Hi everyone,
I’ve been a long-time Synology user because of the platform’s simplicity, but my fleet is getting long in the tooth (DS212j, DS218+, plus a half-working DS215-something). I’m ready for an upgrade, and my first thought was to grab a current 4-bay (or larger) Synology model.
Then I read Synology’s recent announcement: future units will be qualified only for their own branded HDDs. I’m not a fan of that kind of vendor lock-in, so I’m exploring alternatives.
The DIY route I’m considering
- Board/CPU Intel N100 Mini-ITX board (e.g., Jensen N3 or similar)
- a no name N100 board?
- A topton N100 board?
- PSU & case Basic ATX/SFX PSU and a compact 6- to 8-bay chassis
- OS options TrueNAS SCALE, Unraid, or—even if it’s a bit hacky—XPEnology
The DIY build would give me:
- Freedom to choose drives (and brands!)
- Easy hardware swaps if something fails
- Room to tinker and upgrade over time
Budget is limited, though, so I’m eyeing the “el-cheapo” N100 boards on Aliexpress. That raises a newbie concern:
My big question about RAID portability
If I set up, say, a ZFS or Btrfs pool with redundancy (or any other RAID solution) and the motherboard dies, can I drop the drives into a different board and pick up where I left off? Or is there any hidden “pairing” between the disks, the OS install, and the specific hardware?
I’d love to hear from anyone who has:
- Migrated a TrueNAS/Unraid array to a new motherboard
- Recovered pools after a sudden hardware failure
- Tips on choosing reliable low-cost boards for a home NAS
Thanks in advance for any insight—and for talking me out of (or into) this rabbit hole!
P.D I have also a N100 minipc lying around... what about a DAS solution? would it make sense? how secure is it against failures?