Thinking of building a NAS... Opinions?

[Daveburt714]

Hi Folks,

I've been scoping out parts for a NAS build and was looking for suggestions. I'm totally new to this so your input is welcomed!

I already have 2 WD Black 1tb drives, so I was looking to pick up 2 more for a raid5 array (these):
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...LS_Refurbished
My biggest question here is, one of my drives is an 02FAEX, while the other has the same number as the ones linked above (01FALS).
Does anyone know if this would cause a problem creating the array?

I'll be using NAS4Free as an OS, and since it'll be on all the time power consumption is a consideration...

For the motherboard I was looking at these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157228
I know AMD has a low power Richland derivative which I would prefer, but I haven't been able to find any yet...

And for the PSU I was looking at this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151085

Anyone see any glaring problem, or have any comments?
Thanks.... Dave

[Levish]

Any raid other than 0 or 1 may have issues with non RAID / Desktop drives (unless you'll be doing Software RAID).

If you are doing software RAID the drives should be fine if they are slightly different as long as their performance characteristics are close.
I'd look for WD RED or something along that lines if you are going to use a hardware raid controller for a home NAS.

Regarding motherboard choice in conjunction with "NAS4Free" I'd look around and research which setup is either supported or users have good experiences with on the FreeBSD forums.

[Daveburt714]

Thanks for the info Levish...

Being the impatient soul that I am, I went ahead and put a box together over the weekend. Fortunately, everything worked out well!
I bought all the parts at my local MicroCenter, and using some parts scavenged from my current rigs (2x WD 1tb drives), I put the whole thing together for ~$320.
I'm really happy with this settup... Now everything is in one place and easily accessible from all my rigs without a bunch of mapped drives getting lost and confusing WMC.

For anyone interested, here's some info on the build:

Motherboard: Biostar E-350 ($60)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...Core_Processor
The one bad thing about this board was the fact that it only had 3 SATA ports, so I had to buy an add on card to give me enough ports...

PCI-e SATA card ($24)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...PCIe_Host_Card
This worried me a little, but NAS4Free had no problems with it in a soft Raid 5.

Drives: 4x 1tb WD Blacks (I had 2) for a total Raid 5 array of ~2.8tb formatted ($120)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3..._-_Refurbished

PSU: Corsair 430w 80+ Bronze Modular ($40 w/rebate)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...r_Power_Supply

Memory: 4Gb of some cheap 1333 stuff I had laying around (running @ 1066)... ($0.00)

Case: BitFenix mITX case w/plenty of drive space ($60)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...r_Case_-_Black
This case is a little large for a mITX, but it was easy to work with and fit my space requirements...

Here's a couple pics of the rig (my wire management sucks ) :




I know this may be TMI, but it might help someone thinking about a NAS build.
This box has no problem doing 3 HD video streams to 3 different machines, and is pretty power efficient (~25w quiet/ <50w loaded)

This is my 1st build of this type, but performance seems pretty good...

[josh1980]

FreeNAS is an excellent NAS OS. I've been using it for 18 months and ZFS is just amazing.

If you want to talk about using FreeNAS, I'm a fairly good authority with it. PM me with skype or a phone number(in the USA) or something.