Recommendations for NAS hardware

[RileyTheFox]

Hello. I'm thinking of making a NAS for my family so we can pop our photos, videos and other family stuff (memories etc, you get what I mean) so we don't have to have our Dad's external drive connected to our computers. I know we could just copy but I also want to drop my YouTube videos and streams on there so I can use my 2 drives in my PC for other things (I'll find a use for it) Also, the second drive in my PC isn't even 200GB as it was used in a PC that ran a Pentium 4 with some other bad hardware. I'm looking to get 3 1TB drives which will be put into a RAID Array when I setup FreeNAS (I'm using FreeNAS for the software). I'll probably get an ITX board with at least 4-5 SATA ports (So I can add drives later on if I want). All I want to know is some advice on what CPU to get (I don't need anything too fancy) and a decent ITX motherboard. I need a case with about 5 drive bays so I can put the drives in. I will be using a USB drive (probably a spare 32GB I have one lying around) to run FreeNAS on. Also, will I be able to shutdown and boot the NAS whenever I want? I don't want it running through the night while all of us are asleep or while we're out of the house as we don't need it (it'll just waste electricity and there is a possibility of a power cut to kill everything) Another thing, should I get ECC memory or just go with normal memory (forgot to mention, will 8GB of memory be fine?)

 

Thank you for reading and I appreciate your suggestions.

[paddy-stone]

Better IMO to get an HP proliant server or similar that already has everything you need except drives... bought mine for approx £100 after cashback, and then added 2*3TB drives... I don't bother with RAID, doesn't bring anything to the party, it's not a backup solution, as if the box dies your RAID array dies also, no chance of getting the data easily if at all. Better to just get 1*3TB drive and use a USB drive as backup.

[RileyTheFox]

4 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Better IMO to get an HP proliant server or similar that already has everything you need except drives... bought mine for approx £100 after cashback, and then added 2*3TB drives... I don't bother with RAID, doesn't bring anything to the party, it's not a backup solution, as if the box dies your RAID array dies also, no chance of getting the data easily if at all. Better to just get 1*3TB drive and use a USB drive as backup.

 

My dad's old computer is still around and I could use that. However, I absolutely hate the mobo lol. It takes so long to post. That PC has an Intel Pentium 4 in there so I might just nick that and it's cooler and get a new mobo.

[porina]

As a low cost solution, I use a HP microserver gen8. Basic model comes with 4GB ECC ram, some Celeron/Pentium processor which is fine as long as you don't want to do transcode or stuff like that, and 4x 3.5" bays. There's also a thin ODD bay where you could squeeze a 2.5" drive if needed, as there is a spare SATA port on the mobo but you will need a power splitter. I run unraid on mine using an internal USB port.

 

If you need more drive bays, there's also a similar HPE ProLiant ML10 Gen9 for not much more. This is more your basic tower case and I understand, with adapters, could hold 6x 3.5" drives.

 

I think the above are worth considering, as they're quite low cost and all you need to add are the drives and OS to do what you want. Just make sure to look up the basic spec models, as they can scale significantly with spec.

[paddy-stone]

Well, that's the thing with a NAS, they're pretty much always going to take time to boot up. NAS is really better to be left on 24/7 as they don't draw a lot of power really, I think mine is 45/65 watts max, but most of the time it uses approx 13-18 watts I think.

Just saw the above post by @porina, mine is the exact same model as his.

 

If you want soemthing that draws even less power or even powers on when you access it, look into just getting a USB 3.0 drive and attaching it to a USB 3.0 router, it won't have as much versatility though.

That pentium that you are saying about would cost more in power than the box I have, they were real power draws, so in the long run you would benefit more from getting the same as me and porina and having more versatility, less power draw etc.

[RileyTheFox]

If I'm honest, I can't even remember if the Pentium 4 that my dad had is 64bit so I might not be able to use FreeNAS. I want to be able to build myself a NAS even if it costs a tiny bit more as I love building PCs and haven't done it in months (kind of a bad reason to spend a bit more money.) 

17 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

I don't bother with RAID, doesn't bring anything to the party,

I'll probably not bother with RAID then (I haven't done much research on RAID really)

 

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

Well, that's the thing with a NAS, they're pretty much always going to take time to boot up. NAS is really better to be left on 24/7 as they don't draw a lot of power

If I'm honest, I've left my PC on all night and it draws like 4 times more power than that, so that's not my main factor. The thing I'm worried about is fires (I know, very picky) but I hate those god damn heat makers.

 

If I'm honest, to save money. I'll probably just use my dad's old PC and buy some WD drives (that's another question, which is the best 1TB drive to get from the WD collection?)

 

The old PC still has it's CPU, CPU Cooler, Mobo and a PSU inside the case. So I think I'm certain I'll use that.

[Mikensan]

For basic functionality you can get a used qnap / synology, or if you really want to go basic just get something like a WD cloud (one that has a network port) and connect it to your router. All of which do not emit much heat. IDK about WD, but the synology/qnap will let you use add-ons to have more features.

 

Nas4Free still offers 32bit if you can't use FreeNAS.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

as if the box dies your RAID array dies also, no chance of getting the data easily if at all

You can but the drives in a different system and they will work fine.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, EvilCat70 said:

I'll probably just use my dad's old PC and buy some WD drives (that's another question, which is the best 1TB drive to get from the WD collection?)

Id then just install linux and use something like snap raid or btrfs raid 1, you can you just make a pool of a ton of drives of different sizes.

[paddy-stone]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can but the drives in a different system and they will work fine.

Really? hmm even old dogs learn new tricks then as they say, lol

 

I'll have to test that sometime.

[RileyTheFox]

I've sorted all the hardware out now. I found my old mobo with a cup and cooler in some cupboards and its 64bit! Has any AMD processor though. Now I need to get some memory and then I just need to setup FreeNAS