boy2litle

Thanks @Jarsky!!! You just saved me a good couple of hundreds of euros, cause now understand that I just wasted the whole day looking for some parts (Motherboard, CPU and RAM) to upgrade my NAS. Thank you once again. Very helpful your answer.

Even I will change gradually some HDDs and I will reach from 8TB, 64TB of total storage? What's the maximum amount of total storage that I can have using only 8GB of DDR3 RAM? Is there a formula/rule based on which you can find out?

I know that for each 1TB of storage space, you should have 1GB of RAM. Because I'm running Xpenology, that does it mean that if I want to upgrade my motherboard (MIH61R MB 10097-1) and the CPU (Intel Core i3-2100 3.1 GHz) most probably, will my NAS will still run perfectly? Will I have to reinstall it from zero? What will happen with the data on the HDDs, should they be wiped? At the moment my motherboard only supports max 8GB of DDR3 (and I already have 8TB of available storage and planing to upgrade some HDDs) will my NAS still work?

Only storing files, an maybe file editing (using Photoshop and Illustrator, cause I'm a Graphic Designer) direct on it, occasionally.

You've lost me. I'm a newbie, not sure what you mean with "random or sequential". Gigabit network speed.

The last issue that I have, is that I haven't found an answer to this post related to this NAS build.

@Electronics Wizardy thanks for your reply. I want to boost the reads/writes. Your answer was very helpful. Yes, in that case it looks that was a hardware problem, but I've experienced some situations when I lost my connection with my test Xpenology NAS a while ago. I've reinstalled the Xpenology DSM and it worked. But once I will have the real deal, not a test NAS, I won't be able to that all the time. What kind of issue did you encounter, or that you are aware? I was afraid about this answer. That means that you always have to have a spare copy of the NAS somewhere else, on some other NAS or on a external storage, or some external storage. Speaking of which, my NAS build will have probably a 8TB of storage in the end, and I also own a 8TB external storage, is there a way to mirror automatically this NAS to an external USB HDD? Where are located these config files? Are they not located on the OS files? In my mind, it should be, cause you create the HDD pool in both Xpenology or UnRAID, from the OS, and in there the OS should have a file where it does say how the HDDs are reconfigured. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Are there any speed differences in reads/writes if you choose to go with a HBA card vs SATA expansion card? It will be great if the LTT team will consider to make a video about this.

Forgot to mention, I will include in my build an 120GB Kingston SSD (SSDNOW 300 V). I know that is important to have a SDD for cache, not sure at this stage how to: - determine the right size for this HDD drive - if should be changed with a large one later on, when the storage on the NAS will increase - how you should set up this SSD in UnRAID or Xpenology, to be used as a cache drive Hope that you have more answers than me guys. Thanks in advance for your great help!!!

@Jarsky Thanks for taking time and reply to my post. Related to your question, yes, for sure I will look to have support, even though I will have an external USB 3.0, that I will try to mirror this NAS that will build (also I have to find a way to be done automatically). I know that the licence of the UnRAID is not free, if it worth it, for sure I'm looking to pay for it. My main concern with this build is that it look like, despite what way I will go, I can experience a lot of trouble. I've tried in the pay Xpenology, just to see how the OS looks and feels and if is user friendly. Only after a few days I lost the connectivity with this test NAS created by me. On the other hand, Jason, from "Bite My Bytes", a guy with a huge experience in IT and NAS systems, had a few days a lot of troubles with his NAS based on UnRAID, it suddenly stop working, video here. Also, when you build a NAS with UnRAID or Xpenology you should format the drives before, or can you keep the data on them. This question it might sound stupid, but what if my NAS it will stop working, in order to reinstall the OS, or go migrate from UnRAID to Xpenology, or the other way, or maybe I want to update the existing OS, should I recreate that pool, that UnRAID/SHR? Will it be need it to wipe the HDDs first? I've experienced in the past 2x2TB HDD in RAID 1 worked perfect, till one it stop being seen in Windows. I've fixed the problem, but now I've end up with to HDD seen in Windows and not be able to be in RAID 1, as previously. So I had to transfer the data, recreate the RAID1 and put the data back. Wasted days, not being able to work to wait to transfer the files. That was for only 2TB, imagine for 8, 12 TB or more. So that makes question, have problems, for example my USB pen drive with the OS will stop working, I want to update the OS, or I want to switch from Xpenology to UnRAID, or the orther way around, will I have to recreate my UnRAID, or my SHR, so should I transfer somehow my data somewhere safe, wipe the hard drives and after the UnRAID or SHR is (re)created transfer it back? Because of that I was thinking that should be my only two options, still don't know which one will help me to build a NAS and forget about it, only upgrade the HDDs from the time to time for a larger storage. It will be great to have a video in the future from LTT team about UnRAID vs Xpenology and why not vs FreeNAS. That is for me a huge plus, even though, I don't know how stable could be a NAS with Xpenology vs a NAS with UnRAID. As @Jarsky was suggesting, it seems that a UnRAID is faster, or can rebuild a replaced HDD faster. Thanks @BrandonS for your reply.

