I "Built" My First Home NAS

When I first stumbled upon a YouTube video of a tech reviewer talking about NAS, I was curious to finally understand what that meant. I’ve been hearing about it for a long time and I knew it was something that you need to attach to your home network, but I never understood how it actually worked or how it is useful in today’s world.

All the first videos that I saw were from people describing their experience with their Synology NAS. That was useful because I understood that it’s basically something you attach to your home network so you can have some sort of shared hard drive that is accessible to everybody connected to the same network. The only issue is that the Synology system did feel a bit complicated and more oriented toward power users. Usually I look for services and products that are easy to understand and more focused on user experience, so I dug up a little bit on what the alternatives were and then I came across the Ugreen NAS DXP2800. It was way more modern than what was being offered by Synology, the operating system felt more user-friendly and it was also a bit cheaper. So even though Ugreen has not yet built a strong reputation around NAS, I still decided to try it out and I don’t regret it. I have to admit that one of the main reasons I finally decided not to go with Synology was because of the direction they’re taking with their latest models, limiting which HDDs you can actually install on them to only their proprietary ones, which are of course way more expensive than other reputable brands that are compatible with the vast majority of other devices. UGOS is just enough for an average user, giving you access to all the main applications that you may need, from a photos app to a music app to a media management app similar to Jellyfin or Plex. It does all you need out of the box. Since most of these apps have not been around for a long time, the experience on some of them still feels not as polished as services that focus solely on a specific thing, like Jellyfin does for content management. And that’s how I first started self-hosting.

At first I was a bit scared because, I mean, I do have some technical knowledge but I am no developer nor do I know how to code, and I thought this process would require some sort of specialist knowledge — but actually it was way easier than I thought it would be. I just had to install a Docker image for Jellyfin and set it up with the files in the correct folders so that they show up automatically categorised and ready to enjoy. This has been one more step toward regaining a sense of ownership online. After successfully deploying Jellyfin I also continued with other services that would make my life easier, and it was fun to do. It’s something I recommend to people because it’s a nice way to understand how certain things work and how you can potentially save some money by self-hosting your own pictures, music, or your favourite TV series and movies.