Free Nas Question

[reconninja33]

Hello,

I am planning to build a freenas box. The purpose of my box will be to store photos, and backup all my computers.The total storage i need is around 6tb, so i am planning to buy 3 3tb drives. I have 2 macs, and 3 windows computers, and will be creating a data set/share for the macs, and a data set/share for windows. I will be using time machine for the macs, and genie timeline pro for the windows. I want disaster recovery more than file storage. I also need photo storage, and miscellaneous file storage. 

 

I have planned out two seperate builds, a $500 and a $600 (this includes drives).

Build 1: 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VtbKYJ

CPU: AMD A4-6300 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($35.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Motherboard: ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard  ($71.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Mushkin ECO2 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($29.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Western Digital  3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.15 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital  3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.15 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital  3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.15 @ Amazon) 

Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 

Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ Newegg) 

Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter  ($25.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Other: sata cables ($7.95)

Total: $598.33

Build 2:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xHDqcf

CPU: AMD 5350 2.05Ghz Quad-Core Processor  ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Alpine M1 - Passive Fanless CPU Cooler  ($10.49 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: ASRock AM1B-ITX Mini ITX AM1 Motherboard  ($29.99 @ Micro Center) 

Memory: Mushkin ECO2 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($29.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($82.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($82.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($82.88 @ OutletPC) 

Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 

Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ Newegg) 

Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter  ($25.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Other: sata cables ($7.95)

Total: $507.02

 

The first build is more expandable, with 6 sata ports on the motherboard. Its also more powerful, and the main difference is that includes WD red drives.

The second build is less expandable, with 4 sata ports, and less powerful. The main difference is that it includes Seagate Barracuda drives. 

 

The Question:

Do i need wd red drives? Are they really necessary for freenas? The node 304 has anti vibration for the hard drives, so thats not a problem, but is it really necessary? I could save a hundred bucks and i doubt i will ever need the dependability of the first build.

 

Other Question:

Also, if i want to backup photos directly from an sd card instead of transferring them to my computer and then the nas, how would i do that? I saw on a prebuilt nas a feature that when you plugged in an sd card directly to the nas it automatically backed up the photos to a designated folder. How would i do this with freenas? Keep in mind that i'm a beginner, so i can't like write a command prompt or something.

 

I know that i don't have ecc. Thats a choice i made consciously because it would be way way more expensive to get a CPU and motherboard that support it. 

 

I am open to any suggestions for a nas build as long as its under $600 and has around the same amount of storage. (I am even open to buying a nas that doesn't have freenas, but the total price with drives should not excede $600).

 

Thanks for the help,

reconninja33

 

[Altecice]

If you plan to use FreeNAS (so ZFS) its an almost requirement to use ECC RAM from a data integrity point of view... No you dont need WD reds, I use WD greens and they are perfect.

[alpenwasser]

The Question:

Do i need wd red drives? Are they really necessary for freenas? The node 304 has anti vibration for the hard drives, so thats not a problem, but is it really necessary? I could save a hundred bucks and i doubt i will ever need the dependability of the first build.

The reliability is one thing (I'm not really sure how much better the Reds are than regular drives in that area to be honest). The more important thing (IMHO, at least) is TLER. Long story short: Desktop drive firmware is programmed in such a fashion that it can cause a RAID controller to think a drive is broken, and the controller can drop it from the array even though it is perfectly fine. If this happens to lots of your drive at once, that might nuke your entire pool.

Now, I'm honestly not 100% sure how ZFS handles this, but I do know of at least one person who's had this issue with software RAID (mdadm, to be precise) and WD Greens, so it's not just an issue for hardware RAID controllers. Depending on the software RAID implementation, that can be affected as well.

Still up to you, it might work fine with Greens or other desktop drives. Hell, most of the time it probably will work fine. But I think this info is good to know when making a decision.

 

I know that i don't have ecc. Thats a choice i made consciously because it would be way way more expensive to get a CPU and motherboard that support it.

