The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/MorgothTheBauglir on 2025-08-02 02:26:26+00:00.

TLDR;

Wanted to validate the concept of building a DIY NAS using mini pc's and SFF/MFF desktop cases, trying to focus on power efficiency and easily available and cheap materials plus re-utilizing a lot of the stuff I already had - eg. fans, hdd's, IO shields, etc. It turned out pretty good, met all of my personal requirements and couldn't be happier:

1. 10x HDD + 2x 256GB SSD
2. N150 + 16GB RAM + 512GB NVME
3. Deepcool CH160 mesh case
4. Combined HDD throughput is around 2GB/s
5. Idle power consumptions fluctuates around 120W
6. HDD temp averages at 35C
7. CPU temp averages at 60C
8. No RGB whatsoever
9. Wife doesn't know because it's dead silent lol

Context and build log

I've been using my gaming rig as a 24x7 Torrent + PleX server at home for a few years now, had 10x 3.5" HDDs across two 5-bay USB 3.0 enclosures which worked fine with DrivePool and Snapraid but the power consumption was crazy 24x7 for not much demand. Decided to go offload that task to an Alder Lake mini PC and get rid of the USB overhead when moving data around or running backups.

Got the SOYO M4 Plus with 16gb of RAM and 512g SSD for pretty cheap in Aliexpress, replaced the generic SSD with WD's SN5000S 512gb with 2230 and placed it into the WiFi card M.2 slot with the A/E to M key adapter, slapped a couple of ASM1166 M.2 to 6xSATA adapter too and thought it was good (each M.2 is PCIE 3.0 x1 so that's 1GB/s per adapter). However, converting the A/E key to M key added some height to the slot and it started preventing one of the M.2 to SATA adapters from latching completely into the slot.

SN5000S on the M.2 A/E key slot for WiFI, notice how it gets higher due to the adapter

The 2nd M.2 to SATA adapter gets way too high up to the point it can't be completely screwed down to place without bending the PCB.

Since I just wanted to test the system out it actually worked out alright, however, the NVME temperatures were peaking at 79C (due to bad airflow and lack of space between both M.2 slots) and clearly need to have this fixed. The solution was to use an A/E key extender adapter which allowed me to route the NVME under the M.2 to SATA adapter and would give me space to install a proper heatsink and some thermal pads. Temperature went down to 50C and all the adapters were now 100% lined up as they should. The best piece of advice I can give is: always replace the included generic SSD! By doing it so the CPU usage dropped dramatically from thermal throttling non-stop in idle to fluctuating between 60~70C.

"Perfectly balanced as all things should be" - Darth Vader

CPU usage: (1) Included generic SSD, (2) with SN5000S creating some torrents and (3) SN5000S idle. LPT Always get a quality NVMe with chinese mini PC's.

The CH160 case supports both ATX and SFX power supplies but any of those would completely prevent me from installing all 10x HDD's + 2x SSD's so I really had to go smaller and gave it a shot with a Flex PSU and an ATX/SFX conversion bracket. This is by far the most critical component to build this NAS like I wanted, otherwise I would have to rely on power bricks and shady DC to SATA converters - "Fire is the devil's only friend" - nope, just nope. Managed to hide the 24-pin cables nicely behind it along with coupling the ATX power switch.

Flex PSU with ATX/SFX adapter bracket

Another angle, showing how much clearance there is now

Ok, hard drives were next. Managed to screw both 5xHDD cages together as they lined up perfectly and would be treated a single piece from now on. The SATA power cables were perfect for the job as I've had them cherry picked since they had 4cm spacing between each SATA plug which turned out to be precise for a snug fit and leaving no slack around. I've also "painted" the HDD cages with a few permanent black markers I've had laying around as the steel would contrast with the black CH160 a bit too much for my taste, just wanted to tone down the colors a bit for stealth purposes and it went like a charm. Also installed one of the 200W PCIE to SATA power breakout converters (also swapped the 10mm's standoffs with 4mm's), connected the SATA cables and had the mini PC case dremel'd to open way for the SATA connectors. The idea would be to toy around with it all and try to find the best fit and assess the possibilities.

Power cables with 4cm spacing worked out perfectly.

HDD's being thrown into position.

4mm standoffs vs 10mm ones - squeezing every possible clearance we can get

Test fitting chaos.

Settled on the overall position and started routing cables left and right and putting each piece on their final position. Place 2x60mm's close the PSU as they would be intaking cool air towards the mini PC and I've also managed to double tape the SSD's in there as there would be clearance for the mini PC too. I decided to remove the mini PC cover altogether as it wasn't helping the cables nicely so it made my life a bit easier, since the PC case is fully meshed I wouldn't worry about dust anyways plus it would also help with the overall cooling too.

