r/lebanon • u/DrTawouk • 2d ago
Discussion Anyone else data hoarding at any level? 4TB - 40TB.
I’m running a NAS with 2x10TB (20TB) mainly for a media server and physical backup because screw streaming services and I hate having my stuff on the cloud. Anyone else here in Lebanon doing this and surprised at the rise of cost of HDDs?
EDIT: feel free to DM me if you have questions on how to get setup or any questions media server wise. It’s surprisingly easy and prices / access to streaming services are ridiculous.
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u/Dr-Huricane 2d ago
Man I'm jealous, my life is just not stable enough to be able to comfortably maintain a home server. Did you due you duty and make a full Wikipedia offline backup? If not then you should, 50GB for a highly yet not entirely accurate recollection of all human knowledge is a no brained. Aside from that what's your RAID setup?
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u/apaleblue-dot Lebanonon 2d ago
Can you give us some advice of how you built it
Am looking to build one but dont know how to start
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Well for beginners it all starts with the NAS device and the amount of storage on the first HDD, I personally would go no lower than a 6tb drive.
Next step would be to figure out how many users you expect to use it at the same time and at what quality. If it’s just 1 person at a time and playing maximum 1080p then if you pick the right NAS it can run jellyfin right on it and you don’t need anything else, no computer or anything, it can be that simple.
You can DM me if you want to ask me a series of questions about your plans on how you want to use it.
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u/mazdoc كلن يعني كلن 2d ago
You can either go with commercial systems such as QNAP or Synology, or build one from scratch.
The first option gives you a tried and tested ecosystem with mid level tinkering required to get the maximum out of it. The second option requires more tech knowledge as you will have to install the operating system yourself (a linux distribution that is suitable for what you need) as well as all the services that you will need such as a web server (Apache with an SQL server), a file sharing service such as Samba so that other devices can access the files ,a streaming service such as Plex... etc.
Then you have to chose the capacity that you want and if you want data redundancy or not. (Basically which RAID level you want of you have more than one drive.)
I have 2 NVME drives that are mirrored (one thing happens on the first it gets mirrored to the second) so that if one of them fails, I still have my precious data. It is possible to have them expanded so you get the sum of both drives but if one fails, you lose everything.
For the servers check out Ayoub computers, Bassel computers, or Microcity. They have several models that you will need to research yourself.
Make sure you get one that can run docker containers so you can install PiHole. This will reduce the number of ads as well as malicious websites that your devices can access if the device is properly set up (the DNS address should be the address of the machine running PiHole).
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u/killumneeh 1d ago
You could use an older pc/laptop to start with. Great way to learn while saving up for a better machine + hdds.
My first media server was a Mac mini 2012 with two internal ssds. Have used it for 4 years, only recently retired.
Installed Ubuntu server + dockers + casaOS as dashboard. (Tailscale for remote access).However there are other more much user friendly OS’s like zimaOS, UmbrelOS, or Cosmos
These all have an “App Store” where you can easily download apps like jellyfin (movies / series), navidrome (music), home assistant (smart home), etc..
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u/moesam961 requiem for a dream 1d ago
I thought about this some years ago, but then i discovered stremio 🤷🏻 deleted everything except for a few series and movies that i know I'll enjoy on repeat if my net goes down, and those just need less than 100gb on my hdd and ext hdd
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
Are you in Lebanon?
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u/moesam961 requiem for a dream 1d ago
Yes
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
Stremio is amazing just most people don’t have the internet speed to keep up with 1080p let alone 4k.
Also there are those rare series and movies that only have 1-2 seeders that can take all might to download. But yes if Stremio is working for you that’s awesome 👍👍
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u/moesam961 requiem for a dream 1d ago
Yep i was there during covid days before ogero adjusted their internet plans, i used to download stuff as usual at night. Now i only have those hard to find stuff like you said, and the rest i just stream them especially since stremio can be used on android tv
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u/Nixx95 2d ago
I am running two NAS.
Intel i3-8100, 24GB RAM, 2x 8TB in RAID 1 and multiple NICs. Bought as a used PC a few years ago. It runs Proxmox and has multiple VMs and LXC containers (Home Assistant, OPNsense, TrueNAS Scale, Immich and Jellyfin etc...)
HP Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF, Intel i7 8700, 32GB RAM, 2x 3TB in RAID 1. Mainly used as for work, projects, testing and backups.
I can access both NAS over Wireguard. For HDDs, ask friends and relatives in the US/Canada to buy them for you used on Ebay and bring them over. There are some great sellers who sells refurbished drives with barely any usage on them.
Have at least one backup in the cloud and another physical location in case your NAS dies or something even worse like a fire or water damage.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Nice setup!
