I'm shopping around for a NAS setup for Jellyfin and personal file storage.

Tell me all about your setups, and provide any recs if you have them.

I have an old HP Microserver G8 which I upgraded to a xeon processor and 16 GB of RAM. Currently I'm running Unraid with 4x 8 TB HDDs plus 2 external 4 TB drives.
I't's been happily running for 5+ years. I don't intend to change it anytime soon, but if I was building a NAS right now I would just use a big old PC case with plenty of space for drives (2000's-2010's era cases are great for that) and use a low power Motherboard/CPU with unraind installed.

If future expandability is not one of your concerns and you don't want to mess around with hardware/software maybe stick with an pre-built NAS from Synology or QNap. You pay for the convenience I guess.

Should you have a JBOD availble, maybe use It connected to a low power Intel N100 mini-PC and call It a day. the integrated GPUs on those things rock for video transcoding if you need it!

+1 for using a mini-pc! I have a newer HP mini elitedesk with an 11th gen intel cpu and it handles everything I throw at it. It’s running Unraid with an external 10-bay enclosure connected by a single USB-C cable. I prefer this over a NAS from something like Synology that may come with a lower end cpu.

Originally Posted by MrMariners

+1 for using a mini-pc! I have a newer HP mini elitedesk with an 11th gen intel cpu and it handles everything I throw at it. It’s running Unraid with an external 10-bay enclosure connected by a single USB-C cable. I prefer this over a NAS from something like Synology that may come with a lower end cpu.

What 10-bay enclosure, please, and how happy are you with the noise levels ?

Originally Posted by VitaminD3

What 10-bay enclosure, please, and how happy are you with the noise levels ?

I have the Sabrent 10-bay enclosure and I couldn't be happier with it. It's high quality, solid, and all aluminum. It also uses a 10gbps USB 3.2 connection.

There are cheaper 8-bay enclosure options like Syba and Orico, and they would probably be just fine, but some of them use the slower USB 3.0 speed cables.

The enclosure itself isn't loud at all, it has two large fans that I've never been able to hear. It does a good job of masking noise from the hard drives, I don't usually hear the clicks and humming. However I think it also depends on the hard drives you use. I've noticed the faster 7200rpm enterprise grade drives are quite a bit louder than the slower 5400rpm Western Digital drives. The enterprise drives sometimes make thud noises that sound like car doors being slammed outside.

Originally Posted by MrMariners

I have the Sabrent 10-bay enclosure and I couldn't be happier with it.

Oh, that's a better price/drive "slot" than what I got, the TERRAMASTER D6-320 - I'll check it out, thanks.