I recently got my hands on an intriguing little device from an unknown company called Healuck, designed for anyone looking to roll their own Network Attached Storage (NAS) system. The model I tested is powered by an Intel N100 mini PC and features two or four hot-swappable 3.5″ SATA hard drive bays. At first glance, it looks like a mini PC, but its design clearly positions it more as a DIY NAS solution.
You can see it in action in my latest review.
The unit I reviewed was the two-bay configuration, priced around $320, with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. If you need more storage, a four-bay version is available for about $100 more. Given the minor price difference, I’d likely go for the four-bay option to provide more flexibility with storage configurations. The internal components are fairly standard for an N100-based device. There’s only one slot for DDR5 RAM, and it comes with an NVMe drive as well. While it’s upgradeable, taking the unit apart is a bit tricky due to the design. The motherboard needs to be held in place as you reassemble the case, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
The unit also features two 2.5-gigabit Ethernet ports, both of which performed well during testing, maintaining stable, symmetrical connections.
Setting up the unit is relatively simple. It comes with Open Media Vault (OMV), an open-source Linux-based NAS operating system, preinstalled on the NVME SSD. While it boots from the internal SSD, you’ll need to add your own storage drives for mainline storage.
I was impressed by the tool-less drive trays, which allow for easy hot-swapping without the need for screws. Once the drives are in place, configuring the system is straightforward via OMV’s web-based control panel. Although it’s basic, OMV provides essential NAS functionality like SMB and NFS file sharing, as well as user and folder management.
However, it’s worth noting that the device lacks hardware-based RAID, meaning that RAID management is handled by the operating system, which could result in a bit of CPU overhead.
I set up a Btrfs file system in a RAID 1 configuration for redundancy, similar to what you’d find on more expensive NAS systems. OMV doesn’t come with Plex pre-installed, and getting Plex to run requires setting up Docker first, which could be a bit of a hurdle for those unfamiliar with Linux and containers. Despite this, OMV is well-supported and regularly updated, which is reassuring. But other NAS operating systems like Unraid can be easily installed too. I even managed to boot up the desktop version of Ubuntu on the unit.
When it comes to power consumption, the device draws around 25 watts at idle with two drives spinning.
In terms of performance, the N100 processor holds up well, delivering consistent results comparable to other mini PCs with the same chip.
If you’re looking for something more reliable or mission-critical, I’d recommend considering a more established brand like Synology or QNAP. However, as an inexpensive media server, this could be a fun and functional project. The N100 chip, while modest, is powerful enough to handle basic NAS tasks.
I’m planning to test Unraid on it next to see how it handles Plex and other media server tasks. If you’re interested in a project PC that’s ready to go out of the box, this might be a worthwhile option to explore. I hope to start working on that in the next week or two. Stay tuned!