Slowly looking less like a pile of tech garbage - which it is..?

Easy there cowboy, the worse is yet to come.

It's FML time now: cable management. Went with the basics of using Velcro's, fold and compressing cables. Some ~~cheating too~~ zip ties were used but just to fix unmovable things such as fan molex connectors and stubborn hard wires. Speaking of hard wires, untying the flat cable wires and bundling them up with cloth insulation tape did wonders to facilitate the work and remove the excess cables and connectors. I just cut them off and had the bare wires covered with liquid insulation tape. Clean and easy. The fact that I've placed the fan controller just by the rear I/O should opening helped me tremendously to route all the fan connectors to a common point and route them accordingly as well.

Still a rat's nest.

Untying flat power cable wirings.

Cloth insulation tape doing its magic, much better now.

Far from perfect but will definitely do the job.

Fan controller double taped by the I/O shield.

Since there wouldn't be any I/O shield I decided to 3d print one that I would open just the necessary holes for the build and also to allow the air to pass through. Basically the DC power connector of the mini PC goes through it along with the LAN cable and a USB 3.2 10Gbps hub that I've had laying around to facilitate doing cold storage backups via USB with my former HDD enclosures. I've managed to also punch a perfect hole for the ATX power switch to easily shutdown and on the system, the mini PC power is flawlessly managed via Wake-on-LAN, cool beans.

Rearview - PSU power cord, mini PC DC cable, LAN cable and USB 3.2 10G hub. 3D printed I/O shield with manually cut holes for the cables and power switch.

And I guess that's it, the build is complete. Booted perfectly, recognized all the drives, ran several throughput tests and I'm very satisfied with the overall result as I'm not running any VDEV's, VM's or big workloads. Went with Windows 11 IoT LTSC (non-bloated and solid version, highly recommend it) with good old DrivePool and Snapraid as it's basically for Torrent and PleX/Jellyfin.

[Final product.](https://preview.redd.it/oxzvmtv6tggf1.jpg?width=3072&format=pj...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1mff7da/poor_mans_80tb_diy_nas_project_with_n150_mini_pc/

The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Mysterious-Fudge-552 on 2025-08-02 01:48:46+00:00.

Hey I was going through some old stuff and stumbled across my old Western Digital Sharespace NAS. While I know this by itself is old and not being supported I wondered if anybody had repurposed theirs for something. I know the reality is I should e-cycle it and buy something new but I wanted to check if anybody is doing something cool with it.

The original post: /r/earthporn by /u/andrewtransini on 2025-08-02 09:25:20+00:00.

The original post: /r/earthporn by /u/TravelforPictures on 2025-08-02 01:02:42+00:00.

The original post: /r/mullvadvpn by /u/starrycat27 on 2025-08-02 03:55:20+00:00.

*new to vpns

Hi! Im brand new to vpns and piracy, and my uncle (who's been pirating since the dawn of the internet) recommend i try mullvad to start with. Im trying to figure out what settings to turn on and what to keep off, as well as what he means by "[binding my] bit torrent client to the VPN connection" (he hasn't been able to entirely help me out with this as he's busy right now and we live about an hour apart). Im basically in tech kindergarten and really confused, but im sick of giving evil companies my data and I am sick of ai and I am sick of streaming services. Any advice would be so so so helpful. Thank you!!!

The original post: /r/mullvadvpn by /u/Askkkktsschualleeee on 2025-08-01 19:23:05+00:00.

The original post: /r/mullvadvpn by /u/ThisNameDoesntCheck on 2025-08-01 16:15:47+00:00.

Im in the UK, so figured its time to set up a VPN full time in a scenario where I won't have to interact with it anymore. However, here's my problem:

Some websites block me for having a mullvad, or any vpn enabled. My simple solution, and its one I've been doing for other reasons anyway, is use two browsers. I've got both chromium and firefox installed, and I'd like to have chromium always running with the VPN by default, which was obviously pretty simple through the mullvad app - and FireFox, which I want to completely be excluded from the VPN. This way, I can use them both for their respective purposes, without ever having to deactivate or reactivate the vpn.

The split tunneling feature is there, and a simple web search of "where am I" confirms whether the split tunneling is on or off, but my issue is that I do not want to go through mullvad and run firefox every single time I open it. I understand there are ways to automatically route apps around the VPN, I've read there is a "mullvad-exclude" command etc.

