Pondering on a storage Server PC

[Danial]

Hello   

 

I had recently built my brother a compact home theater PC, and his father was there before I constructed it (We have different dads) and he proposed to me that if I built the PC for my brother and it went smoothly he would consider investing $2000 for me to find a server storage solution. He wants to move away from all the separate external hdd/s and have a more centralized and accessible storage. I had a look at a few 8 and 12 bay Nas systems, but they seemed like they were less bang for buck, pretty much put me off them altogether. So I started looking at alternatives like windows home server 2011 in a Full ATX case anything that could fit the hardware. I would at least be comfortable configuring and have fun doing it. My only problem is I have no experience with multiple drive configurations, I wasn't sure if I could use the software RAID or if I would need a Raid controller. Or if 4tb drives would work in a software raid or on controllers.

 

I was just wondering if any or you guys could help me out with some info or suggestions please, it would be much appreciated? :lol:

 

My location is Australia , brisbane

Budget $2000

[alpenwasser]

My only problem is I have no experience with multiple drive configurations, I wasn't sure if I could use the software RAID or if I would need a Raid controller. Or if 4tb drives would work in a software raid or on controllers.

How much storage space will you be needing? You do not need a RAID controller card

as long as you don't have too many drives to attach to your M/B. There are actually

a few Z87 boards which have 10 SATA ports, which will get you pretty far.

The problem with a dedicated controller is that those controllers which will actually

offer you substantial advantages over such a M/B are quite expensive and would likely

eat up a significant amount of your budget. So for 2000 $ I would recommend a good M/B

with enough SATA ports.

Any modern controller should be able to handle 4 TB drives without a problem, be it

a M/B or a dedicated card.

A decent M/B should allow you to run a hardware RAID setup off of its controller, but

you don't usually get to use all ports for this (the Z87 chipset has 6 ports, and a

M/B with 10 ports will then use an additional chipset for the other 4 ports, and AFAIK

you can't combine all those 10 into one single RAID array, although I think you could

make two separate ones if you wanted to), so software RAID might be more appropriate

for your budget.

I don't get much experience with Windows these days (personally I run Linux with a ZFS

setup), but maybe FlexRAID is something you might want to look into (ask @looney about it).