Help building a NAS

SpRaY · July 3, 2013

Hello guys,

I'm not new to computer hardware, but would like some advice in building a NAS.

Here's what I already have:

2x 2GB DDR2 memory (from an old computer, probably can't use it anyway)

Hard drives

SeaSonic Gold PSU (~320W, don't remember exactly)

And here's what I need help with:

Buying a good, but as cheap as possible m-ATX board with integrated CPU to keep the power consumption low.

I was looking at Intel BLKD2500HN, but I'm pretty sure there are better ones out there in the same price range. This board also has only 2 SATA ports, which means I would have to buy a PCI SATA card.

snkmoorthy · July 3, 2013

The simplest of NAS is a storage device connected to a processor running programs (media server/ FTP...) exposed through the network;

Right now you can buy a router(wired or wirelesss) which has a USB(2.0 or 3.0) host interface and just plugin an external HDD and you basically have a NAS.

There are many WiFi enabled drives which are network accessible, just for storage and media playback.

If your requirement is complicated than that then look for:

a NAS RAID system, from a 'BIOS RAID aka fake RAID' or run FreeNAS(software RAID) or Linux + mdadm/dmraid(software RAID)

or

dedicated PCI-E RAID card with 4 or 8 ports of SAS/SATA and an OS

SpRaY · July 3, 2013

I have a router with a USB port, but that is way too slow.

I need a dedicated machine, where I could store my backups from main machines and also set up some services (web server for local development, etc.), so the router is out of the picture unfortunately.

So yes, I still need advice in buying a good motherboard for NAS. :)