Guides
NAS or mini PC: which suits you?
You have a mini PC for your services and also see NAS devices, or you’re considering a separate NAS. Do you need both? It depends on what you want to do with your storage and your programs.
In short
| NAS | Mini PC | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Lots of storage, always accessible, with multiple drives | Running programs (Home Assistant, Docker, virtual machines) |
| Drives | Usually 2 to 8 slots, with RAID | Often 1 or 2 slots (NVMe and possibly SATA) |
| Computing power | Modest (with ready-made models) | More, depending on the processor |
| Power | A few watts for the device plus a few watts per drive | Often efficient at idle (about 5 to 15 watts) |
| Maintenance | Ready-made software with updates | You manage everything yourself |
| Price | Device plus drives | Device; you add drives yourself |
Choose a NAS if…
- you store a lot of data (photos, movies, backups) and want it always accessible;
- you want drives in a RAID setup, so one failed drive doesn’t cost you everything (RAID is not a backup, see RAID and ZFS explained);
- you want a simple solution without much management.
Choose a mini PC if…
- you mainly want to run programs: Home Assistant, Docker containers, a media server, or virtual machines;
- you want to stay efficient and don’t need much storage;
- you like to set everything up yourself. See which mini PC to choose.
Both: a common combination
Many people use a mini PC for programs and a NAS for storage. The mini PC retrieves its data (for example the media library) from the NAS over the network (see NFS or Samba). This keeps your storage in one place and you can easily replace the mini PC.
Does everything fit on one device? A mini PC with a few drives (or a small server) can do both tasks, for example with Proxmox and a NAS program alongside. That’s efficient, but a bit more work and you put more in one place.
Whatever you choose
- Make backups, also of the NAS: see the 3-2-1 rule.
- Calculate the power costs for the entire setup with the Power costs tool, including drives.
- Calculate drive size with TB to TiB and the RAID calculator.
Further explanation is in our guides Choosing a NAS and Raspberry Pi or mini PC.