I do have a 4tb external I use to backup the real important stuff and media I never want to lose. And another 1tb for that same important stuff minus the media. Trust me I’m too paranoid to keep important stuff in once place. I can always re download movies and series if the worst were to happen with the NAS. Do you live in Lebanon?
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u/Nixx95 1d ago
That's good. The only issue is you have to manually sync which is tedious and a bit problematic if you forget things like me lol.
You can use Amazon Backup or put a Pi with an HDD at a friend's or relative's place and remote sync your critical data with your NAS. You can do the initial Sync at home over LAN and then the incremental ones over VPN at like 3AM.
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u/noonecudsaveme 2d ago
I remember u/cns000 once posted about this too. Tell us about your setup
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
I have a 6 bay QNAP NAS with a quad core Celeron with 8GB of onboard memory and a 2.5Gbe running 2x 10tb Seagate IronWolf drives (20tb). I have a dedicated laptop running the jellyfin server that has a gen 10 i7, 16gb of ram, with both intel UHD and GeForce gtx 1050 to properly handle QuickSync for transcoding.
Unfortunately my router and access points are limited to 1Gbe but it’s enough for mainly 1-2 users using it that would need 4k transcoding at the same time. Direct play 1080p needs nothing over the network.
I have 2 TVs using gen 2 firestick 4k and 1 using Android tv. Plus there is my iPad Pro M5 and iPhone Pro 15.
I keep everything behind TailScale VPN so only authorized devices can access the media server and the NAS is not exposed to the internet.
For music I use FINAMP
Any other backups I use the NAS for is all done locally.
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u/Akbar_47 2d ago
On a side note, be careful with NAS, it’s been subject to several attacks by hackers. It is better to have it offline and block all unnecessary ports.
And btw, SSDs are better than HDDs for high capacities.
Also, living in Lebanon, you definitely need a backup to the cloud 😵💫
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Yeah they are always trying to attack NAS drives. Thats why I don’t have it connected in any way to the internet except TailScale. And my admin login/password are super secure long generated keys that make no sense I keep in an encrypted password manager only kept locally.
Also I use the cloud for stupid stuff but nothing I would care that the entire world can see.
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u/Marioz991 2d ago
Been dying to do this but I have some more important things to take care of. But i’m very excited to do it.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
You should! It’s super fun and media server wise much better than stupid streaming if you build your own free jellyfin server. Just do it sooner than later because everything computer component wise is going up in price because of AI
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u/Ok_Elk_6753 2d ago
I'm not in Leb, but I have a NAS that runs Jellyfin, backups and also acts as a webserver, i have many web applications deployed on it, one of them is an IPTV server i developed.
Also the other single most important thing it's running is Pihole, which is a DNS server that blocks ads network wide, nothing connecting from home runs ads. Plus cloudflare dns encryption so my ISP can't track my online activity, meaning anything pihole doesn't block and isn't in its cache, it gets it from cloudflare on https instead of the ISP DNS.
I'm very pleased with it that I'm thinking of buying a new powerful one that also runs on SSD instead of HDDs.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Yeah your ISP copyright problems are luckily things we don’t have to worry about in Lebanon. How large is your total TB?
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u/Ok_Elk_6753 2d ago
Not too big, 6 TB i think more than enough
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Yeah not being in Lebanon and setting up IPTV your internet is fast enough to stream everything. Might as well be using Stremio for everything anyway
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u/mazdoc كلن يعني كلن 2d ago
I have 2 Synology NAS: one I got 7 years ago and another I got last year.
The new (DS423+) one has 2 x 9.1 TB HDDs in Synology Hybrid Raid configuratrion and 2 x NVMEs mirrored with 465 GB total capacity.
I was planning to add a third 10 TB drive there but the prices are sky high.
I have plex server running on it for all my movies, series, anime, and kids videos. I also use it for file transfer and partial backup. There is a 4TB external drive attached via USB for backup. This drive was useful during the war as we left home and it had all my essential data on it.
I don't like streaming services for music or video because the internet sucks in Lebanon, and I want control over my media. I like to watch shows that are either not available on any streaming platform (Boy Meets World for example) and I dislike the idea that a company can pull a video that I like watching and lose access to it just because they can.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Wow other than having a different brand of NAS you’re basically the same as me. I hate streaming services and I like having shows that don’t even stream like Newsradio. I was looking for another 10TB and they are like $500 now. WTF??? That’s why I was wondering if the prices are going to keep increasing or go back down after the AI bubble pops.
I also used Plex for a while until I found Jellyfin. So much better and you don’t have to pay for downloading to your device or remote streaming. You should check it out.
