need help with home server planning

MammothJerk · February 4, 2015

OK so i have been interested in making a home server/personal cloud/NAS thingy

What i would like to be able to do is keep a backup of my desktop and a backup of my laptop on it, as well as keep a lot of storage on it (such as anime, manga, movies, music) and have it be accessible over the net to use when im out and about.

i bought a RN104 netgear NAS about a year ago to try and fulfill some of these and it has been nothing but a headache just not working and being slow.

I have got an old gaming computer that i bought pre-built a few years back where the power supply is busted but i thought i might be able to salvage some parts (or if i can just keep it as is and buy a new PSU)

specs of old computer are as follows

~~Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.93GHz~~

~~4GB DDR2 RAM @ 800MHz~~

~~Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR Mobo~~

1GB AMD Radeon HD 5750

I'm going to need a new mobo, new CPU, and approx ~~32gb~~16gb of ram for 8x3TB drives in raid 1 for FreeNAS to work(if i understand it correctly)

All of this in a Define R4 which still looks and works great so at least the case could be kept the same

i want at least 8 drives in RAID 1 for redundancy (already got 4 WD reds so ill just buy 4 more)

would i need a raid card for that? if so, any reccomendations?

i hear getting an intel ethernet card is a good investment? would getting one improve my performance compared to the one built in to my mobo?

My router is a DIR-865L wireless AC router, is it good enough for this sort of connection or should i get a new router?

The software ive been looking into like FreeNAS and Plex media server as well as ownCloud seems like the services to use, any comments/recommendations on this part?

if anything is unclear please tell me and i'll try to clarify, if wrong section please move =)