 

You could also look into amahi and Openmediavault (there are lots of others, but those are the ones about which I've read quite a few positive things, and I'm currently playing around with OMV in a virtual machine to get to know it a bit), as an alternative to FreeNAS. They don't really require ECC. Openmediavault is based on Debian Linux, so it has a very solid base to build on (not that there's anything wrong with FreeBSD, the base for FreeNAS, as far as I know).

As for ZFS and ECC: It's not absolutely strictly needed. It can run fine. And depending on your data, the odd minute corruption might not be a big deal (say, a pixel in one frame of one of your movies has a different color, probably not that big of a deal). BUT: It could also corrupt your metadata, in which case your entire pool could be nuked. It probably won't, but from what I've been able to find out, it is a possibility (haven't personally suffered that fate, though I have recently done some experimenting with ZFS and corruption out of curiosity). That's personally what made me go with ECC RAM in my ZFS machine.

I'll be back and have a closer look at the hardware once I've had some sleep (rather late here atm).

[79wjd]

If you plan to use FreeNAS (so ZFS) its an almost requirement to use ECC RAM from a data integrity point of view... No you dont need WD reds, I use WD greens and they are perfect.

Check to see how many times your heads parked. Unless you disabled that functionality in Greens you're going to have a bad day. They're rated for around 300,000 parks, but if you don't disable that functionality you're going to find it significantly higher (My WD Green is at 1.2 million parks after 3.7 years whereas my WD Red is only at 4000~ parks after 6 months (about 30,000 in a 3.7 year period).

 

Open up the shell and type: smartctl -a /dev/adaX where X is the number of each drive and see what the start stop count (#4), power on hours (#9), power cycle count (#12), and load cycle count (i.e. head parks, #193).

 

@alpenwasser , I just wondered something based on something in a previous thread, is ECC beneficial without redundancy as well (ECC prevents the data corruption at another level?)? 

[reconninja33]

@alpenwasser, @Altecice

I know of people online who have not used ecc, and have been fine. How common are memory problems really? If it means spending another extra $150, i don't think its worth it considering most probably, theres a 99.9% chance that nothing will happen.

Both of you said that I should be fine without red drives, so i might go with the $500 option. But if ecc is really really necessary, can any of you recommend me some ecc compatible parts that can total to under $600 with the drives?

 

@djdwosk97

I haven't built the nas yet, so i can't really check that. Also, would seagate barracudas have the same problem? Also, i don't understand why parks are bad. Could you explain a bit more in depth?

[79wjd]

@alpenwasser, @Altecice

I know of people online who have not used ecc, and have been fine. How common are memory problems really? If it means spending another extra $150, i don't think its worth it considering most probably, theres a 99.9% chance that nothing will happen.

Both of you said that I should be fine without red drives, so i might go with the $500 option. But if ecc is really really necessary, can any of you recommend me some ecc compatible parts that can total to under $600 with the drives?

 

@djdwosk97

I haven't built the nas yet, so i can't really check that. Also, would seagate barracudas have the same problem? Also, i don't understand why parks are bad. Could you explain a bit more in depth?

I was referring to @Altecice in regards to his drives. 

 

Here's a good explanation of what I'm talking about, but here's the short and sweet version. WD Greens use a very aggressive parking scheme, which is fine in a desktop/archival environment where you're not likely to access the data constantly (i.e. when you're done accessing it, then you're likely done with the data), however in a server you'll find that you're constantly going to be accessing data. Say you're streaming a movie from the server, what will happen is the server will load 10 seconds into RAM, the drive will stop being accessed, its head will park and then 8 seconds later the head unparks and loads another 10 seconds into RAM (now obviously, that's a bit of an over simplification/exaggeration). Anyway, what ends up happening is you cause an extreme amount of parking (for more than in a normal situation -- and I've heard rumors where WD has basically refused to warranty a drive because the number of parks were ridiculously high -- because the drives were used in the incorrect environment). So head parking isn't really an issue on its own -- it becomes an issue as it affects the reliability of the drive more than anything else. Right now, my WD Green is basically a ticking time bomb with it's 1.2 million parks considering it's only rated at 300,000~. 

