Building NAS For Father <Need Advice>

[ItWasEnder]

Hello everybody. I am building a NAS for my dad and the budget is 300$ and was wondering if this is good, the original idea was to get a RAID controller but because we are going to have a 2 or 3 drives. This is the first nas I ever tried to compile and I barely know anything about making a NAS system.
 

RAID 1 with 2 drives a 3rd hot swap.

RAID 10 with 4 drives

 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Qg6bM8
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Qg6bM8/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($50.69 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: ASRock - H170M-ITX/DL Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($80.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Crucial - 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($33.98 @ Directron) 
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($66.89 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($66.89 @ OutletPC) 
Case: Cooler Master - Elite 110 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($38.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Power Supply: Rosewill - 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.99 @ Amazon) 
Other: RockStor - NAS Manager ($0.00)
Total: $368.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-08-19 00:11 EDT-0400

 

P.S. If you can suggest a way to make this setup cheaper or if you find a cheap pre-made NAS it would be very helpful.

 

Edited August 21, 2017 by EnderGaming
Not using raid 01 alright...

[MDRZ_040]

You are going to need a case. Anything that can support your setup and compact will be fine. I recommend the CM Elite 110. Also for that amount of drives, you don't need a raid card, the on board RAID on the motherboard will be fine. Also, if you are planning to run in RAID 10 then the 4 2TB option for drives is not going to be very cost effective. 2 4TB drives in RAID 1 will be a lot better cost-wise. Note that the Case will not work with 4 drives so you will need a different case if you are sticking with the RAID 10 setup.

[ItWasEnder]

9 minutes ago, MDRZ_040 said:

You are going to need a case. Anything that can support your setup and compact will be fine. I recommend the CM Elite 110. Also for that amount of drives, you don't need a raid card, the on board RAID on the motherboard will be fine. Also, if you are planning to run in RAID 10 then the 4 2TB option for drives is not going to be very cost effective. 2 4TB drives in RAID 1 will be a lot better cost-wise. Note that the Case will not work with 4 drives so you will need a different case if you are sticking with the RAID 10 setup.

I had a case on the list but I guess it dissappeared it was that case also  so yeah

Also Im not talking about raid 10 I'm talking about 0+1

[richardthecool]

I think you forgot a case there, I would recommend the Thermaltake Core V1 Extreme mini ITX cube, you can probably drop the Raid Card since you only have 2 drives running in RAID 1 and instead invest in a hot-swap hard drive bay, though it isn't really needed. Finally, you might want to buy a third cheap hard drive to use as a boot drive

[ItWasEnder]

2 minutes ago, richardthecool said:

I think you forgot a case there, I would recommend the Thermaltake Core V1 Extreme mini ITX cube, you can probably drop the Raid Card since you only have 2 drives running in RAID 1 and instead invest in a hot-swap hard drive bay, though it isn't really needed. Finally, you might want to buy a third cheap hard drive to use as a boot drive

Also I'm on a 300$ budget

[richardthecool]

Just now, EnderGaming said:

Also I'm on a 300$ budget

Yes I know, I just noticed your comment about the case not appearing for some reason, so you can ignore what I said about the case, but you don't really need the RAID card and just run it off the motherboard and instead invest some of that in the hot swap bay (which is only $8 more, and again, it's not REALLY needed) and you can easily find a cheap mechanical hard drive on the internet you can use as a boot drive

[ItWasEnder]

1 minute ago, richardthecool said:

Yes I know, I just noticed your comment about the case not appearing for some reason, so you can ignore what I said about the case, but you don't really need the RAID card and just run it off the motherboard and instead invest some of that in the hot swap bay (which is only $8 more, and again, it's not REALLY needed) and you can easily find a cheap mechanical hard drive on the internet you can use as a boot drive

The nas is machanical drives and the budget is pretty much maxed out and I wasn't getting the controller it was just the first idea that I had. Thanks for your answer though.

[ItWasEnder]

So If anyone have any way you can make this any chaper but still hae equal to better praformance it would be aweomse

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, EnderGaming said:

So If anyone have any way you can make this any chaper but still hae equal to better praformance it would be aweomse

grab a old core 2 duo or newer machine and use that as you base. if you can get a new psu, grab 4- 3tb hdd and then run something like freenas. run raid5 (ZFS equvilent is raidz1)

[ItWasEnder]

28 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

grab a old core 2 duo or newer machine and use that as you base. if you can get a new psu, grab 4- 3tb hdd and then run something like freenas. run raid5 (ZFS equvilent is raidz1)

Ok we found a core dou @ 2.93 4gb of RAM wich should be enough for a NAS but might upgrade the ram to DDR4 or upgrade the MOBO and PSU

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, EnderGaming said:

Ok we found a core dou @ 2.93 4gb of RAM wich should be enough for a NAS but might upgrade the ram to DDR4 or upgrade the MOBO and PSU

you can't change the gen of DDR. 4gb is fine. 

