I have two mini PCs mostly just lying around: the Ayaneo AM02, which I turned into a game console in my living room, and the Ayaneo AM01. I've been trying to figure out ways to make use of the AM01, and I had an idea. What if I could turn it into a really basic NAS, that uses significantly less power than my actual NAS?

I wanted to play around with something new, so I opted not to go for TrueNAS or Unraid. Instead, I used the basic Windows install that it already comes with, and installed Docker Desktop and Portainer. Once I'd done that, and disabled automatic Windows Updates (don't keep them off all the time, this is just while I'm testing), I was ready to go. I unplugged my AM01 from my monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and managed everything from my laptop.

It went surprisingly well, much better than I had initially thought it might.

Why use a mini PC as a NAS?

I have a lot of tech lying around, and I use my NAS extensively in my day-to-day life. It has a Ryzen 7 3700X and a GTX 1070, so while it's certainly powerful and capable of transcoding 4K video as well, it's also pretty power-hungry. I wanted to experiment with the Ayaneo AM01 as it has a Ryzen 7 5700U, a very low-power CPU that should still be capable of a lot.

Granted, you aren't going to necessarily be doing as much on this CPU as you would be with the 3700X, but the performance delta may not be as bad as it seems on the outset. While you might struggle with some 4K transcoding, it gets the job done for basically anything else. You don't even need to install a NAS OS on it if you don't want to, and for this proof of concept, I just deployed Docker Desktop and Portainer.

To be clear, I don't recommend using Windows for this project, but as a proof of concept, it certainly works. For ease of deployment and modification, I'd suggest using an operating system like Ubuntu Server, TrueNAS, or even Proxmox.

Installing Docker Desktop and Portainer

Installing Docker on Windows is incredibly easy, as it makes use of WSL 2. You simply download and install Docker Desktop, reboot your PC, and you can get started. From here, the only container you need to install is Portainer. Portainer gives you a web GUI to help you manage your containerized services. Rather than serving as a container runtime environment like Docker, Portainer builds on Docker's functionality by allowing you to deploy, oversee, and troubleshoot your containers without terminal commands.

This is great for our mini PC, as it means you don't need to keep it connected to a monitor to use it. Before we go any further, make sure to disable any automatic hibernation or sleep settings if you are using Windows, as otherwise, your services will become inaccessible after a while. I would also disable any security settings and enable Docker Desktop and your containers to start when you turn on your PC so that everything boots automatically.

Now with that out of the way, we can move on to actually using Portainer. Portainer is great, as any changes or new containers you want to deploy can all be done from it using another device, but you will need to make sure that you have enabled Docker Desktop to expose the port and map it to a port on your system. I simply mapped Portainer's port 9443 to port 9443 on my localhost, which meant that I could then access the web GUI from another device on the machine's IP, like so:

https://192.168.1.46:9443

Once you've connected to Portainer and created your admin account, you can get to work. You can create volumes, pull images, and manage your containers, which means you can now unplug any input devices and your monitor, so long as you're confident that your PC won't go to sleep and that your containers will automatically start if your system reboots for whatever reason.

What this effectively gives you is a full TrueNAS-like system in just a few minutes, without the need to install a new operating system or go too in-depth when it comes to software. While I recommend switching to another operating system more suited to this kind of thing if you're serious about a NAS, this will work as a bare minimum. In the future, you could even migrate to a Linux installation or other similarly equipped operating system if you decide you want to invest more time and energy into making the perfect setup with your mini PC.

What can you do with your mini PC NAS?

A lot, is the answer

Depending on what you're interested in, there are a lot of cool and even life-changing projects you could undertake. You could turn it into a recipe collector, a media streaming server, or a workout tracker. It's extremely versatile, and there are thousands of containerized services out there that you can deploy with Docker. If you start to get serious about running services locally, I highly recommend transitioning away from Windows, but if you just want to run a few smaller services, then Windows will work completely fine.

Pretty much every service you can think of is on Docker, so have a look around the Docker repository and see what catches your eye. From game servers to Google Drive replacements, there's something for everyone. You don't need to be a tech wizard to run a NAS!