DIY NAS

[Trik'Stari]

So, I've gotten my hands on an old Dell PC, and I am planning on building a NAS with it.

 

The trouble I am having is finding a new motherboard for it. I don't want to use the one it came with, because it only has 2 sata ports. I have identified the processor as an Intel Penium 4 521 HT, at least according to the markings on the CPU itself.

 

The bigger problem I am having, is that this motherboard appears to use DDR2, but according to Intel's website, it's capable of using DDR3, so I'm not sure what to get for a replacement motherboard. I was looking at getting this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128536

 

Ontop of all that, I need to figure out if I should go with a motherboard with 4 DIMM sockets instead of 2, and if I can find a compatible case.

[Decon]

Just throw raid card in a PCIe Slot and bang more sata

 

thaw why I have in my freeness system

[Trik'Stari]

Just throw raid card in a PCIe Slot and bang more sata

 

thaw why I have in my freeness system

It's not that simple. This motherboard doesn't have a standard front panel connector setup. It used a ribbon cable for the front panel. And I'm not using the original case because it's just too large.

[HalGameGuru]

How many of the parts, aside from the CPU, do you currently have in hand? If you are going to be buying a lot of this stuff out of pocket there are actually some REALLY good deals through micro center that could let you build an AMD NAS from the ground up for dirt cheap. With the 40 dollar discount for mobo/cpu purchased together you can get a really nice ASrock or ASUS motherboard for 2-15 dollars on top of a 60-70 dollar CPU, Frys has a 16GB kit of DDR3 ram for under 80, and they had the 8GB for 37. And most of those A88X motherboards and similar let you specify operations per SATA port. one IDE for boot then a bunch RAID for storage.

[Trik'Stari]

How many of the parts, aside from the CPU, do you currently have in hand? If you are going to be buying a lot of this stuff out of pocket there are actually some REALLY good deals through micro center that could let you build an AMD NAS from the ground up for dirt cheap. With the 40 dollar discount for mobo/cpu purchased together you can get a really nice ASrock or ASUS motherboard for 2-15 dollars on top of a 60-70 dollar CPU, Frys has a 16GB kit of DDR3 ram for under 80, and they had the 8GB for 37. And most of those A88X motherboards and similar let you specify operations per SATA port. one IDE for boot then a bunch RAID for storage.

I was actually considering doing that. I would assume that a decent AMD CPU would out-perform this ancient single core Pentium 4. I need to build a NAS for backing up three separate computers. And this Pentium looks to be a bigger pain in the ass than it's worth it. The motherboards available don't seem to really be that well equipped.

[HalGameGuru]

I was actually considering doing that. I would assume that a decent AMD CPU would out-perform this ancient single core Pentium 4. I need to build a NAS for backing up three separate computers. And this Pentium looks to be a bigger pain in the ass than it's worth it. The motherboards available don't seem to really be that well equipped.

Depending on the form factor and specs you want I have 3 different 88 series motherboards to recommend either on features or price. And MicroCenter will offer the 40 dollar discount on even the cheapest APU,

 

A6-7400K - $60

They have multiple 88 series motherboards for 65 after rebate, plus another 40 off with CPU for 25 total out of pocket, and if you can actually get TO a micro center when I went they had the ASrock FM2A88M-HD+ for $42 after instant savings and then 40 bucks off for the combo. TWO DOLLARS for a micro ATX motherboard.

Frys has promo code deals almost every day for RAM and such.

 

With a little shopping around within a week you should be able to cobble together a top flight NAS box for a fraction of the price of a bespoke box from QNAP or Synology.

[Trik'Stari]

Depending on the form factor and specs you want I have 3 different 88 series motherboards to recommend either on features or price. And MicroCenter will offer the 40 dollar discount on even the cheapest APU,

 

A6-7400K - $60

They have multiple 88 series motherboards for 65 after rebate, plus another 40 off with CPU for 25 total out of pocket, and if you can actually get TO a micro center when I went they had the ASrock FM2A88M-HD+ for $42 after instant savings and then 40 bucks off for the combo. TWO DOLLARS for a micro ATX motherboard.

Frys has promo code deals almost every day for RAM and such.

 

With a little shopping around within a week you should be able to cobble together a top flight NAS box for a fraction of the price of a bespoke box from QNAP or Synology.

Would the number of cores have any effect on the performance of a NAS?

 

I'm a bit skeptical of using an APU for a NAS. In my experience, the one I had wasn't very powerful, CPU wise.

[HalGameGuru]

Most bespoke NAS systems use Atom or equivalent processors, and FreeNAS boxes are manageable on anything P4/Athlon64 or better and anything Core2Duo/AthlonII or better is tops. You want to check the specific NAS system you will be using but for myself I find anything recent that is dual core or better, with at LEAST 4GB of RAM will do pretty well for file service.

