Hacker News front pageCarlos Asmat7 min readintermediate
Custom home server built from spare parts
Summary
A DIY home NAS built from a repurposed Zotac mini‑PC, 6×8 TB WD Red drives in a RAIDZ2 ZFS pool, encrypted boot, Wi‑Fi, custom Noctua cooling, and a front‑panel ESP32‑S3 touch screen driven by LVGL. Runs Kubuntu 24.04 with Docker‑Compose services behind Caddy, plus a self‑written dashboard and API.
- Reused a Zotac MAGNUS EN1070K (i5 + GTX 1070) as the chassis; added a 3‑D‑printed ABS extension to mount an ICY‑Dock 5‑bay hot‑swap cage plus a 6th drive holder.
- Used an ASM1166 SATA‑to‑M.2 adapter for six SATA ports; powered drives via a Pico PSU and DC‑DC converter (≈125 W spin‑up surge).
- Configured a ZFS RAIDZ2 pool (6 × 8 TB = 43.7 TB raw, 29 TB usable) with encryption unlocked at boot from a remote key server.
- Implemented Wi‑Fi 6E networking (≈893 Mbit/s throughput) due to lack of wired connection; noted TrueNAS lacks Wi‑Fi support and Pascal GPU drivers.
Shows a practical, cost‑effective path to a self‑hosted, encrypted NAS using readily available consumer hardware, while exposing real‑world constraints (thermal, Wi‑Fi, driver support) that influence OS choice and hardware design.
6/10