@GOTSpectrum thanks for your help and understanding. I'm new in here, and I'm still learning what, where and how things are working in here. Regards!

Hi guys, In this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAy9N1vX76o Linus is using 2 hba cards. I come across with this LTT video pretty recently. Because I've decided a while ago to build a NAS, I've thought to expand the number of SATA ports on my mother board, to use 2 x PCI-E to SATA3.0 Expansion Card Adapter (PCE8SAT-M01 8-Port PCI-E to SATA3.0 Expansion Card Adapter 6Gps PCI-E16X for Win). Now my question is: In a NAS, should we use SATA3.0 expansionn cards or HBA cards? Why should is choose one over the other. In what way the NAS effectiveness it will change? Thanks in advance!

Hi, I want to build a modest NAS (8TB or 12TB, if I will include the 500GB hard drives) from old pretty small capacity HDDs. MY PC PARTS for this NAS build: PROCESOR: Intel Core i3-2100 3.1 GHz (from DELL VOSTRO D11M) Alternative: Intel Core i7 860 MOTHERBOARD: MIH61R MB 10097-1 (from DELL, i3 proc.) Alternative: MICRO-STAR MS-7466 (from HP, i7 proc.) MEMORY: CRUCIAL 8GB (2X4GB) DDR3 1600 UDIMM CL11 POWER SOURCE: Corsair RM850, RM Series, 80 Plus Gold Certified, 850 W Alternative: ATX Switching Power Supply Model: ATX-500R HARD DRIVES = 500GB = Seagate ST3500418AS Seagate ST500DM002 Seagate ST3500312CS Seagate ST3500312CS Seagate ST3500312CS Wester Digital WD5000AADS = 1000GB = Seagate S1000DM003 = 2000GB = ST2000DM001 ST2000DM001 = 3000GB = HGST HUS724030ALA640 Seagate ST3000DM008 Question, what should be better to use Xpenology or UNRAID for such a NAS with this PC parts? This NAS it will be used only for personal use, storing personal files (photos, videos and some movies). Also I'm lost in zfs, unraid, raid 5, shr or beyondraid. Which one should I use for my situation? I'm considering to 2 HDD redundancy, in case that a maximum of 2 HDDs will fail at the same time. Thanks in advance for your help?

Hi guys, In the video Linus is using 2 hba cards. I come across with this LTT video pretty recently. Because I've decided a while ago to build a NAS, I've thought to expand the number of SATA ports on my mother board, to use 2 x PCI-E to SATA3.0 Expansion Card Adapter (PCE8SAT-M01 8-Port PCI-E to SATA3.0 Expansion Card Adapter 6Gps PCI-E16X for Win). Now my question is: In a NAS, should we use SATA3.0 exapanson cards or HBA cards? Why should is choose one over the other. In what way the NAS effectiveness it will change? Thanks in advance!