2x 2.5'' NAS from old Windows laptop

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I was looking into buying a NAS and was surprised how bulky they are. Then I thought about making my own, but after some reading it felt like more faff than it was worth.
Then I re-purposed my old Lenovo X230 laptop as a proof of concept - worked great:

• 2-bay (with the right laptop)
• very small
• low power consumption
• works on WiFi and LAN
• supports DLNA media sharing
• has a built-in screen and keyboard
• can be accessed remotely with Windows RDP (even from anywhere if you configure your router right)
• can be used to download files directly on it (also via Remote Desktop)
• can use bitlocker to encrypt drives (with Windows 10 Pro licence)
• can use Windows' File History (or backup software) with one drive acting as full backup
• has a battery = free UPS

I was looking for a cheap network drive with backup and it ticks all of the boxes.

 

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PARTS:

• cheap 3-drive laptop. Lenovo t420 in my case, around £110 used. If you find a cheap t430 it may be better as it has USB3
• Ultrabay HDD caddy for Lenovo t420, around £10 new
• Windows 10 Pro licence, around £15 for OEM. Mine came already with the laptop, so no expense there. "Pro" needed for bitlocker and possibly Remote Desktop, so "Home" should be enough, too
• mSATA SSD for OS, around £30 new for 120GB

• BASE COST: £150 (+£15 for Windows 10 Pro licence if needed)

• 2x 2.5'' HDD. Toshiba L200 2TB in my case, around £60 each
• min. 8GB USB stick to reinstall Windows on the mSATA drive. If you don't have one laying around it's around £5 for a USB 2.0

 

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WINDOWS SETUP:

• Install the mSATA drive
• Download Windows Media Creation Tool, create a Windows 10 installation disc on the USB drive and install Windows 10 on the mSATA drive
• Replace the original HDD with your data drive, insert Ultrabay with your second data drive
• In Windows, create a new Power Profile, set to "Do nothing" when closing the lid
• Show "Away Mode" in advanced power settings by running this command (open CMD as admin!):
  • powercfg -attributes SUB_SLEEP 25DFA149-5DD1-4736-B5AB-E8A37B5B8187 -ATTRIB_HIDE
• In advanced power management for your profile set for both "On battery" and "Plugged in":
  • turn off HDD after 1 minute (this will turn HDDs after 1 minute of inactivity, but not the mSATA OS SSD)
  • Sleep:
    • "Enable Away Mode": On
    • Never sleep or hibernate (set to 0)
  • turn everything apart from WiFi to "Maximum Battery Life", "Maximum power savings", etc.
  • Processor power management:
    • Cooling Policy to "Passive"
    • Maximum processor state to 33% (lowest possible)
  • Turn off the display after 1 minute
  • Multimedia settings:
    • When sharing media: "Allow (...) Away Mode"
    • Video playback quality bias: Performance
    • When playing video: Optimise video quality
• In Network Adapters, set IPv4 static addresses for Wireless and Ethernet (e.g. 192.168.X.168 for Wireless and 192.168.X.169 for Ethernet)

 

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MEDIA STREAMING / SHARING SETUP:

• TBC

 

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FOLDER / DRIVE SHARING SETUP:

• The main annoying thing to remember is Windows' sharing and access model - you set "Security" and "Sharing" in folders' properties separately - first governs who has what access/privileges, second whom you share with and what access they have. If both do not cover intended user/group privileges (I just match them for simplicity), a shared folder will either not be accessible or not visible to a user over the network

• TBC

 

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Really surprised with the power draw. Average for a 2-bay NAS is around 30W, my laptop tucked away in the corner:

idle:

streaming a movie over network: