Setting up my first NAS. Kinda.
Alright, so today was the day. Finally decided to bite the bullet and try setting up one of those network storage things everyone talks about. A NAS. My computer storage was screaming bloody murder, full to the brim with photos and drone videos. Time to move stuff.
Grabbed the dusty box sitting in the corner for months. You know the one. The good deal you got online and then promptly forgot about. Opened it up. There was the little metal box – the NAS server thing itself – looking all sleek and promise-filled. Couple of cables. Manual thicker than my high school math book. Ugh.
First step: Needed hard drives. Turns out this box is just the computer brain, gotta feed it drives. Off to the junk drawer. Found two old drives. One from my dead laptop circa 2015, another pulled from an ancient desktop. Perfect! Plugged them into the slots inside the NAS box. Easy. Click click. Felt like installing batteries. Snapped the lid shut.
Plugged in the power. Found the network cable. Hooked one end to the NAS, the other… straight into my router. Nice blinking lights appeared. Success! Or so I thought.
Fired up the iPad, searched for the magic app you need to set these things up. Downloaded it. App opened. “Searching for devices…” it said. Spun. And spun. And spun some more. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Gosh darn it.
Checked the cables. Seemed good. Power cycled the NAS box. Lights blinked again. App still blind. Okay, deep breath. Remembered the manual. Flopped it open. Scanned, trying not to read the whole thing. Aha! Little tiny footnote mentioning power adapters. Turns out? This NAS needs more juice than my crappy USB power bank adapter provides. I was using one I snagged off my phone that looked sorta right. Wrong move.
Hunted through the spare cables box – pure chaos zone. Found a bigger, chunkier power adapter. Plugged that bad boy into the NAS instead. Heard a different humming sound. App on the iPad INSTANTLY saw it! Yes!
Followed the app prompts:
- Named the thing “Gregs Closet Server” (creative, I know).
- Set a password.
- Chose “RAID 1” cause the app said it was good for safety – makes two drives mirror each other. Safer than just one popping.
- Told it to format the old drives. Big warning about deleting everything. Clicked “Yes, nuke it”.
It started chugging. Said “Initializing… Estimated: 10 hours.” TEN HOURS?! Well, nothing else to do now. Left it humming on the dining table. Went about my day.
Checked back tonight. The little NAS box has a pleasant blue light. App says “Healthy”. Created a folder called “Stuff”. On my Mac, found it on the network! Dragged over a big batch of vacation photos. They copied over! Felt weirdly satisfying.
So yeah, it works. Mostly. Still figuring out the sharing stuff securely. Also realizing two small drives ain’t much space long-term. And man, buying new drives just for this? OUCH. Suddenly feel much poorer.
Oh, and I spent way longer wrestling with the power adapter than actually doing anything useful. Classic. That chonky manual? Yeah, probably should have read that part first. Next step? Figuring out if this shiny new thing was worth the headache and cash. Especially since I basically spent my whole weekend afternoon troubleshooting. Boss ain’t gonna like why my project report slid… again. Oops.