I Tried To Beat Google and It Cost Me 4 800

I'm finally fixing and upgrading my server to become a viable replacement to my Google Drive cloud storage. So a month and a half ago, I tried building a server by using spare parts from an unused gaming PC with TrueNAS. Google Drive was asking for $3,600 per year to increase my storage from 20 terabytes to 30 terabytes. And I said no, obviously. But let's just say that while my DIY server worked, it wasn't really working for me. Copying from Google Drive to the server slowed down the internet to a snail's pace. And I ended up filling all of my drives super quickly, even though I was 100% sure I bought way more storage than I needed. So since then, it's been sitting in a corner of the office waiting for me to do something about it. I shared my experience of getting into homelabbing in a previous video, and many of you were surprised and very happy that I got into a new and nerdy rabbit hole. But others, well, you all had a lot to say about how I could improve my server, and a whole lot to say about how I did everything wrong. Like how I skipped the 3-2-1 rule, or why was there a 3070 in it, and why I used 8 terabyte SSDs instead of HDDs for storage. But finally, the day has come where I'm going to fix it. But not alone. I got the help of a bonafide homelabbing expert, Colton from Hardware Haven. So after all this hard work, is the server actually going to be useful, and can I replace my Google Drive with it? And more importantly, is it worth it? So why are we all paying hundreds of dollars per month for cloud storage? Well, the more you think about it, the more you realize how powerful and how OP Google Drive really is. To you, it looks like you're just dragging your files onto the internet, and you can access it whenever and from wherever you want. But behind the scenes, your data is copied around various servers all over the world, backed up multiple times per day, even multiple times per hour. And you can use any computer to get to it, as long as you're connected to the internet. And if you trash something, you can get it back within 30 days. What? So how do you make a homemade server do all of that? Well, for one, you need a reliable storage solution to store your files. That's server number one. Number two, you need a second remote backup in case something bad happens to your primary storage server. Remember kids, parity is not a backup. And three, you need remote access so you can get to it wherever you are, whether you're on the same network, or at home chilling, or at the coffee, I don't know, wherever. Now it's really starting to look like an uphill battle, and that upgrade now button on Google Drive is starting to look pretty attractive, isn't it? Oh, and let's not forget, we need to make it efficient so it doesn't ramp up the electricity bill exponentially. First, I need to lug my heavy server, let's call this one main, a unique and creative name, I know, I tried. Let's lug main to the project room to perform some surgery. It currently looks like a gaming setup. It's got an AMD 5900X CPU and a 3070 GPU, unnecessary. Let's just yoink it out for a simple replacement, a headless setup. This just means you don't need a dedicated graphics card to boot up your PC. So I'm going to take a trip to Micro Center, who did not sponsor this video, hopefully in the future, maybe they will. To help me on this journey, I employed the help of a friend I recently met online, Colton from Hardware Haven. He has a Homelab YouTube channel where he turns old and cheap stuff into servers, like this one about laptops, or this one where he spent less than $60. Let's just say he knows how to do this stuff on the fly very well. Plus, he's never ever been to Micro Center. So off we went to get a headless CPU and to pick out all the parts for a remote backup server. I know, he's probably like, why didn't you use Facebook Marketplace? It's fine. Picking out the case was the hardest part. You want something good looking, but functional too. It needs a bunch of space to fit in HDDs. There were so many ginormous gaming PC cases with intense RGB and glass panels, especially for a PC that's going to live in your house. It's got to be good looking. Unfortunately, most PCs nowadays only have space for two to three drives at most. And luckily, we got into 3D printing lately, so that's going to open up a whole lot of doors down the line. After looking at all the PC cases, we ended up with the Fractal North. What a beauty. It's going to be perfect. It blends in like a piece of furniture instead of a PC. The rest of the parts were a lot easier to pick out. I'll link them in the description. I got the help of Colton who picked the storage drives and a Micro Center person who helped me pick everything else and found the best deal for us. So we got all of that linked down in the description. I also picked up a headless CPU for the main server and this all totals, drum roll please, $12.50 after taxes. Still a lot of money. So much money that it might have been smarter to just pick up an off-the-shelf NAS, put some storage drives into it and call it a day. Unfortunately, I'm not that smart yet, but you can be. That's why we've partnered with Ugreen, our sponsor for today's video, to share their latest NAS, the Ugreen NAS DH4300 Plus with you. The DH4300 Plus is built to be the most beginner-friendly NAS you can buy. Setup here is as easy as sliding into the drives, plugging it into the ethernet, tapping the NFC with your phone and following the guided walkthrough. That's it. You're up and running in minutes instead of weeks like it's taken us. Plus the thing actually looks good. Its footprint is so small that you can find a small corner of any desk and leave it there. Now you can access the NAS from any computer you have on your network, even your phone. And once you're in, the all-in-one Ugreen NAS app makes it simple to share files, access them from Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android, and even move directly to Google Drive for transferring through the cloud. This compact box can scale all the way up to 120 terabytes. That's enough for you to store 