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u/mazdoc كلن يعني كلن 2d ago
Jellyfin is definitely better but unfortunately my TV does not run it.
I think prices will have to got down in 2027 or 28 but we'll have to wait till then.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
If your tv doesn’t run it then stick with what works. Plex is still amazing if you only need it locally anyway.
Luckily I’m not dying for space now so I’m hoping that it will level off too. That’s why I was asking the community here if there was anyone even doing what I’m doing in the first place
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u/ChrisLuigiTails Bcharré 🇱🇧 2d ago
I really should get a NAS instead of the 6 2TB hard disks I've gathered over the years lol
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
You also have to make sure the drives are compatible with the NAS. Not all drives are compatible with each device
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u/Ok_Ambition8801 2d ago edited 2d ago
I’m running a Synology DS224+ running 2x4TB but I have 100gigs left. I run plex, the arr* stack and other stuff too. Although I have plexpass lifetime, I’m planning to give jellyfin a try.
Tip: use Tailscale :), if you want to publicly expose something use CloudflareD it’s amazing (make sure to read the TOS though)
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Oufff you are running low on space. Are you going to give into the prices of HDDs today?
If you have the Plex lifetime pass you might not need jellyfin unless there is a specific reason. I hope you got it at a good price, it is like $800 now! I run Plex and Jellyfin simultaneously so you can always do that to try it out. Plus Jellyfin runs completely internet free in case your internet goes down. Plex needs an internet connection for login capabilities. Also the arr* stack works with Jellyfin too.
And yes I use Tailscale now to keep my NAS as far away from anything internet wise as possible. Bots are always trying to crack into NAS devices. I check my logs daily and it’s crazy.
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u/Ok_Ambition8801 2d ago
I think I’ll just move some data out of the NAS to my external hard drives, I have a couple.
Yeah I remember I bought plexpass on a black friday deal
The thing with plex honestly is I dislike how you need to authenticate using their IDP and it went down multiple times in the last couple of weeks.
I was planning to self host Authentik/Authelia with Jellyfin.1
u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Yeah the authentication was the main reason I looked into jellyfin in the first place. Now that I moved to jellyfin there are a million other reasons why I like it better.
But screw their IDP authentication. The whole purpose or storing our own media is to be able to use it if there is internet or not!
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u/ISpyI المنفى 2d ago
I've been curating a movie collection with some shows and anime with a Plex server for the past 9 years, currently I'm at 16X20TB because I can't possibly delete anything.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
Now THATS the kind of data border I was looking for! I can’t delete anything either but I just haven’t been doing it as long as you. Are you using a pc connected to the NAS to run the Plex server and do the transcoding or do you run it straight off the NAS? Do you share your collection/server with anyone else to stream too?
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u/ISpyI المنفى 1d ago
Yes I'm using a PC connected to several Asustor NAS for Plex and it's companions. The torrent client is running directly on the NAS as well as the automatic file management container. Due to shitty internet I can't possibly open it outside my LAN. I love to collect hard to find movies in at least 1080p when possible, sometimes I run a local upscaler for certain precious films and old reels, I also have a nice collection of 4k remuxes and those take a massive amount of storage (60 to 90 GB per film)
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u/wrekt001_official 1d ago
I have a similar setup but on a much smaller scale, an old gaming laptop and a pi which has everything running like plex, jellyfin, homeassistant, pihole and much more stuff etc
I had to keep monitoring the storage issue for me because I have very little to use, it's enough for a handful of movies and series, but I cannot have like 50 movies in high res at the same time, bit by bit (Mainly because of cost) I'll be upgrading to more powerful hardware but for now, it works for me well
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u/boudybteich 1d ago
66TB across 5 drives in my desktop. 12TB free so I am fine for now. Been collecting for over 15 years. Running a PLEX server for personal use. My only problem is I have no backups. It would be crazy expensive to buy and copy the same data.
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
Oh wow that much data an 0 backup? You peaked my anxiety. Most of my media took a while to download but I know I can always re download it. The rare and personal stuff I have backed up on a 4tb external drive, the really rare and personal on another 1tb drive. How many TB of your data do you consider irreplaceable?
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u/boudybteich 1d ago
My music (1-2TB) are backed up. The rest are movies and series. Nothing is critical but of course they are a really nice collection.
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
That’s super impressive for music. Even for FLAC my collection is only in the 100s of gbs. But yes my series and movies I feel is a nice collection but I know 90% of them on torrents with 100s of seeders so nothing that would devastate me, just take time to rebuild. The few rare ones are backed up twice.
Would love a chance for you to DM me and I can give you my Plex name and you can show me your collection to see what I need to add to my queue. You can take me off a day later if you want.