[ItWasEnder]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

you can't change the gen of DDR. 4gb is fine. 

well IDk if the board has RAID support, thats why I might through on a board that can support ddr4

[GDRRiley]

Just now, EnderGaming said:

well IDk if the board has RAID support

your OS can do it. 

[ItWasEnder]

15 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

your OS can do it. 

OS? You mean RockStor??? Bc IDK the board were buying. And if the board doesnt have enough sata connectors I have to buy a riad controller. But when we get it I'll update this threa probably to say what were working with

So follow the thread lol

Edited August 19, 2017 by EnderGaming
Follow the thread ;)

[computer1up]

On 19-8-2017 at 7:37 AM, EnderGaming said:

well IDk if the board has RAID support, thats why I might through on a board that can support ddr4

You're not really making sense here. If you're going for a Core 2 Duo build, you'll probably be stuck with DDR2, or DDR3 at best. Like GDRRiley said, the number at the end of DDR(X) is the generation of the RAM. You can only install DDR4 if your motherboard has DDR4 compatibility, and NO motherboards with LGA775 (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium D etc. ) have that. 

 

Core 2 Duo's are relatively capable, at least capable enough for a basic RAID machine. However, they're not very power-efficient and it uses older technology in general. The latter doesn't really matter, but the first one might be rather important. Why save a few bucks now, when you have to pay more on your electricity bill at the end of the year? More than with an efficient system, that is. 

 

I'd recommend looking at motherboards with dual-core Celeron's or even Pentiums onboard (not a socket system, but with soldered on processors). Most of the time, these are passively cooled and rather efficient and will perform about equal to the Core 2 Duo systems when the main goal is to build a NAS. Also, if you go for simple 2TB drives only, I'd recommend just looking at prebuilt NAS-systems from the likes of Synology, QNAP or Western Digital, as they most often offer a much more streamlined NAS experience, in a much more compact form factor and less points-of-failure. If you've got a 300 bucks to spend on a NAS, you can get quite a nice model, like this one: Synology DS216J on Amazon.com. This is a 2-bay model, with plenty of budget left for harddrives. Synology offers quite a nice NAS-interface and they're often easy to use. I've got a DS213air on my desk here, and it's been rock-solid as a simple home storage solution. There's also support for quite a few add-ons, a download interface to manage your downloads and put them straight on your storage, and a QuickConnect system that makes it very easy to access your files from anywhere, similar to Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive but hosted on your own hardware. 

 

I was thinking about building my own NAS too, but ended up buying this Synology for really cheap in a sale. If you have little NAS-experience, this would be a lot safer to do than building one, where individual components might fail, software might be funky and limited support. Don't get me wrong, self-built NAS's can be worthwhile if you have specific requirements, like heavy video transcoding or serving a large number of people.   

[dalekphalm]

On 19/08/2017 at 0:06 AM, EnderGaming said:

I had a case on the list but I guess it dissappeared it was that case also  so yeah

Also Im not talking about raid 10 I'm talking about 0+1

Okay, my first question:

 

Why the hell are you using RAID 01 over RAID 10?

 

There are essentially no benefits of using RAID 01, as far as I can tell, over RAID 10. It has lower fault tolerance (potentially - really depends on risk setup) and the same performance as RAID 10. Perhaps there are some very specific, very niche benefits, but I cannot think of any.

 

Also, you cannot do RAID 10 or 01 with only 2 disks. You'd need a minimum of 4 or 3, depending on your chosen RAID level.

 

If you end up going with 2 drives, just do a simple RAID 1 mirror.

 

If you end up going with 3 drives? Don't - just get a fourth drive and either RAID 10 or RAID 5, depending on fault tolerance/capacity/performance needed. (RAID 5 will have better theoretical read speeds, but worse write speeds due to the parity hit, worse fault tolerance since only one disk can die, and finally, better capacity since you only lose 1 drive instead of 2).

 

I'm just super confused as to why you specifically want RAID 01.

 

As for your hardware choices? They seem totally fine. I've never used RockStor OS, but I've heard nice enough things about it.

[ItWasEnder]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Okay, my first question:

 

Why the hell are you using RAID 01 over RAID 10?

 

There are essentially no benefits of using RAID 01, as far as I can tell, over RAID 10. It has lower fault tolerance (potentially - really depends on risk setup) and the same performance as RAID 10. Perhaps there are some very specific, very niche benefits, but I cannot think of any.

 

Also, you cannot do RAID 10 or 01 with only 2 disks. You'd need a minimum of 4 or 3, depending on your chosen RAID level.

 

If you end up going with 2 drives, just do a simple RAID 1 mirror.

