OK, then maybe a DAS where your can put your drives in and also add some additional ones. Attach it to one of your Servers and Expose them via smb/NFS.

So something like @agile_squirrel@lemmy.ml and @Ugurcan@lemmy.world mentioned.

I don’t know if there is a (of the shelf) DAS out there that supports using drives with existing data on them and also some additional drives with RAID in the same enclosure.

In case you don’t have some place to store the data temporarily you can just use it as it is and save SE money for a NAS.

Because I am asking myself: if you don’t have a place to store the data temporarily, where is your backup? Sounds like you don’t have one. In this case you can save for the NAS AMD use the external drive as a backup drive attached to the NAS. Win-Win maybe?

As far as I know you cannot (easily) use your own OS in QNAP. You can use your external 8TB drive also for the NAS. Attach it via USB to the NAS and expose OT via SMB as your other shares. But in your case I would not do this. Geht the NAS and use it and use your 8TB drive as it is right now. Thats imho the easiest and good enough way.

You cannot use drives that already have data on them in a Synology. They will be “Wiped” during the installation/initialization process. If you can save the data somewhere else you can put it back on the NAS after Installation. I don’t know if this is also the case for QNAP or Asustor.

you can definetly store data, from a Service running on a different machine, to the NAS. This is the whole point of having a NAS. Limitation is network latency and bandwith. But this is no problem for the typical home user use case. If you habe a special use case you propably already know what you need and how to do it.

To be honest, even if you say you want to have your own Hardware: I think you would be better of with an off-the-shelf solution from QNAP, Synology or Asustor. They are easy to use and hard to break if you only need them for basic things like file sharing. And it does not look like you require it to do more. Because all your services are already running on a different system/Hardware.

A 4 Bay solution might be overkill for you if currently an 8TB drive looks like enough storage (otherwise you would have already replaced it if you where soon running out of space). So a “cheap” 2-Bay (with 2x12TB drives in RAID1) based solution would be a good starting point to break procrastination. Imho it is always cheaper to go with larger but lesser drives. AS long as you do not plan to use secondhand drives (large drives are hard to get in the secondhand market).

Maybe Asustor is an Option. Their Software is imho good enough for basic file sharing. And with the possibility to run TrueNAS on them you have an “update” Option for the future.

I had similar problems with a single Drive in a new TrueNAS setup. The Drive would come up healthy after most reboots but after some reboots it was unhealthy. For me S.M.A.R.T data die not indicate and errors. I reboot the Maschine often because it is a backup system that only runs during backups.

Swapping drives (with a known gold drive) did not resolve it. The error was always at the same Drivebay.

For me thepProblem was the y-split SATA power cable I used. After replacing it the system is working without a problem since.

Just wanted to say thank you for the information that this is based on Wifi Aware and the proprietary AirDrop protocol from Apple. Helps understanding why there are some limitations.