41 million pictures or over 80,000 movies. Plus it's fast. With a built-in 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, you can move a gigabyte-sized file in just a few seconds. And its AI smart album can intelligently identify and classify people and places. And lastly, your data stays secure thanks to real-time virus scanning and flexible permission controls. So if you've been thinking about your own home server setup but don't want the headache of doing what I did, check out the Ugreen DH4300+. It's so easy that I'm probably going to use this as a personal home server. If you want to get into home labbing quickly, click the link in the description and use our code to get 20% off a Ugreen NAS today. And let's go back to my overly pricey remote backup build. But it sure looks good, doesn't it? Oh yeah. Pat myself on the back. I did good. So you're thinking, why are you even building a remote server when you already have a server? In server land, there's something known as the 3-2-1 rule. You need three copies of your data, the original and two backups. You need two different mediums. Could be hard drives, cloud storage, tapes, CDs. Don't do that. That's bad. Do whatever you want though. Two medias and one offsite copy stored somewhere else, not next to your current server in case of fire or flooding. Now just looking at that, it seems overkill, right? But when your data is precious, aka photos of your dogs, cats, and kids as they grow up, you wouldn't want to lose it to something stupid like a drive failure or your kid kicking it or spilling water onto it. I talked to Colton and he showed me a bunch of different storage solutions. Like if you just want an emergency backup where if you lose everything, you can pay a bunch of money to get it back, you can use an archival solution like Amazon DeepGlacier. It's like deep freezing your data. It's hard to get back, but it's cheap and safe. But let's get to work because this is a big project. Colton is going to rebuild the server with the headless CPU, take out the 8 terabyte SSDs that I paid an arm and a leg for, and I'm going to tackle our first problem. True NAS. It isn't working for me. I'm not knowledgeable enough. I don't have enough time to constantly tinker with it. I just need a simpler, more foolproof solution. And that's Unraid. It's more intuitive, beginner friendly, and it lets you combine a bunch of drives together no matter how mismatched they are. Unlike True NAS, it does cost some money up front. $49 for a starter license, $249 for a lifetime license, but it's going to unlock a ton of doors for me. Installing Unraid is similar to installing any other distro. You boot it into a boot drive and put it in and yeah, that's it. Now one thing I didn't know is that Unraid lives on the boot drive so you can never unplug it. So just make sure you have a decent boot drive. I've used a fast one. It works great. And I've used a slow one that has corrupted on me. So use a good one. So this time, instead of diving in blind and doing it myself, I'm going to learn from my mistakes from last time. I'm going to follow a setup guide for Unraid that I found on YouTube. And while it was helpful, he was just teaching me to click the buttons in the order that he told me to. So in Unraid, you have an array of drives. This is where all your storage drives live. You can combine any drives you want. 2TB SSDs, 1TB NPMEs, 24TB HDDs, no matter how mismatched. Unraid will make it work. Then you pick at least one parity drive, which has to be bigger or equal to all your other drives, not combined. Then you add on your regular drives. After that, there's a pool where you can configure your cache storage. This is where files live before they get written into your storage array. So files move from your desktop, to your cache, to your array. So it makes sense for your cache to be fast, like your NVMEs and SSDs. So after you start your array, it's going to start syncing the parity drive, which took me like 16 hours to finish, but it did it 100% no problems. I didn't have to set up any pools, datasets, raids, redevs, or whatever that I had to do on TrueNAS. So this is a lot better for a beginner. Now we're really close to finishing up goal number one, which is setting up the initial storage system. Next, I need to set up how to access the storage from my PC by setting up shares. It's like SMB on TrueNAS. So this lets you see your server in your file browser from your laptop or PC. Colton suggested adding a drop folder so that any computer on the network can transfer files to each other. So no more email, Google Drive, Discord transfers. It's really good for the small stuff that you want to share. Now, how do I transfer files from Google Drive to the server? In TrueNAS, it had something called Cloud Sync, but Unraid doesn't have that. So after some googling and some redditing, I find myself doing a lot of that lately, the preferred solution is called rClone. And rClone lives in a Docker container, which I didn't know what that meant, but now I do. I did some research. If you're ever wondering who reads the explain like I'm five posts on Reddit, it's me. In fact, this specific post was still a little over my head at the time. So in my understanding, I'm going to use an analogy because they're very helpful and much better than using technical jargon that people on Reddit really like doing. So you need to understand containers. Let's say a container is like this coffee mug and your whole computer is the coffee making system. Instead of packing your coffee making system to work every day, you just take the coffee, the app, and the cup, the tools the app needs in your thermos, I guess. And that's a container. Docker is a system that makes, stores, and delivers the containers. It builds them, saves them at recipes, it shares them. It's like Starbucks, I guess, in a way. This way, no matter what PC you're on, whatever city you are, you still get your coffee. Unraid lets you turn on Docker with a simple toggle switch. You go to settings, Docker, enable Docker to yes, apply, and boom, that's it. When you first start, your Docker containers are empty. You