home IT upgrade
June 2025 - September 2025
Hardware
Networking

This is a documentation of the updates to my home IT equiment and systems in the summer of 2025./p>

The updates consist of:

  • Rejuvinating a "broken" home NAS (network attached storage)
  • Better networking for the home MESH system,
  • Swarping out parts and software to have better computer systems.

Home NAS

  • Hardware (closeup in images 1, 2, 3):

    • An old "broken" QNAP TS-251A 2-Bay NAS
    • A 3TB HDD and a 4TB HDD
    • An external 2.5-inch SATA enclosure
    • A 12-year-old 120GB SATA SSD
    • USB 3.0 to USB 3.0 Micro B cable
    • Ethernet cable

  • Hardware usage:

    • The NAS is an old QNAP TS-251A 2-Bay NAS from my dad.
    • It has a dual-core Celeron N3060, running at 2.5GHz per core, and has 2GB of DDR3L RAM.
    • The original QNAP OS is installed on the 4GB eMMC storage on the NAS, and it is controlled with a remote.
    • The issue with the NAS is that one drive doesn't even spin, and the other is in pre-fail condition, with the QNAP OS corrupted and unbootable.
    • I opened some of my dad's old external HDD enclosures and reused the HDDs as the main drives.
    • The 2.5-inch SATA enclosure from my dad originally had a 256GB HDD in it, which is perfect for use as the OS drive, as 4GB of eMMC is not enough for Debian Bookworm.
    • The 120GB SSD is salvaged from an Acer Aspire office PC with a Core 2 Duo, and is plugged into the 2.5-inch SATA enclosure.

  • Software usage:

    • Debian 12 (Bookworm) minimal is used to minimize RAM usage (about 100MB of RAM on idle).
    • The fact that the NAS has an HDMI port makes the OS installation significantly easier.
    • Connected to the router via the Ethernet cable, I installed SSHD to control the server through SSH.
    • The HDDs are formatted as ext4 filesystems.
    • Through SSH, I edited /etc/fstab to mount the 3TB and 4TB HDDs on boot.
    • I then installed and configured SAMBA and WSDD so the 3TB HDD is exposed as a network share, and WSDD allows it to be visible in Windows network discovery.
    • Borg is used to do compressed, deduplicated, and periodic backups from the 3TB HDD to the 4TB HDD.
    • Tailscale VPN is installed, allowing remote connectivity to the NAS.
    • The NAS also acts as a subnet router, sharing the home LAN to my Tailscale network so I can control my 3D printer anywhere in the world.
    • A separate tailnet is created, where the NAS is shared, so my family can access the NAS without interfering with my tailnet at all.

Improved home networking (image 4, 5, 6)

  • My home network consists of 4 Xiaomi AX3000NE routers configured as mesh nodes, initially creating a completely wireless mesh topology.
  • However, I discovered an unused wired connection between two of the routers through existing RJ45 wall ports.
  • I therefore established a wired backhaul connection between these two nodes by crimping custom-length Ethernet cables to connect each router to its respective wall port.
  • The firmware version for the routers is also updated to allow for a mix of wired and wireless connections in the mesh topology.
  • The wired backhaul routers can be seen in image 5 and 6

Better computer systems

  • During the course of my summer vaccation, I obtained old laptops and desktops, which I refurbished and upgraded.

  • Laptops that are upgraded:

    • Lenovo IdeaPad C340 (image 8, 9)

      • It has a i5-8265U, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 512GB NVME gen3 SSD.
      • The problem on it is whenever the laptop boots the Windows 10 installed on system, the EC controller malfunctions and fans do not spin up, causing thermal throttling.
      • Another problem is the battery, which holds about 5 minutes of charge and missing keys on the keyboard.
      • It is fixed by installing Windows 11 and Fedora 42 in a dual boot configuration.
      • The keyboard is then fixed by buying a bootleg one from Taobao, and putting the missing keys in.
      • The battery is also replaced with a bootleg one ordered from Taobao, so is the missing power supply.
      • The cracks on the ABS case is also taped over to prevent dust from entering.

      ASUS R455L (image 10, 11)

      • Initially have Intel i5-4210u, 4GB DDR3L RAM, 500GB HDD, with the trackpad not working.
      • Trackpad is fixed by trimming the ribbon connect cable to expose fresh copper contacts.
      • Brought a second hand stick of 4GB DDR3L RAM to upgrade to 8GB RAM
      • Replaced the 500GB HDD with the 120GB SATA SSD from the Acer aspire with faulty power supply.
      • Replaced windows 7 with a LUKS encrypted Arch linux system with the Hyprland compositor