AidanJMessenger

UPDATE 2 I've managed to somehow use 4TB in the last year since upgrading, so I've had to upgrade yet again. Unfortunately, I was wrong in thinking that you could easy add 2 more drives to a raid z and have it automatically expand. Instead, I had to add another 3x3tb drives, in another raid z to expand the volume. Have to learn these things somehow! I went with 3TB WD Blue drives for $164 NZD each. A total of $492 NZD, or ~$340USD. So the upgrade costed more than expected, but ah well. I plan on eventually building some form of backup solution, at which point I'll backup all the data, and reconfigure the disks in either a raidz or raidz2 and then copy all the data back to it. For now however, this solution is sufficient and provided me with an additional 6TB of storage. I also upgraded the boot drive from an old 8gb flash drive I bought in 2008 for $80 (I have no idea how this thing is still working), and replaced it with 2x8GB USB 3.0 drives which are mirrored. The web UI environment for freenas is certainly much snappier now which is good. It was slowly getting slower and slower and I wanted to replace the boot drive before it died. Even though the process of a fresh reinstall was intimidating, restoring from the small config backup file actually put everything back exactly the way it was beforehand, so the upgrade was actually a breeze. Also recently upgraded to 16GB of ram, taking advantage of my friend visiting America and bringing back some stuff for me. Server is much happier with the 16gb of ram in there! My cache drive has been removed, as i only have 6 sata ports and now have 6 hard drives. I don't mind, given that it didn't seem to have any affect for me at all anyway and was basically going to waste. My server hardware is now as follows: Hardware CASE: Zalman Z1 PSU: Some cheap thing I salvaged. (I really need to upgrade this. Unfortunately power supplies are a huge rip off in NZ) MB: Gigabyte B85M-D3H CPU: Intel Core i3 4130 3.4Ghz HS: Stock Intel heatsink RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333 HDD 1: 3x 3TB WD Green WD30EZRX (Main RAIDZ Array) HDD 2: 3x3TB WD Blue WD30EZRZ (also in a raidz array) Software, Configuration & Usage: My server is running Freenas, with the 3x3TB drives in one RAIDZ array, and another 3x3TB drives in another RAIDZ array, with 11.5TB of usable storage after redundancy and formatting, and 18TB of raw storage. 500GB of this volume is dedicated to time machine backups for the 2 MacBooks and my main Hackintsoh. The server is running plex to manage all my media and lets me stream it throughout the house, and I also share it with a few of my friends. I've recently set up Sonarr to automatically download my TV shows, and couch potato to download movies automatically for me. These download using SabNZBD mainly to take advantage of my 100mbps (hopefully soon to be 200/200) connection, and also transmission for torrents. I also have Syncthing running to sync files locally to my laptop and hackintosh so I don't need to rely on always being connected to my network to access some of my important files. Backup: No current backup. Currently looking into either building a backup solution (potentially a raspberry pi with a couple large external HDDs, or something else with faster networking capabilities), or potentially crashplan. Though I've been unsuccessful at setting up crashplan thus far. Additional info: When I first built this server in 2013, I had it running windows server, with 2x1TB drives in Raid 0. I was using some cheap ASrock board, and a pentium G2020. The server ran great, and the G2020 handled transcoding really well - I never noticed any hiccups. However when I upgraded, I wanted to replace the boot drive (an old 250GB drive I'd salvaged), with a 64GB SSD. When trying to clone the old drive to the new SSD, I accidentally wiped the boot drive, and had to figure something out. I decided to try Freenas. I installed windows 8, moved my data to an external, sourced an old 1TB green drive from an old external drive my dad no longer used, and set up freenas. I now had a 64GB SSD to do something with, so I decided to use it as a cache. The server has come a long way since then. With now 18TB of raw storage, 16GB of ram, an i3 and mirrored boot drives. I have all of this set up in the "server wardrobe", aka the wardrobe in my "office". I have no new interesting pictures of the server itself (you can see old ones in my previous post here. However here is an image of the server "wardrobe" as a spoiler: I do however, have a picture of the closet in case anybody is interested. I also aquired a very ancient UPS which I'm using for fun. However unfortunately it's from the 90s and only has a serial port, and cannot get it to work with freenas and a serial to USB adapter. But that's fine. Not really necessary anyway. My router is a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 which I love to bits. Used to have 3 different access points around the house. Since then moved into a smaller house and just bought a single fantastic router. I regret nothing, I'm getting the best speeds ever. I get 130MBPS down, 25MBPS up. I pay for 100/20 (and with the stock ISP router, that's all I used to get). You may also notice the raspberry pi on top of the server. If you're interested this is currently being used to automate the lighting in my house, and is used to control my lighting with amazon dash buttons. I may also end moving it elsewhere and using it as a backup server for the main server, and attach a couple external HDDs. This solution would be quite cheap, but would be quite slow with only USB 2.0 and 100mbps ethernet. Total Raw Capacity: 18TB Total Formatted Capacity: 11.5TB

Ideally, I would get my mother an Apple TV For christmas, because she loves watching a ton of movies and tv shows, but the current raspberry pi I setup for her is a little clunky. However they unfortunately aren't available on amazon anymore Since the apple TV likely therefore isn't an option, I would buy my best friend a NAS, because he's a photographer and videographer etc but isn't a big techie and has a ton of photos and videos taking up a lot of storage, but it's all spread out over a bunch of external hard drives or over a bunch of separate old computers, and he's got almost no space left. Link Here.

