NAS by DIY: Cheap network storage to print yourself

Network Attached Storages (NAS) with four or more hard disk bays are still very expensive in some cases. Maker Jack Harvest now offers a cost-effective solution for ambitious hobbyists with a 3D printer on its website: a reprint of the Minisforum N5 with five hard disk bays. Data can then be distributed across at least three hard disks using RAID 5, for example.

Harvest is aimed specifically at owners of 3D printers from the manufacturer Bambu Labs. The parts required to build the case are made available on Bambu Labs' own community platform MakerWorld.

The Github of the hardware

In addition to numerous other hardware projects from the community, Jack Harvest's files can also be found on MakerWorld. The construction plans can be opened either in Bambu Studio or in the open source software Orca Slicer. You should first check whether the firmware of the Bambu Lab printer still supports print jobs from the slicer.

If you wish, you can give the individual parts an individual "coat of paint" with colored filament. The files are then sent to your 3D printer.

Ecological with reprint

The print naturally only contains the housing. The lower chamber is designed for mainboards in Intel's NUC format with an edge length of 10 cm × 10 cm. Interested parties can remove the board from an old mini PC and plug it into the NAS. For the use of five hard disks, an M.2 slot should be available to plug in a SATA adapter. Harvest estimates all components on a shopping list with a purchase value of around 215 US dollars excluding VAT, plus costs for a mainboard including processor and data storage media. This includes additional boards and adapters.

Software does not come from the printer and Harvest does not name any. Open source solutions such as the FreeBSD-based zVault –, a fork of TrueNAS –, or OpenMediaVault (OMV), which is based on Debian and also runs on commercial NAS, come into question here.

(aki)