A beginner's guide to building a NAS with Unraid

Unlike pre-built network-attached storage systems, DIY NAS setups offer a lot of customization options for CPU, RAM, and other hardware that powers the storage server. The same goes for the operating system, and there are quite a few distributions and operating systems to choose from.

While it's not exactly easy on the wallet, Unraid is a decent NAS-centric operating system that's worth the extra cost. From the simple interface and support for multiple file formats to a huge app suite and the ability to combine hard drives of different sizes, there are many reasons to choose this paid operating system. That's why we've put together a step-by-step guide to walk you through the entire process of setting up Unraid on your new NAS.

What you need

Like other NAS operating systems, Unraid has relatively minimal requirements. Since you only need a 64-bit processor and 4GB of memory, any old PC will do for Unraid. However, Unraid can only be installed on a USB drive running the FAT32 file system. While you can technically run it on a 128GB drive, you'll want to stick with a 32GB variant for a relatively painless process.

Creating the boot drive

As always, you need to write the unraid image to a USB drive before you can run the operating system. The only difference this time is that you don't need to install Unraid on a hard drive or SSD. Rather, the USB stick acts as a boot drive every time you turn on the NAS.

1. Download USB Flash Creator tool from Unraid website and install it on your PC.
2. Run the tool as administrator.
3. Press Select Operating System and select the latest version of Unraid.

   

4. Knock Select Storage and select that USB drive you want to use as a boot disk.

   

5. Hit that Next button and set it name And Network mode for your unraid server before clicking Carry on.

   

6. Knock Yes Click on the final confirmation box and wait for the tool to finish writing the unraid files to the USB drive.

Alternatively, you can manually download the operating system, copy the extracted files to the USB drive and run it make_bootable Script with administrator rights.

Toggle BIOS settings

Once you've created the boot disk, the next step is to power on your NAS and change certain boot settings in the BIOS. While the exact steps vary depending on the motherboard, here is an overview of the overall process:

1. Crush that Delete/Del Press the button while the NAS boots up.
2. Go to the Boot settings tab and set your newly configured unraid drive as Boot option #1.

   

3. (Optional) If you want to run VMs on your Unraid server, you must enable the following Virtualization/SVM/AMD-V/VT-x Setting within the Tweakers/Advanced Settings Tab.

   

4. Be sure to save changes before exiting the BIOS.

Configure the web user interface

After rebooting, your NAS will launch Unraid's command line interface and there you will find the system's IP address. We use this to access the web UI from another computer on the same network.

1. Enter that IP address your NAS into that Search bar your favorite browser.

   

2. Hire password for the Unraid web UI.

   

3. Assuming you have not purchased an Unraid license key, select Start the 30-day free trial.

   

4. Log in to Unraid's website and click Confirm the test start Button.

   

5. Log in to your Unraid server's web interface by typing root than that user name followed by the password They set it earlier.

Setting up the Unraid storage server

Now that you've gained access to the Unraid dashboard, it's time to initialize a storage array and connect it to your PC.

1. Click on Primarily Tab and select your parity And Primarily drives.

   

2. Tap start Click the button to initialize the array.

   

   If Unraid shows that Unmountable: Unsupported or no file system Error, click format Click the button to set a new file system for the failing drives.

3. Switch to Shares Tab and press the Add shares Button.

   

4. Give him one Share the namegive something Minimum free spaceand assign them Included hard drives from your array before you strike Apply.

   

5. Scroll down to SMB security settings Tab, set the export option too Yesand tap Apply press again.

   

6. Navigate to user tab and click Add user Button.

   

7. Grant a name and a password to your new one user before pressing Add.

   

8. Make sure that the share is visible below user and the User access Option is set to Read/Write.

   

9. Open that File Explorer on your PC and enter the following IP address your NAS into that Address bar.

   

10. Enter that user name And password according to the user You have previously set up to get access to the SMB sharing.

Get the most out of your Unraid-based NAS

This means you are free to store all your valuable documents on your Unraid server. As I mentioned earlier, Unraid has a huge collection of apps that you can self-host on your NAS, from the hugely popular Jellyfin and Vaultwarden packages to the more obscure (but equally useful) RomM and Pterodactyl packages . If you want to experiment with different distributions, you can set up some virtual machines for your favorite operating systems using the VMs tab.

Alternatively, if you're unhappy with Unraid's paid model, you can try TrueNAS Scale. Although the learning curve is steeper than Unraid, TrueNAS Scale offers better performance and better RAID deployments with the same USB-only boot drive requirement. And the best part is that you don't have to pay a cent to install it on your NAS.