Getting your PC ready
Drives, drives, and more drives!
You likely have some drives installed inside your PC, but there’s a good chance they’re not NAS or server grade. A standard-class hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) are not designed for heavier workloads, nor are they built to run 24/7, though an SSD would be better equipped without spinning platters and a motor. That’s where NAS or server drives come into play, such as the Western Digital Red and Seagate IronWolf series. They’re more expensive than your normal desktop drives, but it’s worth the extra cost when working with lots of data.
When shopping around for a drive to install inside your PC and use as a NAS, you’ll need to check how many storage slots and ports are available on your motherboard. 3.5-inch mechanical hard drives and 2.5-inch SSDs connect via SATA ports. Then there are M.2 slots that can take faster NVMe and SATA SSDs, but I’d recommend against using these for storing data and instead reserve them for your Windows 11 OS and any games or software you wish to store on the PC. Use the SATA ports for the NAS side.
Your PC case will also need to have enough mounting locations for all the drives. While you could get away with installing a single 8TB Seagate IronWolf HDD and call it a day, this wouldn’t provide any redundancy in case the drive failed. When working with more than two drives, factor in one being reserved by Windows for RAID. When installing three 8TB drives, you’ll have a usable storage capacity of 16TB instead of 24TB, with the 8TB reserved for recovering from a drive failure. Remember, the more drives you install, the more power the system will draw.
Setting up a storage pool
RAID will become your best friend
Windows has never been designed with NAS in mind but Microsoft has made it easier to set up a RAID within the OS. We’ll use this method to create a single storage volume using multiple disks within Windows. This won’t affect your primary drives already used for the OS and any software and games. Simply select the new NAS drives through this process and you’ll be good to go.
When creating a RAID-protected storage pool with drives in Windows 11, all the data will be wiped on the selected drives. If these are not new drives, be sure to back up everything you want saved before following this guide.
Here’s how to set up a storage pool using RAID in Windows 11:
- Open Settings.
- Select System.
- Select Storage.
- Click Advanced storage settings.
- Click Storage Spaces.
Turn your PC into a NAS
Store and share all your data
A NAS device is a simple server where data can be transferred between clients. Now that we have a storage pool ready to go, all that’s left to do is open up the Windows 11 PC to the local network. Once this has been completed, any supported client will be able to connect and log into the Windows 11 system, accessing the newly created storage pool.
- Open File Explorer.
- Select Network in the sidebar.
- Click on the “Network discovery and file sharing are turned off. Network computers and devices are not visible. Click to change…” pop-up.
- Select “Turn on network discovery and file sharing”.
- Select “No, make the network that I am connected to a private network”. You can select the other option for public access if you know what you’re doing and wish to provide external access.
- Click This PC.
- Right-click the storage pool drive.
- Choose Properties.
- Choose the Sharing tab.
- Click Advanced Sharing.
