What can I do with a NAS?
What can I do with a NAS?
I recently emptied my father's old office and discovered a D-Link DNS-320l with two WD green 1.5TB drives inside. I'm keeping it for now, intending to use it later. Someone has any suggestions on what I can actually do with it? I was thinking about using it as a remote time machine for my Macs and girlfriends, but I've learned it's only compatible with SATA 2, which greatly restricts the NAS performance (around 300MB speeds as seen online). Do anyone have ideas about other uses for it?
Gigabit ethernet is a much bigger limitation compared to Sata 2. You’ll rarely surpass around 116MiB/s even with 1000mbps network speeds. Regarding what you can achieve, proprietary NAS storage units aren’t practical beyond their intended purpose. You can’t run substantial software or OSes on them, and the low-power components mainly spin disks. As a NAS, your home server consumes over 100 watts when idle (with seven drives), while those drives likely draw more power than the hardware itself. I designed my server to consolidate all hard drives, removing noisy components. I keep half of my Steam games on the same drive, moving them to an NVMe drive over the network for larger files when bandwidth is limited. You could build a media library there—store movies and shows, use Plex, and access them via the network share. Keep in mind, 1.5TB drives are nearing the end of their life; check SMART data before using them. If you notice reallocated sectors or hours exceeding 40k on WD Greens, treat them with caution—they’re likely close to failure despite being new.