 

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hacking-wd-greens-and-reds-with-wdidle3-exe.18171/

 

As for the ECC thing, I just upgraded my server to ECC just these past few days, before that I was running for 6 months without ECC without any issues -- and truth be told, you probably wouldn't have any issues. But if your data is important, than ECC is a worthwhile investment in order to ensure the integrity of your data. I would try and buy some used hardware, I managed to find a Xeon E3 1230v2, a supermicro X9SCM-F, and 32gb of ECC memory for $350. But for something new I would be looking at this (without the drives): (or go with 8gb of RAM and save the $50~)

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($64.99 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: Supermicro X10SLL-F Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($139.99 @ Amazon) 

Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($99.99 @ Amazon) 

Total: $304.97

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-27 21:23 EST-0500

[alpenwasser]

Dammit, I really should be in bed. Last post for today.

Check to see how many times your heads parked. Unless you disabled that functionality in Greens you're going to have a bad day. They're rated for around 300,000 parks, but if you don't disable that functionality you're going to find it significantly higher (My WD Green is at 1.2 million parks after 3.7 years whereas my WD Red is only at 4000~ parks after 6 months (about 30,000 in a 3.7 year period).

 

Open up the shell and type: smartctl -a /dev/adaX where X is the number of each drive and see what the start stop count (#4), power on hours (#9), power cycle count (#12), and load cycle count (i.e. head parks, #193).

Funny thing is actually happening to me on that one: Some of my Reds are getting park counts in the hundreds of thousands as well for some reason, and I have absolutely not a clue as to why. Others are fine. And they even run the same firmware version. But not that much I can do about it I suppose.

And the extremely weird thing? My Greens are only at about 1,000 and about 2,000 park operations (while having about 20% of the power-on hours of the youngest WD Red which is suffering from the head parking issue).

@alpenwasser , I just wondered something based on something in a previous thread, is ECC beneficial without redundancy as well (ECC prevents the data corruption at another level?)?

Unless you've disabled checksumming, ZFS will still checksum and validate every block it reads. So if you read a block, calculate its checksum, then read the checksum from the drive and compare the two, and you get an error somewhere in there, might still lead to trouble. Hard to say what precisely will happen though.

 

 

@alpenwasser, @Altecice

I know of people online who have not used ecc, and have been fine. How common are memory problems really? If it means spending another extra $150, i don't think its worth it considering most probably, theres a 99.9% chance that nothing will happen.

Both of you said that I should be fine without red drives, so i might go with the $500 option. But if ecc is really really necessary, can any of you recommend me some ecc compatible parts that can total to under $600 with the drives?

Yeah, I know that most of the time it will be fine. I ran ZFS without ECC for more than a year as well, and I'm still running some secondary ZFS standalone disks without ECC (although the data's primary copy is stored on an ECC server).

Look at it this way:

risk = (probability of occurrence) × (amount of damage upon occurrence)

Most of the time it will be perfectly fine. And even when do you have an error, it might be in a non-important part of your pool. BUT: The potential damage is that you lose everything. The chances of that occurring are low, but they're non-zero, and the potential damage is huge (unless you have a backup of your stuff somewhere else, which you should have anyway I'd say, at least of the important stuff).

In the end, what you need to do is make a risk assessment, and then a decision. You have the relevant info, the rest is up to you.

@djdwosk97

I haven't built the nas yet, so i can't really check that. Also, would seagate barracudas have the same problem? Also, i don't understand why parks are bad. Could you explain a bit more in depth?

Most desktop drives would probably have that problem (on top of the TLER issue I mentioned above), although the extent of it may vary a lot. If the drive's power saving methods aren't too aggressive, it might not be that big of a deal. I have some Samsung desktop drives which have 42,000 power-on hours on them (though they don't give me a head park count unfortunately) and have been running fine since 2008 or so (*knock on wood*), a big proportion of which in 24/7 mode.

As for why this is an issue: The read/write head gets mechanically worn down a tiny bit each time they get parked, as far as I know. @Captain_WD might be able to give more reliable info on that one than my educated guess though.

