Hi!

Originally, I just wanted advice for an NAS to host my videos and tv-series I aquired in the last couple years but whilst researching, I found a couple things that I think are neat, but have no idea how to start.

First things first: I wanted originally a QNAP TS-364 to host my movie/series collection to consolidate everything and don’t have to switch between drives any more. After finding this community, I’m toying around with the idea that I could build something myself, and use it to fix some things I want to fix some time now.

But for this task, I could use some help/advice to where to start, hardware, software, the works.

For latency / up- & downloadspeed, I’d like to have the server at home, fairly quiet, low power consumption and able to “stream” everything (movies / series) over LAN to my TV(s) or PC, maybe music to my mobile sometime in the future.

I’d like to use pi-hole for adblocking, host some non-media-files to get rid of Dropbox but keep its funcitonality to sync these files between two/three physical locations, including one mobile device (android) and sync passwords for my accounts. I guess a VPN for syncing would be benefitial.

In the future, I may want to add a usenet downloader but I’m not sure about that. Also, i just flew over the “awesome-selfhosted software” resource and my mind is kinda blown, so I may want to add some software to the list later.

Storage requirements: currently at least 12TB for media, upgradeable, no RAID needed ATM, JBOD would suffice but you never know.

To cut to the chase:

  • What hardware would you suggest? Off the shelf or DIY (I’m no stranger to building PCs and installing OSes. (Bonus points if sub 250 Euro without storage)
  • What OS would you recommend?
  • What software would you recommend?

Thanks in advance Andy