5 Home Gadgets I Replaced After Buying a Good NAS

A Network-Attached Storage (NAS) server can be a valuable addition to your computer setup, whether you are a consumer looking to share files among nearby devices or a data hoarder in need of hundreds of terabytes to preserve your digital legacy. Even better, contemporary NAS systems are adaptable enough to support a range of applications, and the most expensive models offer considerable power for a storage server.

I previously used a custom PC as a storage server before switching to the TerraMaster F4-424 Max, and both are relatively high-end NAS solutions that have essentially replaced some equipment in my home lab.

1. Bootable Flash Drives

A Network-Attached Storage (NAS) server can be a valuable addition to your computer setup, whether you are a consumer looking to share files among nearby devices or a data hoarder in need of hundreds of terabytes to preserve your digital legacy.

Even better, contemporary NAS systems are adaptable enough to support a range of applications, and the most expensive models offer considerable power for a storage server.

I previously used a custom PC as a storage server before switching to the TerraMaster F4-424 Max, and both are relatively high-end NAS solutions that have essentially replaced some equipment in my home lab.

The main disadvantage of distro-hopping, aside from my constant need to install the oddest Linux distributions available, is that I have to flash USB devices each time I wish to switch between OS images. Although installing Ventoy made the process much easier, I still needed to connect the USB drive to my primary computer to add new ISO images.

Since I can now manage the ISO collection from any device on my network and boot over IPv4, eliminating the need for intermediary devices like USB drives, installing a PXE boot server on my NAS has made it much simpler for me to resist the need to switch between different distributions.

Since it is compatible with every distribution I have used over the past several months and is available on almost all central NAS-centric operating systems, NetBoot.xyz is my go-to tool for a PXE server.

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2. External Hard Drives for My PC

My Windows 11 computer could use additional storage space to accommodate all the coding projects, image and video editing activities, and gaming content I have installed on it.

My PC has most of its drive ports occupied, and I’m concerned that adding another HDD to the mix will cause it to overheat. Additionally, my MacBook lacks sufficient storage, so I try to install as few apps as possible to prevent the computer from becoming sluggish due to excessive data usage.

I used to utilize external HDDs in the past to remove files from my computers that I didn’t use frequently. Organizing the extra documents on my devices became much simpler after I added a NAS to my home lab. While my NAS chugs noisily in a different room, I can share coding papers, photos, ebooks, and videos with every device on my local network using a Samba share.

It may seem ridiculous, but you can move your Steam collection to an iSCSI volume with minimal latency and slightly slower load times if your NAS has at least one SSD and 2.5GbE connectivity. Since I experimented with this concept last year, it has become my go-to method for keeping less-played Steam games.

3. Entry-Level Self-Hosting Machines

The main attractions of home servers are the ability to execute entertaining experiments inside virtual machines and self-host apps inside containers. Budget-friendly SBCs and mini-PCs are excellent for hosting services within containers, even if the latter may require some additional processing power.

The problem is that so are NAS systems, and you can operate a few virtual machines without experiencing any lag if you have a good processor and memory combination.

For mission-critical applications that I didn’t want to run on my experimental home server, I’ve been using a few of the ARM SBCs as backup Docker environments. Since I can run all of my necessary services on the server, a high-end NAS has completely replaced them.

Although I still use my non-Raspberry Pi ARM SBCs, I wouldn’t say that my x86 systems have been fully retired because I’ve added them as backup server nodes to my home lab.

4. Dedicated NVR

Although contemporary Network Video Recorder configurations sometimes include motion and object tracking features to enhance the system, a surveillance system essentially consists of IP cameras connected to a central storage system. I utilize my NAS to power my security system, even though I recognize that specific NVR options are reasonably priced.

Frigate is the main target of my monitoring system. It has all the motion tracking and object recognition functions I could want without using a lot of computer power, even with its simple user interface.

My storage server can store all of my camera footage, so I don’t need to run a separate NVR hub and increase my energy costs, as I already run my NAS around the clock.

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5. Smart Home Hubs

Building an automated home is now less expensive than ever before, particularly when considering the decreasing cost of smart home appliances and IoT accessories.

Regretfully, some products may not work well with smart home hub devices, and if you have not done your homework, you may wind up purchasing gadgets that aren’t compatible with the brain of your heavily automated home. If you don’t want businesses to collect your data, consider the privacy concerns associated with operating smart hubs.

Since I installed Home Assistant many years ago, I have been a fan. This utility’s HAOS version is simple to install within a virtual machine, and I’ve had no problems using it on my NAS.

I have not encountered a device that I can’t connect to my HAOS instance since I equipped Home Assistant with the HACS integration, even though it works with the bulk of smart home devices available on the market. That’s before you add Node-RED, Mosquitto Broker, and a dozen more plugins that enhance the functionality of my Home Assistant interface.

As if that weren’t enough, Home Assistant is a fantastic substitute for my smart home hubs because it can be set up to function as a voice assistant.

Even while I’m pleased with my NAS setups, they still can’t make many home lab gear obsolete. For example, I still use a twin Xeon workstation as my main home server, with a few spare x86 mini-PCs and SBCs acting as additional cluster nodes. That’s because I would never want to conduct possibly dangerous experiments on my NAS, which is quite sensitive.

I also prefer to use a dedicated router, as I don’t want my valuable storage server to be the target of an attack that could circumvent my firewall rules, even though I have attempted to install a virtualized firewall on my NAS in the past.