Printable kit · 12 worksheets
The Home Server Build Planner
- 12 fill-in worksheets, 40 print pages
- 2 filled-in examples and a companion spreadsheet
- Online buyer guide with 3 priced builds, beginner to eight-bay
30-day money-back guarantee. Use it all; if it doesn't help, every dollar back.
Size the storage once, on paper, before a single drive is in the cart. Then the layout, the power bill, the UPS and the backup plan all fall out of your own numbers instead of a guess made at checkout.
Replaces the forum thread you half remember and the rebuild that starts with "I think it was RAID 5".
Look inside
Real pages from the PDF you download, including both filled-in examples. Swipe or scroll.
What's in it
See all 12 worksheet titles
- Storage Requirement & Growth
- RAID Level & Cost Per Usable Terabyte
- Drive Inventory, Burn-In & Serial Log
- Failure Probability & Rebuild Risk
- Power Draw, Running Cost & UPS Runtime
- Network Throughput & the Bottleneck
- 3-2-1 Backup Plan & Restore Log
- Your Build, At A Glance
- Parts Checklist & Build Budget
- Maintenance Schedule & Trigger Calendar
- Firmware, Software & Access Log
- What This Kit Saved You
Also included
- 2 filled-in example worksheets. Storage Requirement & Growth and Power Draw, Running Cost & UPS Runtime, worked through with real numbers, so you can see a finished page before you start.
- 1 bonus printable. Drive Bay & Cable Label Sheet: Cut apart and stick one label on each bay, drive and cable
- 1 companion spreadsheet. A companion spreadsheet that does the math: storage growth and cost per usable terabyte, the yearly power bill, a budget tracker with a running total, a maintenance schedule that flags what is due, and a log of what the kit saved you. Tabs: Storage and cost math, Power and running cost, Budget tracker, Maintenance schedule, Payback log.
- 1 start-here page. The four sheets to fill in the first 20 minutes, and which sheet to reach for when.
Plus the online buyer guide
Three complete builds at three budgets, every item priced and linked, plus every product the kit names, kept current on this site. Your kit links straight to it, so the prices you plan with are today's, not the day the PDF was printed.
Who it's for
- Anyone about to buy their first NAS or drives and wants to size it once, correctly
- Home lab builders who already own hardware and want the power bill and the backup plan on paper
- Anyone who has read the RAID 5 against RAID 6 argument three times and still is not sure which their own drives need
- Households that have never actually tested a restore and suspect they should
Who made this
Built by the HomeServerCalc team, the people behind the free RAID, power and UPS calculators on this site, from manufacturer specifications, published reliability data and patterns in owner reviews. Researched, not hands-on tested on every model.
30-day money-back guarantee
Use the whole kit. If it doesn't help, fill in the refund form within 30 days and you get every dollar back. No questions asked. Refund form.
Questions
How do I get it?
Pay on the secure Stripe checkout and you land straight on your download page: the full PDF, a ZIP of every sheet as its own printable page, and the companion spreadsheet. Bookmark that page to download again later.
Can I print it more than once?
Yes. Print as many copies as your household or home lab needs. The logs and the schedule are made to be reprinted or refilled every year.
What if it is not what I expected?
Use the whole kit. If it does not help, fill in the refund form within 30 days and you get every dollar back. No questions asked. Refund form.
Does the RAID math match the free calculator on the site?
Yes. Every worked example was computed with the same RAID capacity math behind the calculator on this site, so a figure on a printed sheet cannot disagree with what the calculator returns for the same drives.
How is it different from the free calculators?
A calculator answers one question and forgets it. The kit keeps your build’s numbers together in one place, turns them into a maintenance schedule with real due dates, and gives you the logs and the one-page summary that make the next drive purchase or the next rebuild far less stressful.
The Home Server Build Planner
12 worksheets · 40 pages · examples, workbook and online buyer guide