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Building a first nas

I'm thinking about building my first nas for my family which would store some of there most valuable data like home movies and pictures that they don't want to loose. and i was wondering what parts i should put into this build i know that western digital red drives are good but i need to know the motherboard, the cpu, ram and the psu. for anyone who has built a nas before what would you guys recommend for a first time build. the price range would be somewhere like $600 ish

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I'm thinking about building my first nas for my family which would store some of there most valuable data like home movies and pictures that they don't want to loose. and i was wondering what parts i should put into this build i know that western digital red drives are good but i need to know the motherboard, the cpu, ram and the psu. for anyone who has built a nas before what would you guys recommend for a first time build. the price range would be somewhere like $600 ish

Location? (i.e. US, UK, etc.) I assume US since you are using $ correctly (before the number, rather than after).

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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yeah i live in the US

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($99.98 @ OutletPC)

Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced (Black) Mini ITX Tower Case ($39.94 @ Mwave)

Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Plus 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($68.30 @ NCIX US)

Other: ASRock C2550D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard ($280.00 @ Newegg)

Other: Crucial 2x4GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 RAM ($99.99 @ NeweggBusiness)

Total: $588.21

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-31 22:33 EDT-0400

 

This is what I recommend if you want to use FreeNAS. FreeNAS is an OS specifically for NAS things. It has a WebGUI, is free, and can be simple. However, it has a lot you can customize, so it can feel overbearing at times as well. It just depends how you feel about it. I use it a lot, so if you have questions, feel free to ask them.

If you don't even want the option of messing up, you can try Amahi. It is also free, NAS oriented, but is focused purely on simplicity, so it's easy to use/hard to screw up. 

If you have any questions regarding the "Why?" of the parts, feel free to ask, but you should take note that all that is special. I picked that RAM and that PSU because it is guaranteed (from my experience) to work with that motherboard. Not all PSUs/RAM does. 

If you start using all that space or want to add redundancy, you can buy another 2TB down the road for RAID 1. 

Also, remember: Backups. RAID 1 doesn't replace that, and neither does a single NAS. Anything can happen, so after you've got all your stuff loaded onto this, I would get an external HDD and back all your stuff up onto that as well once every few months. Then never use it for anything else. Keep it somewhere away from the NAS (i.e. a relative's house). That way, if a storm or other natural disaster (fire/earthquake) comes, you have a backup of semi-recent use somewhere else in case all this dies.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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does that motherboard have the cpu already preinstalled?

Yes, it's a 4 core Atom Intel CPU. It uses like 20w of power and is reasonably powerful. Only PSUs that support Intel's C6/C7 power states are compatible with that motherboard because of that. Otherwise, the PSU thinks it's always off, whether it is or not, so you can't use it. However, that PSU I listed is compatible with C6/C7 power states, so everything will work.

That's everything you need to make a NAS.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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alright that's good i was just curious on which parts to buy when building a nas in the future.

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Hey there,

 

@Vitalius 's build looks great to me. You could also go with 4GB of RAM but 8GB would be the better option.

As for the HDD, WD Red would be great for your build as they are designed for NAS storage and (if you decide to upgrade in the future) RAID environments. As Vitalius mentioned, NAS and RAID are not the same as a backup. I would strongly suggest backing up all your important data on an external drive somewhere outside your NAS in case something happens with it (power shortage, physical damage, etc.). An additional backup never hurts.

If you are looking for a way to create a continuous or scheduled backup of some or all your data, you might want to check out WD SmartWare. WD Red drives and FreeNAS work great with it and offers a number of useful options. Here's a link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=940

 

Hope this helps you :) If you have questions, feel free to ask,

 

Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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