New NAS/Server, Old Components?

[Molex Mike]

Hello all, 

 

It's my first time building a NAS/ Server, and I'm looking for some guidance. 

 

I have some parts from a previous build that I'm hoping to repurpose, but I'm not sure if they are appropriate/ fulfill the criteria.  
Additionally, I'm not sure if the configuration I'm going for is even possible.

 

Criteria:

1. Three 4TB drives in a mirrored configuration. (Possibly two drives in RAID 1, with an air-gapped drive in a hot-swappable 5.25" bay rack, using a mechanical power switch to initiate syncing.)
2. Three 1TB drives in a mirrored configuration. (Similar hot-swappable arrangement as the drive array in criteria #1)
3. Secure Remote Access
4. Streaming / Casting content to compatible devices. (like how VLC media player can do with almost any local content)

 

Starting components:

• Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840 RC-KKN1-GP
• CPU: Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield Quad-Core 3.2 GHz LGA 1366
• Motherboard: ASUS P6T Delux V2 LGA 1366 Intel x58 ATX
• PSU: ZALMAN ZM850-HP 850W
• Air-gap Solution: Noise Isolation 5.25" Bay Hub with two 12V Mechanical Switches

 

Any and all input on the build would be much appreciated. 

 

Kind regards, 

- Mike

[Electronics Wizardy]

Reason why you want 1 and 4 tb drives? Id make one array of 8tb drives. There normally the best value when you get those external drives and remove the internal ones.

 

How about a few external hdds for the airgaped drives, then swap them offsite.

 

Look at plex for video streaming. 

 

Nextcloud should work well for good remote access.

 

Id get a small ssd for boot.

[Molex Mike]

On 6/5/2019 at 7:27 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Reason why you want 1 and 4 tb drives? Id make one array of 8tb drives. There normally the best value when you get those external drives and remove the internal ones.

 

How about a few external hdds for the airgaped drives, then swap them offsite.

 

Look at plex for video streaming. 

 

Nextcloud should work well for good remote access.

 

Id get a small ssd for boot.

I was going to use the 4TB drives for general content and 1TB drives for high value/ sensitive data. Using economic 4TB drives and archive quality 1TB drives.  But if that's a silly idea, I'm all ears.

 

Good idea on the external drives. They look much cheaper. I found this list of video guides for disassembling external drives which would come in handy.  Only question I have is are they in any way less reliable or lacking performance? Might do that for the general content drives and buy regular drives for the high value data drives. 

 

I want to try the 5.25" bay airgap racks because the motherboard lacks USB 3 and I'd like to use up the SATA ports and save the USB 3 expansion card ports. Also, the case has the room so I'd like to use it. And I like the idea of a physical button used to sync drives, like in this video. I would only need to take the hot-swap drives off site in the case of a hurricane (I live in Florida). 

 

Plex looks amazing. Really clean interface and flexibility that I always wanted for my library. 

 

Nextcloud looks great as well. 

 

And yes, small ssd for boot is planned. 

 

EDIT:

The motherboard has only six x SATA 3Gb/s ports...

Edited June 7, 2019 by Molex Mike

[Timotheus2]

Bigger external WD drives often contain white label drives. White label drives are similar to WD Red, but have the 3.3V Pin issue.

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 hours ago, Molex Mike said:

I was going to use the 4TB drives for general content and 1TB drives for high value/ sensitive data. Using economic 4TB drives and archive quality 1TB drives.  But if that's a silly idea, I'm all ears.

Id make a single array of bigger 8tb drives. I don't see a reason to have lots of smaller drives. And the archive drives aren't much different. 

 

12 hours ago, Molex Mike said:

high value data drives. 

 

What drives are you looking at? There really aren't drives that are much more reliable, so just build the system for failure.

 

12 hours ago, Molex Mike said:

ant to try the 5.25" bay airgap racks because the motherboard lacks USB 3 and I'd like to use up the SATA ports and save the USB 3 expansion card ports. Also, the case has the room so I'd like to use it. And I like the idea of a physical button used to sync drives, like in this video. I would only need to take the hot-swap drives off site in the case of a hurricane (I live in Florida). 

 

Really look into could options well, would probably be better here.

 

And that button is just a switch for the drive, might as well just pull the hot swap bay out a bit. I don't see the point.

 

 

 

[Molex Mike]

On 6/7/2019 at 2:36 AM, Timotheus2 said:

Bigger external WD drives often contain white label drives. White label drives are similar to WD Red, but have the 3.3V Pin issue.

Thanks for the heads up. Luckily the power supply I'm using doesn't seem to cause the issue, as it is recognized by my motherboard. However, my motherboard isn't recognizing the entire capacity of the 8TB drive (I bought one to test out first) and only sees it as 1.4TB. I'm guessing this because the motherboard doesn't support as large drives? I'm planning on purchasing an expansion card (like this one) anyway so hopefully this won't be an issue down the road. That said, I'm not sure if my motherboard will support that card.

 

On 6/7/2019 at 11:13 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id make a single array of bigger 8tb drives. I don't see a reason to have lots of smaller drives. And the archive drives aren't much different. 

 

I'm going to start with the 8TB array. I wanted to have a separate array that I could do backups and take off site more often as that data (family videos and pictures, etc.) is priceless and I would like to swap copies of it often. Likely would integrate cloud with this, but I want a very full proof way of backing up this data. 

 

On 6/7/2019 at 11:13 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

And that button is just a switch for the drive, might as well just pull the hot swap bay out a bit. I don't see the point. 

Part of it is I want to be able to leave the drives in the hot swap bay but without power, so essentially air gapping them against the data on the other drives in case they are compromised. And the other part is I think it would be fun to have a button. I like the idea of making a hobby type task out of it regardless of the ultimate practicality.