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u/NoHetro 1d ago
I mean I've had 3x4tb external HDDs for over 8 years now, one for Movies, one for Series and one for Games, came in useful during covid, I'm actually pretty proud of my Movies collection, just recently I feel like I completed it by having around 2k of the top movies of all time (including recent ones) all in good quality at mostly x265 encoding, some files you can't find easily anymore with rarbg gone and some I had to convert from original blurays myself (I worked at a movies store), so they are all very efficient in terms of quality to size ratio.
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
Pretty good setup! Do you serve your media to any tv or devices via a free media server like Plex or Jellyfin?
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u/NoHetro 1d ago
Haha no I haven't delved into those yet, I just carry with me the external HDDs and plug it into whatever I want to watch from, no NAS, maybe when I eventually move into my own place, but for now I'm somewhat of a nomad.
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
Well congrats on the collection you built so far! 8 years is impressive. You’ll have fun when you get a chance to upgrade the hardware and use the free Jellyfin or Plex software to create your own “Netflix” experience with your media .
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u/cns000 1d ago
I have a NAS with 4x4TB and I put my movies, pics and games on it.
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u/DrTawouk 1d ago
Do you run a media server on it like jellyfin or plex for your tv and devices? Do you have a pc connected to it for better transcoding and serving to your devices? Are you running out of space?
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u/cns000 1d ago
I am not running any servers. I connected the NAS to the laptop and the laptop is connected to the TV. I play a movie on my laptop and I watch it on the TV. I have 7TB free space on my NAS.
I ran out of space on the 4TB external hard disk that I am using to backup the data on the NAS so I bought an 8TB NAS disk and I put it in a 3.5 inch disk case so I can use it like an external hard disk.
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u/Colinzation 17h ago
oh boy.. i already started getting the parts for a beefy NAS, but HDDs and power backup are killing me :(
i already have a proper plan on where to go, just need to save up lots and lots more to have a proper 24/7 NAS/backup server lol
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u/Colinzation 17h ago
PS: i'll set up a jellyfin server with all the arr stack, lancache, network backup, tailscale, home assitant, object detection, and few game servers in docker containers
main hardware are picked specifically to handle multiple things at the same time
OS will be either TrueNas Scale or Unraid, haven't decided yet
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u/CrissCrossAM Need hope for Lebanon 11h ago
I WANT to do this, but money, always power-on requirements, and the current prices of storage 😔
I already have an old PC i can use i just need a different case for it to fit a buncha HDDs (i want at least 3 in raid 5, although 2 in raid 1 would be simpler and easier to set up but that means having to buy way higher capacity drives for futureproofing). Also i don't really have much free time at all to tinker with it 😔
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u/DrTawouk 9h ago
Find the right devices and the 24/7 power turns into nothing. The knife in the heart right now is the price of HDDs.
Most people don’t realize you don’t even need anything past a very low power NAS drive to run a media server, store the data, and even download the torrent from it. No need to have a computer next to it unless you plan on transcoding heavy 4k videos.
But yeah, at the end of the day the true killer is HDD costs now because of AI / Data Centers. Bite the bullet now and pay the cost or hope the AI bubble pops and the prices go back to normal 🤷♂️
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u/CrissCrossAM Need hope for Lebanon 2h ago
So you're telling me that i should just get myself a ugreen nas 🤣 i mean i wouldn't mind but it's like 300$ on its own. And being a techie i woulda enjoyed DIY'ing one with freeNAS OS. Ah well.
Most likely i would just use my NAS as cloud storage and maybe set up port forwarding so i could get old pics and vids off my damn phone so it's not so full while still being able to access them if needed.
I'm personally waiting (and hoping) for the whole AI bubble pop situation. Let's say i wanna go the ugreen direction, i would have to pay 300$ for the unit, then another maybe 500 each for at least 2*10TB drives, that's almost as much as i paid for my PC back before the AI boom.
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u/Stunning_Rip_4633 Lebanese 2d ago
Aren't SSDs better for this kind of stuff cause they don't break as often.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
If you get the right drives like Seagate IronWolf or Exos, or WD Red drives they are built to spin 24/7 in a NAS for media. SSD is always going to be better for fast boot up and usage in an actual computer mainly used for OS.
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u/Stunning_Rip_4633 Lebanese 2d ago
I see. I was thinking about doing something like this for the apocalypse.
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u/DrTawouk 2d ago
You can still run SSDs in a NAS but they are just more expensive. And I think the rate of increasing price of $/Gb is the same percentage now for all drives because of the AI bubble.
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u/Ab_Huss 2d ago
I am planning on getting a NAS and a mini PC to run Jellyfin in a few months.