Building a NAS cheap....

[john.weland]

Well I found this http://www.amazon.com/Synology-America-DiskStation-Attached-DS414slim/dp/B00KXQD7WY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431525745&sr=8-1&keywords=synology+ds414slimand it's awesome but spendy. 

I have a slew of sata drives sitting around my house sata2 (or maybe 3). 4 of them in the 2.5" form factor and 2 in 3.5" I decided that maybe building a budget NAS to use them would be a good way to keep my wife from making me throw them away. I like the idea of the NAS being super small like the one in my link and while I would LOVE to have all the bells and whistles on dual gigabit ethernet etc. I don't really need it. I was thinking a little frankenstein machine even with an add on board I'm not sure the Pi2 would be quite enough... but maybe. 

Any thoughts or guidance is always appreciated.

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP

 

my nas is just a basic Pentium g3220 and motherboard - something like that in a small ITX case should be efficient and fast enough for any file tasks you can throw at it

[john.weland]

my nas is just a basic Pentium g3220 and motherboard - something like that in a small ITX case should be efficient and fast enough for any file tasks you can throw at it

This all started as she was complaining that I have all these spare parts, while I was backing up the desktop to drop in a new SSD in place of some old drives and I realized she has about 20 GB of pictures alone. I've got 1.5 TB of drive space between the 2.5" drives and another TB in 3.5"

[Eniqmatic]

What are you going to keep on it? How important will the data be?

[ShadowCaptain]

This all started as she was complaining that I have all these spare parts, while I was backing up the desktop to drop in a new SSD in place of some old drives and I realized she has about 20 GB of pictures alone. I've got 1.5 TB of drive space between the 2.5" drives and another TB in 3.5"

 

hmm you can create a nas from random drives but you are best if you can set up some sort of RAID, potentially with a drive as an external back up too

 

depends how secure you want it to be and how important your data is

[john.weland]

What are you going to keep on it? How important will the data be?

pictures and music, that work of stuff

 

hmm you can create a nas from random drives but you are best if you can set up some sort of RAID, potentially with a drive as an external back up too

 

depends how secure you want it to be and how important your data is

well I mean I could do a raid across tree drives maybe 2 for storage one for parity. 

[ShadowCaptain]

pictures and music, that work of stuff

 

well I mean I could do a raid across tree drives maybe 2 for storage one for parity. 

 

Sounds like a good idea, even a simple RAID 1 array across two drives is a massive improvement  - and maybe put one drive in an external enclosure and every month do a backup of the server  and keep that drive stored in a separate location or safe or something

 

Ive lost data, its a rough experiance 

[john.weland]

I mean again I would love to have a real NAS setup, maybe some sort of plex server or something and of course a real network lol but yeah... baby steps. 

[Eniqmatic]

If you're not keeping critical data on it, why not build an ITX system for less than that enclosure, running FreeNAS and capable of running Plex?

 

You won't get ECC support at the same/less money than that but if you turn scrubs off and you make backups of it, then why not?

[john.weland]

If you're not keeping critical data on it, why not build an ITX system for less than that enclosure, running FreeNAS and capable of running Plex?

 

You won't get ECC support at the same/less money than that but if you turn scrubs off and you make backups of it, then why not?

Oh I agree. but I'd like somethign smaller those ITX board and incloases are still about the size of... a game cube or something right? 12" cubed or so.  

[Eniqmatic]

Oh I agree. but I'd like somethign smaller those ITX board and incloases are still about the size of... a game cube or something right? 12" cubed or so.  

Yeah, but what would you prefer? It would save you having to spend again when you upgrade or whatever next time. Just think about all your options is all I'm saying, then no matter what choice you make you will be happy!