Depending on how you go about it, building or buying a NAS can be an expensive hobby or a cost-effective venture. You can repurpose an old PC and turn it into a NAS, but you can also buy highly specialized, ready-made NAS units to satisfy all your storage needs. One way or another, even just the hard drives alone can cost a lot, especially considering the current prices of storage.
Most NAS owners don’t just set up a NAS and then stop there. They keep on adding upgrades, be it more storage or upgrades to the NAS itself. Some are super expensive, but some are really cheap, and those are the ones we’ll focus on here in this article.
The smartest NAS upgrades are the ones that address actual problems
And not all problems call for expensive solutions
As a PC hardware enthusiast, I know all too well the traps that await those who like to upgrade their tech. The constant FOMO, combined with real and imagined needs, makes it hard to resist spending a fortune on your PC, but also on your NAS. And NAS units aren’t the cheapest things to upgrade, especially if yours is an all-SSD NAS.
It’s easy to fall for it, too. Your NAS feels slow? Time to throw in an SSD or buy more RAM. Need better performance? Faster networking. And so on, and so on … and it all costs a lot of money.
6 nearly free NAS tweaks I’d do before buying new hardware
Why spend a fortune when you can spend so much less (or nothing)?
In many cases, the real problems don’t require expensive solutions.
For instance, mixing up drives during a replacement is supremely annoying. Forgetting to back up your configuration can be disastrous. Losing track of which share stores what can be either of those.
And that’s exactly why some of the best NAS upgrades cost almost nothing. Below, I’ll walk you through my favorites that help you keep your money and still benefit.
1. Label every drive and every bay
This is perhaps the simplest NAS upgrade on the list, but it can save you from one of the most annoying mistakes you can make: pulling the wrong drive.
If your NAS ever throws a warning, starts degrading, or simply needs some good old troubleshooting, you don’t want to stand there guessing which physical drive matches the disk shown in the dashboard. Labeling removes that entire thing once and for all.
This upgrade costs anywhere from $0 (we love that) to $10, depending on whether you do something easy, like a permanent marker, or go with something a little more sophisticated, such as masking tape, small stickers, or a label maker.
2. Keep a USB stick just for config backups
Backing up your NAS system data is paramount, and neglecting to do this can end in anything from annoyance to a total, complete, data-loss-related meltdown. Let’s prevent all of that.
You should always be backing up things like users, permissions, shares, scheduled tasks, network settings, and sometimes app settings, too. If something goes wrong and you need to reset, migrate, or rebuild your NAS, having a config backup can save you a ton of time.
The easiest way to do this is to keep one small USB flash drive dedicated to recovery and configuration exports. Use your NAS operating system’s backup or export option, save the file to that drive, and update it whenever you make major changes. I would also keep a second copy on your PC or in cloud storage, just in case that little USB drive goes missing. That 3-2-1 backup rule is real, and it applies to your NAS, too.
This can cost nothing if you already have a spare flash drive (many people do), but it’ll be up to $30 if you’re buying a new one.
3. Make a one-page NAS cheat sheet with QR codes
A NAS cheat sheet is basically a tiny recovery guide for those of us who have a million different passwords and things to remember. So, these days, pretty much all of us.
It can include the NAS dashboard address, the local IP, the names of your most important shares, and shortcuts to self-hosted apps you use all the time. If you already have a printer, this costs basically $0.
4. Turn on alerts you’ll actually notice
A lot of NAS owners either never set up alerts or set up way too many and ignore them (I fall under the latter category for every piece of tech that I own). Finding the perfect balance can be surprisingly meaningful.
Take a few minutes to go into your NAS notification settings and enable the alerts that truly matter. Send them somewhere you will actually see them, like your main email address, a push notification app, or even a messaging platform if your NAS supports it.
This one also costs $0, because the feature is probably already built into your NAS, so you’re just taking advantage of something you already own.
5. Label the cables, power brick, and backup USB
You’ve labeled your drives. Now, do the same with everything else. (Yes, my label maker gets a lot of use, how did you guess?)
It might seem redundant, but it can be super helpful. If you ever need to move the NAS, unplug it, troubleshoot it, or swap out hardware, the cables can become a mess fast. A labeled Ethernet cable, power brick, and backup USB drive make it much easier to figure out what belongs to which NAS. Plus, if you have multiple NAS units, this becomes even more critical.
You can use little cable tags, masking tape, stickers, or even just regular old paper labels. Some of these solutions cost $0, some may cost up to $15. Either way, it’s worth it.
These upgrades will make your NAS safer
Or, at the very least, easier to live with
The above upgrades won’t transform your NAS into a whole new beast. They won’t give you more performance, storage capacity, or even reduce things like noise and power consumption. But they’ll still offer you a whole lot of value for the money, and there will come a time when you’ll be glad you made the effort to go through these cheap and easy fixes.
Sometimes the most meaningful upgrades don’t cost a lot
If you own a NAS (or you’re thinking of building one), chances are that it’s already cost you some money. Even if you’re the biggest fan of upcycling and recycling, there’s often an expense involved, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
The smart way to go about it all is to spend as little as you can while making as much of an impact as possible. From labeling the drives to carrying a backup USB drive that helps you get your NAS back up in the event that something breaks, a lot can be done for $0.
