I love that dock. I had four HDDs in two of these docks connected to one of my servers for a bit. Same experience. A bit slow for large transfers but fast enough for HD streaming. I think the space between the drives allows for enough natural airflow to keep them relatively cool. I think the hottest they got was 63 degrees Celsius during a large transfers. Usually stayed a bit below 60. In my janky homebrew NAS I see temperatures around 50, give or take 5 degrees. The use case should really determine the build so that may be the best option for many, especially with budget constraints.

The power supply probably won’t spin those drives and you may have some difficulty with thermal management. I used a SFF PC case with a SATA extender running outside to a few HDDs for a while. The drives got really hot until I got a fan running over them. This was a super janky setup though. Made a lot of dust. If you’re looking to stay low budget and don’t need RAID or SMART reporting then I would get an enclosure for those drives and just use USB. Otherwise see what you can Frankenstein from what you have. I built a NAS using my janky setup’s HDDs, CPU, and RAM. Got a cheap full size tower, old motherboard off eBay, basic cooler, and power supply for much cheaper than a new build. Still janky but upgradable with a lot of internal space for storage/GPUs.

What form factor is the m710q? I have a tiny FF so I’m imagining you trying to squeeze two HDDs into that… I was in a similar situation a while ago and broke down and bought a new case and transplanted my CPU and RAM. The options are only limited by your budget and needs when building

This right here. Since you can’t really configure the ISP router (1), DMZ is the way to go. The DMZ feature on home routers usually allows you to select a specific device or devices to add to the DMZ so make sure to reserve/set a static IP on your router (2) and configure the DMZ on your ISP router (1) to include only that specific IP. DMZ essentially forwards all ports to that device.

Seems like AI wrote this. And did a good job!

I found an informative post about a related issue that might be of some use to you. Sounds like DHCP or Network Manager may be rewriting your systems-resolved.conf.

https://joshrnoll.com/my-tailscale-dns-woes/

Have you tried deleting /etc/systemd/resolved.conf and restarting the service with systemctl restart systemd-resolved?

Did you undo the reverse path strict filtering your guide suggested?

net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

Above is what the guide suggests to force reverse path strict filtering. Try setting as shown below:

net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 0
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 0

According to the guide, “By default, these are set in /usr/lib/sysctl.d/50-default.conf”

OpenWebUI supports allowing web searches when submitting prompts to your self-hosted models. Usually I see three web searches per prompt if I enable this feature.

You may not be able to do RAID or other redundant/performant arrays with USB. You can definitely achieve a big JBOD array but it will be less resilient and slower than a RAID array. Enclosures often don’t cool as well so heat may degrade your disks faster as well. I did this for a while with some old disks and some $30 HDD toasters. I only put data on there I could afford to lose. I wish there was a standalone hardware RAID solution… like a NAS without the network. That would have a huge draw for hobbyists that don’t want to buy an expensive NAS. I’ve searched for this but haven’t found anything. Message me if you know of such a product! Maybe consider building your own NAS with an old PC. Way cheaper than a prebuilt and fun to build! I had an old Dell Optiplex 990 that is now a 32 TB NAS. Had to get a new case but it’s a decent backup to my Synology.