Warning: This Mini NAS Might Lead to a Full Home Lab!

Turn a Mini PC into a DIY NAS! In this video, I take the GMKTec NucBox G9, a dual-boot mini PC with NVMe slots, and transform it into an affordable home NAS using OpenMediaVault. Perfect for beginners, this DIY home lab project walks you through setting up RAID 5 storage, SMB file sharing, connecting to your NAS, plus a glimpse at Docker and remote access. Whether you’re exploring network-attached storage (NAS), home servers, or virtualization, this is a great entry point into the home lab world.

Products Highlighted (Affiliate Links)

Chapters:
00:00 - Opener
00:22 - A Confused Little System?
01:00 - Agenda
01:27 - Specs & Features
03:19 - The Dual Operating Systems
04:36 - Selecting a NAS OS
06:11 - Installing the Storage.
07:34 - Installing OpenMediaVault
11:09 - Setting up the Server
17:00 - Accessing the Server
18:47 - Speed Test
19:06 - More than Storage!
19:57 - Remote Access?
20:15 - The GMKtec NucBox G9 Final Thoughts!

Find me on Social Media

My Studio Equipment (Paid Links)

Audio file(s) provided by Epidemic Sound

[mrtronic]

Finally got TrueNAS Scale installed to the emmc. Easiest way is to download 24.04 and install directly to the emmc. After that you can manually upgrade to the newest release.

[jimisangster]

Thanks for the introduction to this box, Not as a NAS for me, but just for windows.

When I travel to places without internet access fast enough to hit my plex back at home, this will store 16TB for me on a windows box thats tiny. Along with a tiny portable keyboard, it just works. I already was carrying the 4tb nvmes already in their own enclosures PLUS another mini PC with its own power supply, this is a great way to carry less gear when traveling for me.

[diogoalmeidavisuals]

If TrueNAS can detect your eMMC storage, you could just install it on a USB drive, and boot from USB.
Once in TrueNAS go to your boot pool settings and add the eMMC as a mirror. Then remove the USB from the boot pool leaving the eMMC as the only boot option

[joeburkeson]

As someone who has struggled with OMV since version 5, this is a great tutorial, thanks.

[delboyg]

Great review, rather than messing with the eMMC, I've used a small USB to SSD boot drive, that's left the internal slots available for pure 4x 4TB storage. Then I installed Proxmox with TrueNAS in a VM on Proxmox. That way I get the flexibility of networking, backup, VM's and CT's with the TrueNas zfs storage. My NVMe's are sitting at a constant 54 deg. C. which is a little higher than I'd like but still fine for the drives.

[acubley]

"1-2-3-4-5. That's amazing, I have the same combination on my luggage!"

[iamchynhuei]

thank you for this detailed step-by-step tutorial

[SonicManEXE]

I tried getting TrueNAS Scale set up on this guy, but the other people commenting about temperature are right: the heat coming out of it even just at idle with zero networking happening is crazy. I put 4 WD Blues in it and their temperature according to TrueNAS ranges from 50-80 C. First of all: a crazy range considering they are all in a row next to each other. Second, there is no way I am letting the drives I would store all of my media to stay that hot long term. That’s wild.

I purposely bought the G9 on Amazon so I could get a refund in case it didn’t pan out, and it really didn’t. The possibilities of the G9 are very cool, but the thing itself literally is the opposite of cool. Maybe there’s some wild variation between units, but I’m gonna return it because I don’t trust it.

[texan]

I love OMV, it was my first NAS... never did more than store digital books and comics, but I could see myself setting up something like this again one day. Which most people would yell at me since I built a custom NAS running TrueNAS Scale... but maybe I might want something smaller and less enterprise grade. It's my home lab, let me be a goober!! =P

[davidshields]

I just discovered your channels and am loving them man! Subbed here and Lifting Linux. Keep up the great content!

[Squeech.]

perfect timing. nice walkthrough. i just got my first nas a zimablade. now i was thinking of getting something more compact with wifi for traveling. excellent!

[wraggal]

I've been watching a lot of these kinds of videos while researching my first NAS, and damn if this isn't the absolute easiest to follow tutorial out of anyone in this space (with the caveat that I'm just watching, not following along with the actual product)

[wereoctopus]

Bookmarked for future reference :)

Quick question: say a newbie wanted to set up a DIY NAS, but wasn't planning on using anything with eMMC storage. Would you still recommend OMV, or are UnRAID & TrueNAS Scale better options at that point?

Specifically, I have an N95 mini-PC with one M.2 NVMe slot & one 2.5" drive bay which I might turn into a always- or mostly-on media server. I also have an ageing desktop with one M.2 slot and four SATA ports that (once I replace it) could become a mostly-off backup server.

[RetroBerner]

Really good tutorial. The only thing that I would do different is that I'd just pin a shortcut to the share to Quick access.
Windows Explorer can randomly hang or lock up if there are any network hiccups and it can't connect to the mounted network drive for whatever reason.

[lowbarb]

Must.. Resist.. Urge.. To buy!! Great video.

[Chris.Brisson]

What an awesome comprehensive tutorial! One must know the needed hardware/software integration to achieve such a goal, and you've covered it well. There are golden nuggets to be mined from this video that will advance my initiatives. Subscribed and Liked.

[hikaritsumi]

I want a low powered non-spinning harddisk NAS since I switch around PC so much but I want to keep my personal stuff on it without too much noise. My inital plan was to get an Asustor Flashtor and just roll with it but this things fit my needs more. It also has eMMC plus it's Smaller, Faster and Cheaper but 2 drives less; a reasonable trade off. If I really want a to be a local data hoarder I will repurpose my 2 decades old PC to do it; that is, if I ever got to it.

Anyway, great video and awesome tutorial on OMV! I use OMV it on my raspberry Pi3B and it was okay a very redundant confirmation but work nontheless

[Silvar]

Good and informative Video. Since I looking for a small mini "Server" which could be used as NAS and also to run docker container on it to be used as documentent management system database. USB-C power delivery make a loot of sense. Walmount option would be perfect to hand beside the fritzbox.

[albertpauw]

Thank you, I had the stuff lying around already to do just this thing. But of a bummer to hear to hear that truenas won't install on the emmc memory. That would have been my first try. What kind of heatsinks did you use, and did they fit properly? I can imagine that thicker heatsinks are a problem. And how did it fare heatwise, does it heat up quickly?

[CPOGPU]

I installed Truenas Scale on usb drive and then clone it to internal 64gb disk. Working without any problems 👍