[reconninja33]

@alpenwasser, @Altecice, @djdwosk97

i found this motherboard that supports ecc, is cheap, and supports a low power cheap amd processor (the 5000 series).

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-am1ma

 

The only drawback is it has 2 sata ports!!! How would i add more sata ports? Does freenas support that in any way? 

[79wjd]

Dammit, I really should be in bed. Last post for today.

Funny thing is actually happening to me on that one: Some of my Reds are getting park counts in the hundreds of thousands as well for some reason, and I have absolutely not a clue as to why. Others are fine. And they even run the same firmware version. But not that much I can do about it I suppose.

And the extremely weird thing? My Greens are only at about 1,000 and about 2,000 park operations (while having about 20% of the power-on hours of the youngest WD Red which is suffering from the head parking issue).

Unless you've disabled checksumming, ZFS will still checksum and validate every block it reads. So if you read a block, calculate its checksum, then read the checksum from the drive and compare the two, and you get an error somewhere in there, might still lead to trouble. Hard to say what precisely will happen though.

 

 

Yeah, I know that most of the time it will be fine. I ran ZFS without ECC for more than a year as well, and I'm still running some secondary ZFS standalone disks without ECC (although the data's primary copy is stored on an ECC server).

Look at it this way:

risk = (probability of occurrence) × (amount of damage upon occurrence)

Most of the time it will be perfectly fine. And even when do you have an error, it might be in a non-important part of your pool. BUT: The potential damage is that you lose everything. The chances of that occurring are low, but they're non-zero, and the potential damage is huge (unless you have a backup of your stuff somewhere else, which you should have anyway I'd say, at least of the important stuff).

In the end, what you need to do is make a risk assessment, and then a decision. You have the relevant info, the rest is up to you.

Most desktop drives would probably have that problem (on top of the TLER issue I mentioned above), although the extent of it may vary a lot. If the drive's power saving methods aren't too aggressive, it might not be that big of a deal. I have some Samsung desktop drives which have 42,000 power-on hours on them (though they don't give me a head park count unfortunately) and have been running fine since 2008 or so (*knock on wood*), a big proportion of which in 24/7 mode.

As for why this is an issue: The read/write head gets mechanically worn down a tiny bit each time they get parked, as far as I know. @Captain_WD might be able to give more reliable info on that one than my educated guess though.

 

Some of the WD Reds had the same parking bullshit that the Greens have. AFAIK WD stopped doing that and it's no longer and issue. But the wdidle firmware that works for WD Greens is also applicable to those WD Reds. Edit: I should have finished reading your sentence first  

Maybe it was on a hardware level and not just a firmware level, so you need to run wdidle....I don't know. 

 

As for the Green being better than the Red, different load pattern?

 

As far as I know, Barracuda's don't suffer from the headparking that WD Greens have, although I may be wrong. Lack of TLER would be my concern with desktop drives. 

 

And something like that -- it ultimately leads to a drive failure. 

[reconninja33]

To add on to this:

 

@alpenwasser, @Altecice, @djdwosk97

i found this motherboard that supports ecc, is cheap, and supports a low power cheap amd processor (the 5000 series).

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-am1ma

 

I would be looking at something like this:

 

CPU: AMD 5150 1.6GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($36.95 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Alpine M1 - Passive Fanless CPU Cooler  ($10.49 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: Asus AM1M-A Micro ATX AM1 Motherboard  ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Kingston 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($50.89 @ SuperBiiz) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($82.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($82.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($82.88 @ OutletPC) 

Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 

Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ Newegg) 

Other: sata cables ($7.95)

Total: $497.89

 

Or 

 

CPU: AMD 5150 1.6GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($36.95 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Alpine M1 - Passive Fanless CPU Cooler  ($10.49 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: Asus AM1M-A Micro ATX AM1 Motherboard  ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Kingston 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($50.89 @ SuperBiiz) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.88 @ OutletPC) 

Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 

Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ Newegg) 

Other: sata cables ($7.95)

Total: $572.89

 

PLUS the cost of a ad on sata card like this:

http://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-Controller-Non-Raid-SI-PEX40064/dp/B00AZ9T3OU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453948798&sr=8-1&keywords=sata+pcie+card

 

[79wjd]

@alpenwasser, @Altecice, @djdwosk97

i found this motherboard that supports ecc, is cheap, and supports a low power cheap amd processor (the 5000 series).

