Building a Network Attached Storage (NAS)

[Hidden Attribute]

Hi everyone.

Considering how expensive NAS enclosures are, I've been considering building my own NAS.

Can anyone recommend components for this project? A mini-iTX form factor would be great, with at least four SATA 2/ 3 connectors/ hard-drive bays.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

HP Microserver + FreeNAS is all you need. Throughput won't be phenomenal but more than sufficient for home use.

 

[ponder]

If you are gonna use raid get a MB that supports ECC RAM depending on how paranoid you are wrt bit flips.

 

[nahoR]

For home use the Western Digital My Book Live Duo is okay. It comes with drives and is not that expensive

Also you will have root access to the debian running on it so you can run some other services on it aswell

 

[AchmatK]

For home use the Western Digital My Book Live Duo is okay. It comes with drives and is not that expensive

Also you will have root access to the debian running on it so you can run some other services on it aswell

i have two WD My Book live 3TB network hard drives attached directly to my switch. Just added a 3TB WD My Cloud Live.

Simple plug and play with 3 mapped network drives on my laptop which acts as my Plex server streaming to 1 smart tv via network cable, 1 BD player via cable connected to non smart tv, another laptop via WiFi and a few phones via WiFi. No buffering.


Got the 3TB WD My Cloud Live from Dion wired for R2 400.00 last week.

Also using at a backup.

One more thing. The My Cloud can be expanded by plugging in a powered usb port and attaching up to 7 hard drives to the usb port. So when I need more space i will be buying a normal hard drive and attach it directly to the My Cloud hard drive.

 

[Hidden Attribute]

I find that the external hard drive solution is a bit "messy". I've previously connected external hard drives to a router, and used the integrated "NAS" functionality, but I dislike it. It would be more organized to place everything in one case. The HP Proliant Micro server sounds like a viable solution, also, then I can configure RDP on it.

Where is the cheapest place to find a HP Proliant Microserver?

 

[AchmatK]

I wouldn't attach anything directly to my router.

I ran my entire house with cat6 cable. Have a gigabit switch in the top of a closet with all the wires going in the ceiling. The hard drives are connected directly to the switch and not to the router which is in the lounge. The only time i ever opened the cupboard in the last six months was to connect the new hard drive and when i attached an ip camera to the switch.

Don't know where you can get an HP Microserver from.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

I find that the external hard drive solution is a bit "messy". I've previously connected external hard drives to a router, and used the integrated "NAS" functionality, but I dislike it. It would be more organized to place everything in one case. The HP Proliant Micro server sounds like a viable solution, also, then I can configure RDP on it.

Where is the cheapest place to find a HP Proliant Microserver?

You can get one from either Wootware (http://www.wootware.co.za/hp-prolia...neo-4gb-ddr3-microserver-no-hdd-included.html) or Esquire.

 

[Gnome]

EDIT: See my sig, avoid Esquire!

If you are gonna use raid get a MB that supports ECC RAM depending on how paranoid you are wrt bit flips.

ECC is a must for Brtfs or ZFS (ie> FreeNAS).

Not as simple as saying you may have a few bit flips Without ECC RAM a single bit corruption in memory could lead to losing everything. So if you go FreeNAS route, stick with ECC RAM.

I would go the Microserver + Intel Gigabit CT (Or Intel Pro/1000 CT) network adapter + 2x8GB ECC RAM + Miroserver 16GB RAM firmware from interwebz

Intel network card is to ensure you don't have any issues. All other network cards have some problems in FreeNAS sadly.
16GB of RAM gives you plenty of headroom to run all your download apps on the NAS also (eg. Sickbear, SabNZBd+, Torrents, etc.) -> See plugins of FreeNAS
Lastly you can get a IcyDock bay if you want all 5 of the drive bays as easy pull out bays for your NAS. (4 Of them are already that way standard)

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

EDIT: See my sig, avoid Esquire!

I've been buying from Esquire for years, never had an issue with them.

 

[Gnome]

I've been buying from Esquire for years, never had an issue with them.

Yeah and everyone on this forum having a bad experience is completely nullified by you, their No.1 customer.

Regardless, it is the OPs choice, just warning him that there are numerous and many threads of people having a lot of issues with Esquire.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Yeah and everyone on this forum having a bad experience is completely nullified by you, their No.1 customer.

Regardless, it is the OPs choice, just warning him that there are numerous and many threads of people having a lot of issues with Esquire.

I'm just showing both sides. Every company is going to have people complaining about them, it's the nature of the beast.