past the $600 mark, and that’s without the hard drive cost. I calculated the cost of the complete system with 12TB NAS-class drives for all its bays, and I was looking at a small fortune. That was the moment when I just closed the checkout page.

Whatever features I was paying Synology for could easily be recreated on a DIY setup. There are literally tens of third-party tools that are either equally good or much better than its first-party tools. The convenience it afforded me didn’t look worth the money it asked for when comparing the price-to-performance ratio. I could instead spend some time building my own NAS server and installing only the software I need, rather than what the NAS maker wants to promote.

This way, you aren’t even stuck with whatever RAM and CPU configuration the NAS comes with — you can piece your NAS together like a Lego set with the hardware of your choice.

How I put it all together

Syncing the hardware with the software

While getting used hard drives saved me a bunch of cash, the second part of the equation helped me stay within budget. Instead of going out shopping for new components, I repurposed an old PC. Despite being a few years old, its Intel processor had enough power to run everything I wanted from my NAS (and more) and a built-in GPU for transcoding on the fly with Plex. It saved me quite a lot, though it still needed some things like breakout cables and an HBA card to be fully operational like a NAS, which turned out to be a small investment.

With the hardware in place, including the hard drives, it was time for the software to come alive. I stuck to TrueNAS, mostly because I wanted ZFS, and I built my setup on top of it with proper account and share permissions, Docker containers, and whatnot. It wasn’t an easy setup by a mile, but it was quite satisfactory to put it all together myself while saving so much cash compared to picking up a pre-built NAS and using hard drives off the shelf.

Taking this route requires your commitment to getting your hands dirty, constant troubleshooting, and putting together software piece by piece. That’s also more of a time commitment that I understand many won’t be down for. Unless you’re on a tight budget, getting yourself a pre-built NAS won’t be a bad idea, considering all the conveniences it affords you — but it won’t give you the thrill of not knowing what lies next in the DIY world. You gotta choose your poison.