this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
20 points (95.5% liked)

Buildapc

4007 readers
48 users here now

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Lemmenmo
20
Mini PC with large storage? (self.buildapc)
submitted 1 week ago by AlternatePersonMan to c/buildapc
6 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Not so much looking to build a PC as buy one, because I'm lazy these days. My old one is forever old and filled with randomly upgraded parts and HDDs. I've also got an old and under performing NAS for Plex. Looking to turn my current PC into my new NAS, and buy a mini PC for my new rig. (I don't game on PC anymore).

The problem is, I want one(ish) large capacity drive on the mini PC. Not 100% tied to a mini PC, just like the idea of being minimalist on this rig.

Any suggestions? 2 monitors. Not much else special.

Maybe an external drive? Or drive bay? Speed isn't critical on the large capacity.

Thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well the first question I'll ask is how much storage do you want. 2 x M.2 slots can give you 16TB total, but you'll pay for it.

If you have an external drive or a drive bay, doesn't that negate the purpose of a NAS?

[–] AlternatePersonMan 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Eh, I'd say $1k for the setup, so probably not ssd's. The nas is just for Plex.

I'm actually stuck on sailing the high seas and running Plex. For whatever reason split tunnel, Plex, and my VPN do not get along, so it just seems easier to run to separate machines. Acquire stuff on one, host it on another. I guess I could just keep the storage all on my old box, but I've been burned on hard drives dying...then the back up died while copying to the new drive. So I just want hard drives everywhere now.

I could probably also figure out a VM, but that seems like a whole thing as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Could you run Tailscale? That way you can still use your internal IPs and just whitelist the tail scale subnet.

You can put multiple shares on the same SMB for Plex. So you can use SMB and also Plex at the same time.

Mini PC and high storage density do not mix too well unfortunately.

Running off a USB bus is fine, but with that, I would still run it through the NAS. That way you can still access the files while aboard.