[Trik'Stari]

Most bespoke NAS systems use Atom or equivalent processors, and FreeNAS boxes are manageable on anything P4/Athlon64 or better and anything Core2Duo/AthlonII or better is tops. You want to check the specific NAS system you will be using but for myself I find anything recent that is dual core or better, with at LEAST 4GB of RAM will do pretty well for file service.

All I want to do is backup the OS's, and files from three separate PC's. I'm doing this as a project so I can add it to my resume (lacking traditional experience, successful personal projects do count). I was planning on using FreeNas. So a simple dual core or quad core APU will suffice eh?

 

*finger pyramid of evil contemplation* Excellent.....

[HalGameGuru]

Yeah, I mean personally I'd be comfortable using anything Core2 or newer, so long as the motherboard supported enough SATA and RAID. The AMD ones of the 88 series chipset are often pretty robust on that side. My A88X-Pro from ASUS is full ATX but you have super configuration of every SATA port. For the price, especially with combo discounts and promo codes, you can build a decent midrange PC from scratch for chump change. 

[Trik'Stari]

Yeah, I mean personally I'd be comfortable using anything Core2 or newer, so long as the motherboard supported enough SATA and RAID. The AMD ones of the 88 series chipset are often pretty robust on that side. My A88X-Pro from ASUS is full ATX but you have super configuration of every SATA port. For the price, especially with combo discounts and promo codes, you can build a decent midrange PC from scratch for chump change. 

Is RAID really necessary for a NAS though?

[HalGameGuru]

Is RAID really necessary for a NAS though?

IT depends on how robust you want the data to be. As a plain backup with an extra copy on an external HDD and maybe an online backup as well, I personally wouldn't consider RAID a NECESSITY, if it's business related, if there needs to be robust data storage and redundancy, if you are wanting it to be a business class, or at the least a RETAIL product level solution. RAID at the very least for basic mirroring I would consider the minimum. Most any off the shelf NAS you would buy would be built to handle at least 2 drives with RAID

[Trik'Stari]

IT depends on how robust you want the data to be. As a plain backup with an extra copy on an external HDD and maybe an online backup as well, I personally wouldn't consider RAID a NECESSITY, if it's business related, if there needs to be robust data storage and redundancy, if you are wanting it to be a business class, or at the least a RETAIL product level solution. RAID at the very least for basic mirroring I would consider the minimum. Most any off the shelf NAS you would buy would be built to handle at least 2 drives with RAID

It's partially for business and school. I need to back up my PC, as wells as my moms work PC.

[HalGameGuru]

It's partially for business and school. I need to back up my PC, as wells as my moms work PC.

I'd definitely go for at least a mirrored RAID array then. Business data NEEDS to be redundant. And there should be AT LEAST the 3-2-1 rule followed for that. School credit I would assume RAID is expected.

[Trik'Stari]

I'd definitely go for at least a mirrored RAID array then. Business data NEEDS to be redundant. And there should be AT LEAST the 3-2-1 rule followed for that. School credit I would assume RAID is expected.

Well, she's never really used any kind of backup to begin with. She generally keeps copies of everything using Email (Gmail, so it's pretty safe). All she really needs to keep is the final report from the jobs she's done.

 

Mainly I'm worried about having to reinstall the Appraisal software she uses. It's proprietary and a GIGANTIC pain in the ass to install. Half of the time they try to get her to buy a new copy.

[HalGameGuru]

Only real way for that is a full system image. Lots of options for that, NAS or no.

[Trik'Stari]

Only real way for that is a full system image. Lots of options for that, NAS or no.

So the full system image would "reinstall" the OS, all programs, and files?

 

Interesting....I wonder if that would work on a system that's got multiple programs on multiple drives.

[HalGameGuru]

You'd need to definitely image the system drive, if the other drives survive you would not necessarily have to image them.

 

Windows has its own full system backup solution, Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, there a a million and one free options as well.

[Trik'Stari]

You'd need to definitely image the system drive, if the other drives survive you would not necessarily have to image them.

 

Windows has its own full system backup solution, Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, there a a million and one free options as well.

I've made backups with Windows before, but I never actually knew that a System Image would include the programs already installed on the system. That's really good to know.

 

Back to hardware. I was looking around Newegg, and I came across some embedded solutions that I was wondering about. Mainly Intel Celeron processors. While they only have two SATA ports on their motherboards, they include PCI-E ports, and I was thinking of going with one of them, combined with a PCI-E controller card (for more SATA ports) instead of buying a CPU and Mobo separately. Think that would be powerful enough?

 

Something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157513

[HalGameGuru]

Yeah that kind of setup would probably work fine. It may chug a little bit in certain scenarios but I doubt it would be noticeable. You may have a longer wait for reboots and initial response to remote in attempts though.