Username: AidanJMessenger Favourite videos: The 10Gb netowkring / server video. SO COOL! https://www.vessel.com/videos/LCoY5zfFf and this: https://www.vessel.com/videos/G-DUjgUyYDRROOOOOL! You guys are awesome! Keep it up LTT!

A repeater and an extender are two words for the same thing usually. Those are devices which connect wirelessly to your existing AP, and repeat the signal to get it to travel further. Personally, I'm not a fan of this solution as it would half the amount of throughput. The best solution is to have an ethernet cable go to a second AP at the other end of the house where signal is weak, and have the AP's settings all the same as the other one so it's all the same network. But that probably isn't ideal for you as running a cable isn't always possible. As for the different brands, these days they typically all work together fairly well. Assuming they support something like WDS. You can usually google specific models for more info on compatibility.

That would depend how the LEDs are configured. You could only control them via the BIOS if they were plugged into the motherboard some how. If they're plugged directly into the power supply via something like molex, you could buy some sort of adapter which would allow you to control the brightness. Personally I'm not a fan of PC lighting, as it just ends up irritating me and is always far too bright.

They're talking about 970s, not 290s. 290 is an AMD card, 970 is an NVIDIA card. the 970 is 1 step down from the 980, but by buying 2 of the lower 970 cards, you would get more performance than a single 980 for a similar price. HOwever, this only works if buying 2 GTX970 cards is actually a similar price to buying a single 980 in your country.

That's a really solid build. Will be more than capable of everything you want it to do and you will definitely be happy. I'll be jealous

That is true. But I like to be safe just in case. Some things work perfectly, some don't. If your LAN doesn't work, then you're kinda screwed haha.

Yeah there is a PB tech here in Hamilton, but when I've gone in I haven't been able to play around with the switches or anything. And their selection is crappy... basically just a couple of CM keyboards usually. Plus I use MacOSX (don't hate), so ideally I'd like a keyboard with a command key.... which limits my options even further. But 'el well. One day, when I have the money.

Fair enough. I too am currently looking into some form of backup solution for my freenas. I was considering crashplan, because they're quite cheap and have freenas integration. My upload speed is only 10mbps (soon to be 20mbps when I upgrade), however I noticed crashplan does this cool thing where they'll actually send you some hard drives, you transfer your data onto them and send them back, and they put it on the cloud. Far faster. You can also do this to restore too. Pretty cool feature really. It's too bad they don't make a single drive that would fit all your data. You have to choice but to do some sort of RAID. Either like a RAID 0 of 2x4TB drives or, 3x4tb drives or 3x3tb drives. The lack of security when it comes to RAID 0 doesn't really matter too much when it's just a backup. You could just take the RAID 5 and make it a RAID6 for the extra security.... but it still won't help if the raid itself corrupts. There is always the option of just buying perhaps 2x4TB external USB drives and instead of RAIDing them, just set certain things to go on each drive. I don't know how you have everything set up so I'm not sure how much of a Hassle that sort of set up would be. Why is it that backing up a large (but not too large) amount of data is so hard

If the computer is already running on windows 8.1 and you just want to install a fresh windows 8.1, you won't have any compatibility issues. You will however, need to make sure you find the motherboard / computer's drivers online, and download them first and stick them on a flash drive or something, so after you've re-installed windows you can install all the drivers and insure everything is working correctly.

When I first built a computer many years ago, I didn't install motherboard standoffs. I couldn't figure out why the computer wouldn't turn on, and why it was just making a ticking sound (The sound of a spark, think of the sound a gas stove top makes when you try to light it). I was super stressed because it wasn't my computer, it was a build for someone else. Thankfully I took it all out, installed the standoffs and everything was fine. PHEW!

I really want to switch to a mechanical keyboard since everyone raves about them. However, they're so expensive here in NZ, and I'd really like to try it out / have a play around with it and see what the keys feel like before I buy it.... Which isn't a possibility here 'El well. One day I'll join the Mechanical Keyboard cool kids

I would probably suggest the Pentium.... It may only be 2 cores but it is a solid little processor that is easily capable of performing well with the 750Ti. Personally I'm just not a fan of buying old stuff, I typically prefer to buy new. Unless it's a really solid deal. But the G3258 would likely lasy longer than a second hand Q6600. Plus, then you have to find a motherboard for the Q6600 etc. The H81M-E you've written above should work with the pentium.