nature11

You see, that is what I have been doing till now. I have over 5 External HDDs that i carry around with me. However, the problem is that 2 of those have failed over these last few years, which is most likely because they have been roughed up from being carried around so much. That's why, I want to have one big data storage in complete safety of home, so at least my old data will remain protected to most extent. And as for the data I need with me, I still have 3 External HDDs to use for immediate access, and I can update the NAS when i go back. Also about putting new files on NAS, I wonder if it is possible to use as a Remote system, to which I can download directly instead of uploading from my location at a different place. By using Teamviewer or VNC server. Would that work?

Eitherway, thanks. I will check out all these options. Will update in future.

Thanks man, this has been quite troubling as I completely confused about the motherboard and such. This is of great, I will keep this in mind. If the price difference between the two types of s too much, I will probably end up consulting a local dealer as to which motherboard will work but let's see. I am still investigating about this stuff, so I should not mess up in future... Unfortunately, that will be an another expense that I am not sure I will be afford in the beginning. However, maybe in future I might be able to add something like this depending on the availability and afforadbility. There is also that, the case I am opting for is pretty cheap, so I guess I don't mind if there are too many wires inside. Though will having too many wires affect the performance? The price difference between a dual core and Quad Core CPU isn't much so I will most likely Opt for Quad Core as it will provide longevity and an little extra power. Price deference between AMD Athlon and Ryzen 3 3rd Generation that I can see is about 30 Pounds. That is affordable. Especially with the money I will save from the Raid 5 setup I talked about in earlier post. FreeNas is free man, the whole thing ended right there. I don't mind the difficulty and few hours of frustration. Have to make do with what we have. But in future, when I can afford, I most probably go for a simpler solution of unRAID, so let's see. I will be sure to ask for more advice then. And you have saved me another few bucks, Thanks! I will setup using a Pen Drive for now then, especially since I am most likely the only user as no one else will really use it (No one is tech savvy enough in family to pitch in : /). Though I do not trust Pen Drives anymore after my last fiasco...but it still lasted me for 4-5 years, so I guess it will be all fine. You see, the NAS will sit at my home (Parent's home), and since I won't be living there for most of the time. I will be streaming it on my other devices over the internet. In india Mobile Data and even Wifi (FIber and such) have data caps. Mobile data caps around 1.5 to 2 GB per day with a normal pack. Whereas Wifi broadband that i can afford right now gives around 100 GB. So Direct play is not a choice at all, as it will suck the data like an Airplane toilet. So trans-coding become a necessity, especially on mobile data. As I travel around a lot, Smart phone becomes my primary method of consuming media. Though Kodi is like an alternative to Plex? I need to check that out. Thanks for your help man. Let me know if there is anything else you think I should keep in mind.

I am not much aware of the differences within the unRaid, but I guess that is something I will learn with time, when I start setting it up. And like I said in last post free is the s**t. I am willing to suffer a bit to save some bucks. However, thanks, I shall be preparing for the battle ahead, then.

You see, considering my budget constraint, I was thinking of buying 8 or 10tb hard disks, as that way I can fit more storage space in the PC Case in future. The one am current looking at has seven 3.5 Inch bays. And the 2 Drive initial setup, with 1 has Raid was due to budget constraints, since these two hard disks alone will cost more than the whole system. However, if I am doing a Raid 5, then I will probably be buying at least three 6tb drives....... I just checked the details and it seems Raid 5 will give me the best ang for my buck. 3 6tb drives will get me 12 tb of storage with good redundancy for now! And I will save some bucks as well! However, that leads me to an important question. Let's say I setup a Raid 5 initially, can I convert it to Raid 6 in future to make it even more secure? Would that be possible? Or is that a complicated process? Most likely Freenas, I rather use those 60 bucks in buy another hard disk than to make my life a little more comfortable. . OpenMediaVault can be an option, however that depends on when I am making the system, let's see. And will ECC memory make a great difference? I have not exactly been able to tell them apart while I was making the build, so I am bit confused about that. Please guide me to any source where I can learn. Also, really thanks for the Raid 5 idea, that will help me save quite a lot while loosing only one bay for now. I will have ample time to upgrade in future, with this much storage.

Will keep that in mind, and I am also guessing that Server PSUs might be a bit more expensive as well. I will probably end up taking help from a local dealer who can help me with compatible parts. So I don't think I will have a problem with that. Especially since Servers are not really available and those which are are far too out of budget. Thanks!

I am looking for redundancy so I will most likely go with unRAID. Then would it work if I start with 8 GB or RAM and upgrade when there is a need? I heard in one of LTT's videos or some article that AMD Processors work better with two ram chips instead of one? Won't using one 8Gb Ram affect the performance of the system? And how can I differentiate between Server PSUs and Desktop PSUs? Would it be written in their names? Or is their any information I should be looking out for? Thanks!