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-am1ma

 

The only drawback is it has 2 sata ports!!! How would i add more sata ports? Does freenas support that in any way? 

I wouldn't concern yourself with low power chips since your system will be idling at irrelevant power draws anyway. 

 

I have two points of inquiry about that board. First off, I know that the normal consumer Intel chipsets (h81, h87, q87, z87, z97, etc...) CAN support ECC but are unable to take advantage of ECC features -- For example, the Asrock H87-WS supports ECC memory but it will function as non-ECC, so I don't know if that's the same with AMD. Secondly, AMD is generally not recommended for FreeNAS, so I don't know if there may be some weird compatibility issues as AMD doesn't see a lot of testing. Also, for that build, I don't see any ECC memory on PCPP for that price -- are you sure that's ECC? I would personally go with a cheaper case -- something like an NZXT Source 210 (that's what I'm using personally), and put that money towards drives/a better cpu setup. 

 

As for adding more SATA ports, I've been using a SYBA SI-PEX40064 Sata controller card just fine with my WD 4tb Reds. It gave me an extra four sata ports (and you can add as many as you want basically) for only $20. 

 

 

Here's what I would try to aim for (I know it's over budget, sorry :unsure:): 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($64.99 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: Supermicro X10SLL-F Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($139.99 @ Amazon) 

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  ($54.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($109.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($109.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($109.99 @ Amazon) 

Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($37.62 @ Micro Center) 

Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($44.99 @ Amazon) 

Total: $672.55

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-27 21:44 EST-0500

[79wjd]

@reconninja33

I don't know if this interests you at all, but this is a pretty good deal: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/fs-supermicro-x8sil-f-lga-1156-bundle-noctua-u12dxi4.8299/#post-74729

Xeon X3450, Supermicro X9SIL-F, and 16gb (presumably ECC) DDR3 for $130. It's about the same cost as your 5150 build but quite a bit more powerful, uses server grade hardware, and gets you an extra 8gb of RAM. Of course you'd have to be okay with used hardware, but that's something only you could decide. (There are also probably other possibly better deals if you look long/hard enough, this is just one that I saw)

 

or if power is a big concern, then maybe pick up this guys Supermicro X9SCI-LN4F board for $80, pair it with an Ivy Bridge Pentium ($60~), and 8gb ECC DDR3 ($50~) and you basically have my above build at around $600. https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/x9-mobos-e3-e5-cpus-ecc-ram-and-chassis.8310/

[reconninja33]

@djdwosk97

i'm not comfortable with buying from a forum.

I saw someone online who used the 5150 and ecc, and their freenas box worked. But im still not entirely sure.

I like your build, but i want the case to be a bit more compact, and its 675. A bit over budget. 

I'll use the recommendation of the  SYBA SI-PEX40064 , and i'll do more research about the ecc thing.

[reconninja33]

@djdwosk97

i did the research. It seems to work!!

This means i can get ecc and be well within budget! 

Also, that ram is ecc. its unbuffered, but its 1 dim, so i can expand.

Any reccomendations for small micro atx cases? 

[reconninja33]

This is what i came up with:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/rL4MRB

 

CPU: AMD 5150 1.6GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($36.95 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Alpine M1 Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler  ($9.99 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: Asus AM1M-A Micro ATX AM1 Motherboard  ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory: Kingston 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($50.89 @ SuperBiiz) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.88 @ OutletPC) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($107.88 @ OutletPC) 

Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($44.99 @ Amazon) 

Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter  ($25.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Other: sata card ($31.98)

Total: $599.41

[79wjd]

@djdwosk97

i'm not comfortable with buying from a forum.

