I should've set up a NAS a lot sooner

I set out to keep a copy of my most precious data at home and to reduce reliance on Google, and the project quickly grew into a personalised server with far more capability than I expected. I bought two Seagate IronWolf Pro 8 TB HDDs for £240 each—drives designed for always‑on use with CMR rather than SMR recording—and learned that picking the right drive matters for reliability and write performance.

The box I chose was a four‑bay Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Pro, currently on sale for $676/£586, powered by an Intel Core i5 13 1315U (two P‑cores, four E‑cores, 15 W base, 55 W turbo). With the HDDs spinning the unit draws about 49 W at the outlet, peaks briefly at 76 W during boot, and idles near 30 W.

It’s compact at 257 x 178 x 178 mm, offers 10 Gb and 2.5 Gb ethernet plus various USB ports, HDMI and an SD slot, and sits unobtrusively on my shelf.

nas, seagate ironwolf, ironwolf pro, 8 tb, hdd, cmr, smr, ugreen nasync, core i5, 10 gb