DIY Nas Advice

[SphinxPhoenix]

So my Synology DS 218play died on me last week. Fortunately i was able take one of the drives out of it to copy all data to it so i still have a backup (i even mirrored it to the other drive i had in the Synology nas). Both drives survived.

But now i need a new nas and because i was not really happy with the feature set of the Synology box anyway. I have an old Lenovo ThinkStation C20 lying around that i intend to use for my diy nas.

 

The specs for the Thinkstation are as follows:

CPU: Xeon W3550

Ram: 6Gb DDR3

GPU: Dell Radeon HD 6350

Psu: 625W

 

I also have the two drives out of the old nas which are Seagate IronWolf Pro 16Tb (ST16000NE000) drives. I also have two WD Red 4Tb (WD40EFRX) drives that i have no use for currently which id like to put in there as well. And last i have a WD 250Gb (WD2500JS) lying around that could maybe be used for the OS?

I know that i want to buy a 1Gbit network card because the network chip of the Lenovo motherboard is only a 10/100 chip.

I will also need to buy a Lsi raid card in IT mode to use it as a HBA if i understand correctly and an external drive caddy if i want to use more than 5 drives because the lenovo motherboard only has 5 Sata ports.

 

My biggest question is with which operating system i should be going with.

I am already familiar with DSM which can apparently be installed on diy nas boxes as well. I liked beeing able to setup shares for family members and the phone apps.

I am going to use this nas as a backup and media server for my htpc and my phone when i'm on the go.

I am willing to go with a different os that has the same or a better featureset.

I also thought about setting up a Plex server on the nas instead of using the buil in functions of dsm.

I also want to know if the CPU can handle a 4k BluRay transcode to somthing like 1080p for mobile streaming.

 

I am happy to hear your ideas and suggestions!