haven't added anything yet. Unraid has an app store that lets users make their own apps, but there's also official apps like Tailscale, Odoo, and Rclone. In our case, we'll search up Rclone. But surprise, there's various different versions. After more Redditing and internetting, it seems like I'll this up, Colton is working hard in our tech corner of our storage room, setting up managed switches, firewalls, and VLANs so everything stays secure. It's not the most luxurious tech corner since he's on his knees breaking his back. But yeah, thanks, Colton. Back to Rclone, I learned a bunch of command line things like Rclone config and copy. And fast forward two hours later, I've got a test copy. Transfer from Google Drive to my server. Goal number one is done. Now for the next part, doing the same thing all over again except on the computer that I have to build and put together. We'll call this one the remote server. Another great name. I know, I try. It looks like Colton ran into some serious issues with our headless PC, so he's just unplugging and replugging wires all over the place. I'm sort of glad he's doing that because I wouldn't know where to start with fixing a PC. I'll get the new PC built. How hard can it be? So the PC case, the Fractal North, is stunning. I love the wooden accents. The mesh screens are nice. I love the airflow, which is good because spinning drives get hot. The downside is that it only has two native hard drive bays, which means later down the line when I want to expand, I've got to come up with some real creative ways. So to build it, I followed the instructions on the manuals and I got to work. It was really self-explanatory. Well, no, it wasn't. I had to follow the guide. First, the power supply went in. Then it was time for the CPU and the CPU cooler. It's nice having a small cooler for a change. The Noctua one I was using was way too big and annoying. Then the two RAM sticks snapped in. The SSD went in. It's so easy. Now it's time for the motherboard's turn to go into the case and man, ITX is just so cute. It's like the quarter of the size of ATX and this is actually my first ITX build. Then I just connected the motherboard power cables and the SATA cable and that's it. We were well off on our way to replacing Google Drive. But it was getting late, so we called it for the day and headed home. Colton took the managed switches I bought weeks ago, but I never opened so he could configure them properly for the network. And I could only describe what he did as IT wizardry because the next day came around and all we had to do was set up remote access. The one and final goal, the big one, the whale, the mammoth. The next morning came around and it was go, go, go. We got our first round of files copying from Google Drive to the main server running in the background. Colton got to work on the network by plugging himself straight into the router, got comfy in the IT corner and played around with router and switch settings. My job was to get Unraid installed on the remote server, build out the array, the users and shares like how I did on the main, and get something called Tailscale installed. Ah, Tailscale. It sounds like a dragon, but it's actually a VPN that creates a secure network between all your devices, even if they're not on the same network. It's not the type of VPN that lets you access international versions of Netflix or Disney Plus. This one is more like a tunnel. So if I take my laptop home, I can get access to files on the server. I'm tunneling myself into our network. Pretty neat. And it's actually easy to use. I just have to log into my account, have Tailscale installed on everything. This installs setting up a small Raspberry Pi that I happen to have laying around. This is where I evolved my tech skills. I got the Raspberry Pi up and running, and I used SSH to remote into it from my MacBook. It lets you remote log in and execute terminal commands for other devices. It's like being able to control another device without actually being at it. So I installed Tailscale on it, and I also installed it on the remote server and the main server as plugins. So now my Raspberry Pi, MacBook, framework, main server, remote server, and all the network PCs are all talking to each other. It took a couple hours of troubleshooting on the laptops to make sure the files were transferring over properly, and we could actually access them when we were on a different Wi-Fi network. I was a lot of neck and back pain, so I have great respect for you IT professionals out there. But at the end of the day, right before chilling for the night, I checked the SMB in my framework, and there they were. All the files I have copied over so far. In fact, last night I was using SMB into the server. It's so cool. It's legitimately so freaking cool. So for now, we finished all the goals. The main server for storage, a remote server for backup, and remote access. But looking back, the price was sort of high. I spent a ton of money on the main server, as you can see in the previous server video. I also spent $1,200 on the remote server, a couple dollars a month on tailscale, and a ton of hours figuring it all out. And I still have to troubleshoot through some issues before I can totally replace Google Drive. Now for the real question, was it worth it? Well, it's a really tough question, and it depends on who you are. I guess someone else could have just bought two off-the-shelf NASs, $300 each, pack in storage. Boom, you got a main server, remote server, and you probably got remote access with all that too. But what I did get in return was knowledge. I learned firsthand TrueNAS and Unraid, Dockers and Containers, R-Clone, SSH, Tailscale, and a bunch of rudimentary networking and hacking and whatnot. Sure, Google Drive is way more convenient. And now that I know what I do know, Google Drive might actually be cheaper too. But what really matters is the fun and the learning and the friends that we make along the way. Plus, I'm excited to see what's next. Jellyfin, Plex, ooh, they sound cool, don't they? And if you haven't already, watch this video where I explore Linux for the first time.