Hello, I’m looking for a very small NAS - actually, it doesn’t even have to be a fullfledged NAS, more like a device that will appear on the network as an SMB network drive. It should use maximally 2.5” sized SSD drives, alternately M2 format, with 1 or 2 drives at most and I dont look for a Raspberry solution.
Buffalo used to have something like this a long time ago, but I can’t seem to find anything similar.
What I’m looking for should be very simple, with no extra features. Thanx!
I highly recommend a refurbished HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini PC or even G3. They generally support up to 32GB DDR4 ram, some even 64, they have an M2 slot and a regular 2.5” SSD slot. Great thermals, 45W max power draw. The only potential dowside is the 1GB network, but if you can live with that seems to be what you’re looking for.
I’ve used a couple of these for Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup server, never had an issue.
I use the Beelink NAS Mini with TrueNAS and several smaller apps like Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, Home Assistant. Works like a charm for the past 8 months. 6 NVMe slots, internal power, 2.5 Gbit/s in a 10cm cube. Quiet and low power draw.
If you don’t mind paying a bit more, ugreen has a new product line for NAS.
This is their entry line model and can fit a couple of drives, but you’re dealing with a vendor lock in for the OS. You can throw TrueNAS in it from what I’ve seen in YouTube videos.
Otherwise I’d go with a used machine like @DrHeat mentions so you can set and forget it somewhere.
this looks like an SSD enclosure, I cannot tell how deep it is from this photo. To me, a mini NAS is at least 2 SSD or 2 NVME, control board, 4 cores, 8GB ram, rj45 (either 1 or 2.5G), and usb-c. If you find one, post a link.
the company provides no info. I build my own NAS, DELL Optiplex, 4 cores, 16GB, 2 SSD, ubuntu server, zfs and be done. I can install truenas core with guest access for a nicer gui. Sadly, truenas scale does not offer anonymous guest access. It covers my needs as a home user.
