Simpel Storage Homeserver

[ALN118]

Hi Guys

 

I think about building  / buying a Homeserver just for Storage.

 

I Wanna use Raid 1 and different not matching HDD´s ( I have 1x3 TB 1X2TB and 2X1TB HDD´s) and may wanna add some more ...

 

Also it should be Powersaving 

 

What would be the Easiest and Cheapest way to do it ?

[SMURG]

Grab an Intel Atom mini-ITX board and build the system around that :)

[Bradleywh]

I started out with a mini itx Motherboard with a AMD apu with the built in graphics. I would then go for a nice raid card maybe a LSI one. You should invest in this as its a really an important part of any storage system. A good efficient PSU is also a must As you don't want it to be a power Hog.

 

what sort of price were you looking at? I could put you a simple spec together and then you could alter the Case ETC to you likes.

[ProGearUk]

I think get a low end i3 or i5 on an itx board and get a case such as the node 304 from Fractal Design and build the server around that. 

[wpirobotbuilder]

Hi Guys

I think about building / buying a Homeserver just for Storage.

I Wanna use Raid 1 and different not matching HDD´s ( I have 1x3 TB 1X2TB and 2X1TB HDD´s) and may wanna add some more ...

Also it should be Powersaving

What would be the Easiest and Cheapest way to do it ?

Do you have a computer that you don't use anymore? Use that as the server. Toss Windows 8 on it and use Storage Spaces to pool multiple drives. I wouldn't recommend Windows Home Server V1 as it isn't supported anymore.

If you have an older computer but not enough drive slots in your case, then you need to determine how many you might need. You've got four drives right now, plus you'll need a boot drive (SSD recommended!).

 

I think... get a case such as the node 304 from Fractal Design and build the server around that.

The 304 is a great small form factor case, but you will need a Mini-ITX motherboard, which has far fewer SKUs on the AMD side than on the Intel side. Intel tends to be more power efficient, but also more expensive (in general). If you go this route, I'd recommend getting the ASUS P8H77-I motherboard because it has 6 SATA connectors as well as a low-power Ivy Bridge Celeron or Pentium. If you absolutely need the integrated GPU and horsepower of either of the Ivy Bridge i3 processors (say, for media streaming), then get one of them, but for simple file storage, a Celeron/Pentium is all you need. Celeron is the cheapest by far at $50, while the i3 will be closer to $120.

If you don't care about size, then you can go with a Micro-ATX or ATX motherboard and get a larger variety of case options as well as platform choices. If you want lots of storage, then you can go with the Silverstone GD-08 for up to ten 3.5 inch drives and two 2.5 inch drives. If you want silence, then go with either the Fractal Design Define Mini or Define R4, which have 6 and 8 drive bays, respectively. With Micro-ATX and ATX you can find boards with more than 6 drives on them to use Storage Spaces. If you need more drives than the board supports you could buy a cheap controller card or an inexpensive RAID card, although I'd recommend upgrading your hard drives to larger capacity ones before doing so. If you could fill five 4TB drives then I'd be impressed.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces 

Fractal Design Node 304: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352027&Tpk=node%20304&IsVirtualParent=1

Ivy Bridge Celeron: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116889

Ivy Bridge Pentium: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116886

Silverstone GD-08: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163196&Tpk=silverstone%20gd-08&IsVirtualParent=1

Fractal Design Define Mini: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352011&Tpk=define%20mini&IsVirtualParent=1

Fractal Design Define R4: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352020

[SMURG]

I started out with a mini itx Motherboard with a AMD apu with the built in graphics. I would then go for a nice raid card maybe a LSI one. You should invest in this as its a really an important part of any storage system. A good efficient PSU is also a must As you don't want it to be a power Hog.

 

what sort of price were you looking at? I could put you a simple spec together and then you could alter the Case ETC to you likes.

APU is overkill for a NAS, especially if u want power efficiency. An LSI RAID card is nice, but again, overkill for a NAS (unless you have the money to throw at it) since Intel has matrix firmware RAID capability onboard which will be more than adequate for RAID 1 since there's no parity calculations for the CPU to do like with RAID 5.

He asked for cheapest way to do it, so that rules the LSI card out straight away.

[ALN118]

I think i will go with a 

Intel® Celeron® Processor G465

 

ASUS P8H77-I, Mainboard

 

2GB ram

 

32GB SSD

 

What Powersupply would you buy ?

[SMURG]

I think i will go with a 

Intel® Celeron® Processor G465

 

ASUS P8H77-I, Mainboard

 

2GB ram

 

32GB SSD

 

What Powersupply would you buy ?

Looks good to me - as for a PSU, about the only limiting factor you might need to look out for is SATA power connectors, unless you buy a case with a backplane for HDDs and an included PSU, since these usually allow you to power a lot of harddrives from a smaller-than-usual PSU, since in such cases the assumption is that your main power draw is going to be drives rather than processors etc.

[wpirobotbuilder]

I think i will go with a 

Intel® Celeron® Processor G465

 

ASUS P8H77-I, Mainboard

 

2GB ram

 

32GB SSD

 

What Powersupply would you buy ?

I'd increase that SSD to 64 GB, since the OS install is quite large and you'll be left with almost no space left on the drive to install applications. If you can afford the RAM I'd get 4 GB so you can turn off your page file, which will make the system a little snappier. Plus things tend to run better with more memory.

 

Power supply recommendation (6 SATA ports, 80+ Bronze, active PFC) right here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151074. This will keep wasteful power down and make your system on the whole more efficient.

 

What case are you thinking about using?

[ALN118]

I'd increase that SSD to 64 GB, since the OS install is quite large and you'll be left with almost no space left on the drive to install applications. If you can afford the RAM I'd get 4 GB so you can turn off your page file, which will make the system a little snappier. Plus things tend to run better with more memory.

 

Power supply recommendation (6 SATA ports, 80+ Bronze, active PFC) right here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151074. This will keep wasteful power down and make your system on the whole more efficient.

 

What case are you thinking about using?

You are right i added 64 GB SSD and 4 GB Ram 

 

I think i will go with a Fractal Design Define Mini it has enough space for me and it is small and quiet.

[adhisakti]

If you just use it for storage, consider using unRAID OS. You can throw any drive with any capacity, flexible to upgrade, don't need any hardware RAID card. Easy to recover when something wrong happened like damaged array or more than 1 drive failure.

[wpirobotbuilder]

 

You are right i added 64 GB SSD and 4 GB Ram 

 

I think i will go with a Fractal Design Define Mini it has enough space for me and it is small and quiet.

 

Don't forget to post it in the build log section when you start working on it.