Unfortunately, I'm stupid. I don't know how to set up networking to route firefox around it, and I can't find any guides online to do this specifically. I'm hoping someone can post a simple step by step guide for me to set up split tunneling that will automatically exclude firefox whenever I run it, without having to go into the mullvad app every time. Please bear in mind even though I've ran linux since 2020, I'm not smart witted with it. I'm a casual user in the most literal sense. I'm currently running Ubuntu 25.04, with KDE plasma / Kubuntu installed. Besides that it's a pretty stock OS. Let me know if I missed any important details to include!

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

The original post: /r/mullvadvpn by /u/optimisticalish on 2025-08-01 15:12:40+00:00.

Got my Mullvad scratch-card from Amazon today, and installed. Expected it to take four minutes, but it took longer due to firewall problems.

Setup was a little clunky. I expected one offline installer. What I got was a stub .EXE which then demanded to go online to get a larger installer. I would not have expected that from a privacy focused service. The stub then had to be let through my Tinywall firewall.

On installing and setting Mullvad up, I immediately found that Mullvad has severe problems when working with the Tinywall firewall for Windows. Tinywall is a "nothing gets out unless I whitelist it" freeware firewall for Windows.

Even when every single .EXE in all Mullvad folder and subfolders are whitelisted, Tinywall still won't allow it to connect. And yes, the two VPN check-boxes in Tinywall's 'Special Exceptions' panel are ticked - and it makes no difference at all. Neither does rebooting the PC. If Mullvad can't connect, the Internet connection is blocked.

The clunky workaround is then ...

i) Launch Mullvad, but don't connect to a VPN server.

ii) drop all firewall protection in Tinywall (eeek!)

iii) connect to a VPN server via Mullvad

iv) then raise the Tinywall firewall again.

Not ideal! But at least the Mullvad connections will then persist, so long as it doesn't get dropped due to network problems. Or if you encounter a blocked website, and thus need to change the Mullvad server to reach the site. On a 24/7 desktop PC this is not likely to be much of a problem. But when my Surface Windows 10 tablet is simply 'hibernated', the Mullvad connection is dropped. It's then not likely to be ideal, dropping the firewall in a cybercafe situation!

I've searched hard but can find no hint of what additional .EXE file needs to be Whitelisted in Tinywall. Anyone know? Perhaps it's hooking into something Windows uses, but I don't see anything likely appearing in Tinywall's list of running processes. Nor does using Tinywall's 'Autolearn' option shed any light at all on the matter - nothing extra or unusual gets auto-listed.

Ideally, Mullvad would do some research and work out exactly how to have their software work with Tinywall, and then post the details on their FAQ.

Blocked website? Regrettably, it seems that all Hostinger hosted websites are blocked, which is a pity since they're one of the world's biggest website paid hosting services. All such sites "took too long to respond", yet they work fine and instantly when Mullvad is turned off.

Working websites: Wordpress.com free blogs work, Reddit works (if logged in, otherwise you get a security alert and block), CivitAI, YouTube (faster to play, hurrah!), Google and Google Scholar, Archive.org (faster!), Gumroad, DeviantArt, Major Geeks (though only if I turn off the uBlock Origin adblocker, which is curious since it was working fine before - possibly they have regional requirements for ad-blockers?), and GitHub.

On the plus side, I'm pleased to find my slow Internet a bit faster than usual when using Mullvad (connected via Manchester to the East Coast of the USA)! I can only assume that some ISP throttling or congestion is being bypassed? Perhaps I'm no longer being sent via London to get to U.S. sites? Or perhaps it's just a much faster DNS?

Anyway, those are my initial findings. I have yet to test 'split tunnel' (allowing one software to bypass the VPN).

The original post: /r/mullvadvpn by /u/Kahootalin on 2025-08-01 10:35:08+00:00.

I was reading about the eu’s ‘going dark’ plan, obviously I think it’s horrible, how will mullvad navigate this? And how will eu citizens be able to access mullvad?

The original post: /r/torrents by /u/UnhappyWhile7428 on 2025-08-02 00:52:25+00:00.

The original post: /r/torrents by /u/Conscious_State2096 on 2025-08-01 19:38:02+00:00.

That's what I read on their GitHub page. I was looking for software similar to Hatt for torrents.

The original post: /r/torrents by /u/catmeowmix2018 on 2025-08-01 16:44:51+00:00.

Hey everyone! I'm using the torrentgalaxy.one mirror and every time I use the sort function by seed it glitches. Does anyone have a better mirror to use or a workaround? Thank you