I have looked into servers on ebay and I just checked the ones from Newegg.com. Unfortunately, like I said in my last post, ebay is not an option, as the delivery fee can go upwards of 6,000 INR (60 Pounds), in addition to that is the problem of Custom duty, there is no fixed rate as to how much the Custom Department will charge. It can be just 50 Pounds or it can be half or even equal to the price of the product I am getting delivered. India's Custom Department is basically fucked, otherwise, I would have ordered a refurbished Ipad Pro from America and saved a ton of money, but now I am worried if they will charge even half of it's price and it will end up costing much more. . So ebay and foreign websites, which don't have a subsidiary in India are not really an option. There is a good chance that they will end up costing more. Also my long term goal is to set up a Raid 10, I will be beginning with Raid 1 then to 3 and Hopefully reach Raid 10 with time. In the build in the earlier, post I have two 8TB harddisks to set up Raid 1 for now, with 8TB of usable space. What exactly is a raid card? When I was looking for HBA Card it also popped up. Are they similar? What exactly are their functions? Can you guide me in a direction where I can find out this information? Unfortunately, I am trying to reduce my dependency on external hard disks, they make my work space too cluttered. Carrying around those 6 Harddisks has been a great hassle. I recently bought a Raspberry Pi to make a torrent box and got introduced to the Samba Share. I feel so stupid for not knowing this till now. However, that is a comfort and ease I want with my system. I will be setting up the NAS at my parent's home which is my nest to return to when I am done going around other places and stuff. So Plex and Transcoding is going to be important. My main goal with this NAS is to budget build and ease of use and comfort. Right now the build I came up with is around 40,000 INR (420 Pounds) which is affordable to an extent, without the hard disks at least. The Next option I am looking out for is the used PC's being sold on Used products websites like OLX and such, if i can find a good one there, I might go with that and save some bucks. Thanks for the help, man! If you got any more advice for me, don't hold back!

You see, I have been using external hard disks for last 6 years or so. That's how i have been managing, but i have to travel a lot, so i used to carry those drives with me. These were mostly 4 tb WD passport and such. I am guessing that being carried around in bags, roughed up over the years also added to shorter life span. That's why my first and foremost desire is to get a online network station, that I can access from everywhere. And since it will be mostly media, Movies, Anime (Especially Anime), music and photos. None of it isn't really that i cannot download again, it will take a long time, but it will not be too big of a problem. Especially since once I have a bigger storage, i can actually download the proper HD stuff instead of settling down trans-coded low quality fake 720p (For anime.). A 24 episodes show can be over 40 gb and some span into 200gb or more, but because there was only a limited number of hard disks that i can carry with me, and access. A NAS will be a great relief for that, as i will be able to access these shows whenever I need and from anywhere. Through plex or just a direct stream. As for backup, it is once again budget constraint. I learned from my past mistakes and have kept my most important data (Documents) on various cloud services and backed up at many places. The Collection of Movie and Anime is important in regard that if the file is too big, it will eat up a lot of my internet data (It is capped) so that can add to bills. That's why NAS is my primary choice for convenience of no longer carrying around 5 or 6 hard disks (One was which needed external power source, a terrible experience every time i have to go through Airport Security check.) However, my degree is about to end and I will finally begin earning, so a backup machine in future is easily a possibility, since I will be financially comfortable. (Especially I want to buy an Ipad Pro this year ) Yes, We can consider it a fresh start of building my Anime collection once again, I once had to delete my all my full blu-ray quality downloads and replace them with 250 mb and such rips of 720p due to storage limitations. But Now I am hoping to go big and create a long term collection. I checked the Hard disk prices, they are pretty much the same as UK, so that won't be a problem. That is something that I have suffered from too much to skimp on that part. About this, I am hoping to use the NAS as a torrent Box/Downloaded as well. Then would the Dual Core CPU will be enough for that? SSD will not be too much of a problem, it is around 3700 INR that is 40 Pound. I can afford that easily, since it will make it run much smoother. (USB Drive man, my worst experience. I thought a USB has no movable parts and such so it will not crash and burn and used to keep all my important documents on a HP pen-drive. And then i got burned, got burned so bad. It happened around 2 years ago and even now I am trying to recover those damaged documents, used all kinds of data recovery software, still lost at least 15 % of my stories. That really hurt back then and even now it burns. ) Unfortunately that case is not available in India . This is the closest budget one I could find with 8 - 3.5 bays. Do Check it out. I made a build according to the specifications you provided. Have a look - Type Item Price CPU AMD ATHLON 200GE APU Series Desktop Processor YD200GC6FBBOX 4,050 INR or AMD Ryzen 3 3200G with Radeon Vega 8 Graphics 3rd Gen Desktop Processor YD3200C5FHBOX 7,750 INR CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED CPU Coolers RR-212L-16PR-R1 3,000 INR SSD WD Blue M.2 250GB SSD WDS250G2B0B 3,700 INR RAM Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3600MHz C18 Memory Kit 8,011 INR HDD Seagate IronWolf (NAS) 8TB 3.5″ SATA 6Gb/s Hard Disk ST8000VN004 x 2 (For now) 40,300 INR Case Antec P101SILENT Silent Mid-Tower PC Cabinet 7,650 INR PSU CORSAIR RM Series RM650 650 Watt 80 PLUS Gold Certified Fully Modular PSU 9,050 INR --------------------------------- TOTAL Athlon Processor 75,761 INR or £ 796 Ryzen 3 Processor 79,461 INR or £ 834 I wonder if Ryzen 3 3rd Generation will help in trans-coding and longevity of the system. The difference in price between the two processor isn't much either. So if there is a chance that I can much better performance than Ryzen 3 I would prefer to go with that since I am hoping for it to last couple of years before i need to upgrade. Anyway, the most costly thing in the end are the HDDs and that is an unavoidable cost. Also, how do I check if a particular motherboard will work with a particular Processor and other components? That part have been quite confusing. What exactly is the HBA card? I tried looking it up, but I still don't have any concrete idea of what exactly it is. I am sorry, man, I am a noob when it comes PC builds and the intricacies, so most of those terms just went went over my head . But I guess I will investigate more about that. And no ebay here, the original site got shutdown last year or so and now you can only buy stuff from other countries, and if you buy anything from there, most of the time shipping cost is more than the product itself. We have a fucked up custom duty system as well, so it is a mess. They can charge you nothing or double the price of the item if they so wish. No rules and regulations. So ebay is not an option. Will there be any loss of not having an HBA card? I tried looking it up on Amazon, but the site is not working under lockdown and such. And thanks for help man! You went through so much effort and it cleared out many things for me as well. Do check out the built i made and let me know.