I saw someone online who used the 5150 and ecc, and their freenas box worked. But im still not entirely sure.

I like your build, but i want the case to be a bit more compact, and its 675. A bit over budget. 

I'll use the recommendation of the  SYBA SI-PEX40064 , and i'll do more research about the ecc thing.

For what it's worth I felt the same way, but I ended up buying my current config off of that forum about a week ago, and I got the system yesterday and it's been flying through stress tests the past 24 hours without any issues. Plus, paypal buyer protection is great -- you basically can't lose (as long as you make it clear -- and have him agree to it -- that the hardware is 100% compatible and functional). But I can completely understand not wanting to buy used. 

 

@djdwosk97

i did the research. It seems to work!!

This means i can get ecc and be well within budget! 

Also, that ram is ecc. its unbuffered, but its 1 dim, so i can expand.

Any reccomendations for small micro atx cases? 

Node 804?

[reconninja33]

@djdwosk97

Yeah, but it's close to a hundred bucks. I think your recommendation for the source 210 was better. I guess I'll have to live with the large case.

[79wjd]

@djdwosk97

Yeah, but it's close to a hundred bucks. I think your recommendation for the source 210 was better. I guess I'll have to live with the large case.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with your decision (I really wanted to go with an R4/R5 for my server as well, but couldn't rationalize spending the money since nothing is really gained by it -- my reasons for the R4/R5: Looks nicer (irrelevant), it would be easier/tidier to cable manage (irrelevant), it would feel more premium (again, irrelevant). The only valid reason I could come up with was the drive trays rather than screws, but I don't swap drives (so...irrelevant)). 

 

But before you make a purchase I would think long and hard about it. I ended up cheaping out on my desktop case (and going with an N200) only to end up buying a 350D like a month later. So while I would always prioritize hardware over a case, it's not necessarily advice I would follow myself (for a desktop).

[reconninja33]

@djdwosk97, @alpenwasser,

or, i could get this

http://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-431-Personal-Mobile-Support/dp/B00O3Y7E2G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1454039212&sr=8-3&keywords=nas+plex

supports everything i need, and its cheap. The only problem, it uses raid, so if use the three drives in raid 5, i would have the write loop or whatever thats called.

[79wjd]

@djdwosk97, @alpenwasser,

or, i could get this

http://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-431-Personal-Mobile-Support/dp/B00O3Y7E2G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1454039212&sr=8-3&keywords=nas+plex

supports everything i need, and its cheap. The only problem, it uses raid, so if use the three drives in raid 5, i would have the write loop or whatever thats called.

It's not really cheap though; it's more expensive than building something yourself.

 

A non-ECC system would run you like $215~ while an ECC system would be $330~.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Pentium G3260 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($63.15 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD2 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($39.99 @ Micro Center) 

Memory: Avexir Budget Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($27.99 @ Newegg) 

Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($37.62 @ Micro Center) 

Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($44.99 @ Amazon) 

Total: $213.74

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-29 00:19 EST-0500

[reconninja33]

@ djdwosk97

i still don't understand why i need the pentium and the super micro board. The asus am1 motherboard also supports ecc, so couldn't i just use that?

[79wjd]

@ djdwosk97

i still don't understand why i need the pentium and the super micro board. The asus am1 motherboard also supports ecc, so couldn't i just use that?

Yeah probably.

[reconninja33]

Yeah probably.

cool! Also, i have another question. I have a ssd hard drive setup with a ssd for boot and a hard drive for games. How would i backup both of them together using a backup software to a nas? And if i were to restore them, would they restore to one drive, or two seperate drives?

[79wjd]

cool! Also, i have another question. I have a ssd hard drive setup with a ssd for boot and a hard drive for games. How would i backup both of them together using a backup software to a nas? And if i were to restore them, would they restore to one drive, or two seperate drives?

I would say to back those up as two separate drive instead of one just to make restoring easier. 

[reconninja33]

@djdwosk97

Thanks. Also, could I do a one touch backup of an SD card/ camera plugged in via USB?