 

If you end up going with 3 drives? Don't - just get a fourth drive and either RAID 10 or RAID 5, depending on fault tolerance/capacity/performance needed. (RAID 5 will have better theoretical read speeds, but worse write speeds due to the parity hit, worse fault tolerance since only one disk can die, and finally, better capacity since you only lose 1 drive instead of 2).

 

I'm just super confused as to why you specifically want RAID 01.

 

As for your hardware choices? They seem totally fine. I've never used RockStor OS, but I've heard nice enough things about it.

For you I see your point and I was only taking about raid 01 because I am pretty sure the case I found only has space for 3 3.5" drives and an ssd slot. And I will take all this infor into account and correct the page. Thank you.

[ItWasEnder]

2 hours ago, computer1up said:

You're not really making sense here. If you're going for a Core 2 Duo build, you'll probably be stuck with DDR2, or DDR3 at best. Like GDRRiley said, the number at the end of DDR(X) is the generation of the RAM. You can only install DDR4 if your motherboard has DDR4 compatibility, and NO motherboards with LGA775 (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium D etc. ) have that. 

 

Core 2 Duo's are relatively capable, at least capable enough for a basic RAID machine. However, they're not very power-efficient and it uses older technology in general. The latter doesn't really matter, but the first one might be rather important. Why save a few bucks now, when you have to pay more on your electricity bill at the end of the year? More than with an efficient system, that is. 

 

I'd recommend looking at motherboards with dual-core Celeron's or even Pentiums onboard (not a socket system, but with soldered on processors). Most of the time, these are passively cooled and rather efficient and will perform about equal to the Core 2 Duo systems when the main goal is to build a NAS. Also, if you go for simple 2TB drives only, I'd recommend just looking at prebuilt NAS-systems from the likes of Synology, QNAP or Western Digital, as they most often offer a much more streamlined NAS experience, in a much more compact form factor and less points-of-failure. If you've got a 300 bucks to spend on a NAS, you can get quite a nice model, like this one: Synology DS216J on Amazon.com. This is a 2-bay model, with plenty of budget left for harddrives. Synology offers quite a nice NAS-interface and they're often easy to use. I've got a DS213air on my desk here, and it's been rock-solid as a simple home storage solution. There's also support for quite a few add-ons, a download interface to manage your downloads and put them straight on your storage, and a QuickConnect system that makes it very easy to access your files from anywhere, similar to Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive but hosted on your own hardware. 

 

I was thinking about building my own NAS too, but ended up buying this Synology for really cheap in a sale. If you have little NAS-experience, this would be a lot safer to do than building one, where individual components might fail, software might be funky and limited support. Don't get me wrong, self-built NAS's can be worthwhile if you have specific requirements, like heavy video transcoding or serving a large number of people.   

As for you, If we buy that pre-made with 2 slots off of Amazon I'll change the thread. But idk if he got a pre-made core 2 duo  or not. But with thone solutions is it possible install our own os?

Edited August 21, 2017 by EnderGaming
Question

[computer1up]

There are no pre-made Core 2 Duo NAS's as far as I know, at least not currently available. I think you'd be wiser NOT to go with a C2D. 

[ItWasEnder]

Just now, computer1up said:

There are no pre-made Core 2 Duo NAS's as far as I know, at least not currently available. I think you'd be wiser NOT to go with a C2D. 

No I'm not talk8ng about buying a NAS c2d I'm talking about a cheap prepaid made pc we found on ebay

[computer1up]

Just now, EnderGaming said:

No I'm not talk8ng about buying a NAS c2d I'm talking about a cheap prepaid made pc we found on ebay

Definitely stay away from those for a NAS build. Not the most reliable hardware in terms of PSU, and brand specific hardware all over the place. Go with something newer. 

[computer1up]

3 minutes ago, EnderGaming said:

As for you, If we buy that pre-made with 2 slots off of Amazon I'll change the thread. But idk if he got a pre-made core 2 duo  or not. But with thone solutions is it possible install our own os?

No, that wouldn't be possible. At least not AFAIK. But if you're going for a simple file server anyway, you don't NEED anything better than that. 

[ItWasEnder]

1 minute ago, computer1up said:

Definitely stay away from those for a NAS build. Not the most reliable hardware in terms of PSU, and brand specific hardware all over the place. Go with something newer. 

I saw an i3 on there also for 10 bucks more

[computer1up]

Just now, EnderGaming said:

I saw an i3 on there also for 10 bucks more

I mean don't do normal prebuilt PC's at all for a NAS....

Trust me, it's not a good idea. If the PSU fails, you'd need to find something that has the right connectors if it has got weird ones. They generally don't have a lot of room for harddrives and stuff like that. 

[Salacious B Crum]

I just finished my build and used an old pre built HP Envy with a i7 6700 and 16gigs of DDR4 a total of 5 drives using unRAID but I'm using NAS drives I would think those drives you chose at 7200rpm might see a lot of heat unless the os has a good gui with the option of spin down not familiar with that os but I guess it should be able to do that.