Thank you! Will update when i finally build the system!

That will make it much few bucks cheaper, but a good idea. I will look into it! But won't it affect Plex Transcoding? My Mistake, I meant at least 10 tb (2 10 tb drives to setup raid right away) of storage as I start building the system. I see, if it will survive on I-gpu alone, i can save quite a bit, and it will give me the option to add gpu later. Though my only worry at this point is, what will happen to Plex Transcoding.

Yes, right now I am looking for a used desktop. But in India, NAS is not popular at all, i could barely find 4 YouTube videos from Indian You-tubers regarding it. Most of the PC for sale have 2-3 drive capacity. As for Ebay, Indian Ebay website closed down XD and now it only imports stuff from other countries, which applies custom duty, hence expensive so not an option. That's why I would like to ask about the specification of such a pc to build my Home Server. The ones I am think of right now is - CPU - Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 (Depending on the price if the difference is lest 20 USD i will opt for better one) Motherboard- This I am not sure of, as to what kind of motherboard is best for making a NAS. What i need and what should i look out for? Storage - Beginning with 10 gb with raid (10 gb should be avialable for storage) Graphics Card - Would it be needed for a small system like mine. If I do, which one will be the best. Ram- I think 16 gig would be enough Power supply - A 550 Watt? Is there anything else I need? And If I messed up somewhere, feel free to correct it.

Yes, I need Transcoding. Especially because of the internet data caps and Device limitations of Smartphones and Ipad. However, I will most probably won't go over 1080p. But I would like for the 1080p videos to play very smoothly.

I just checked the difference between the two. You see the problem I mostly face is drive failure. The data I want to store on my NAS is mainly Movies and Anime. Not something that someone would steal and even if it gets corrupted, that part is not a big deal as there is always some recoverable data. However, what I am most afraid of is complete drive failure. As it means I can't recover anything and have to build my collection from scratch, and that's something I want to avoid. It will be the third time now, after all. However, I understand where you are coming from. And i believe I can still setup a back up after setting up a raid system. So for now, I want to go with that.

Those not interested in the little backstory, please skip to the Bold words, later in the post. Hello from India. I have been using external hardisks to store my Movie and Anime Collection, and a hp pen drive to store my extremely important documents. Little to say, in last 5 years, I have two failed Hardisks, one from Seagate and one from WD, as well as my HP Pen drive (A heartache since it had my notes of written stories, over 200 of them, i lost at least 1/6th or something). I learned my lesson and moved on to Google drive, one drive and others for my documents. However, I recently lost another hardrive of anime. A collection, i took over 3 years to build. Unfortunately NAS was out of budget as drives and the NAS boxes from Synology are too overpriced in India, especially for a student like me. However, after loosing 2 of 5 drives, I have decided to build a NAS to prevent further heartache. However, budget is a constraint. Things I want from my NAS build. 1. Best possible redundancy (I don't want to loose data ever again if possible.) 2. Which OS will provide the best option for No. 1 3. Hardware- upgradable (For longevity of the gig) and storage- scalable on later time (Due to Budget constraints) 4. Plex Server at 1080p max (Since the internet connection is barely 50 mbps to 100 mbps. With monthly data limits of 100 gb most of the time. A higher resolution system doesn't make sense. Even this only make sense since mostly I will be the only user.) 5. Budget friendly - Important - Still a student, so budget is tight. I will be happy with a base system that i can take my time upgrading as I get more money. 6. Good Initial storage size - I currently have 3 working hard disks - a total of 10 tb. Data that is left with me is around 6 tb. So I am hoping for an initial storage capacity of 16 to 20 Tb. Limitations on my end. 1. Mainly Internet connection can only afford that 50 to 100 mbps connection with data cap. 2. Budget as spoke above. Thanks in advance and sorry I have broken any guidelines. First time here.