First nas build

[newgeneral10]

Hello,  I am looking at building a nas for central media storage.  I currently have about 400 gb of movies and tv shows on my gaming pc that is taking up valuable space.  I know that simple file storage is not that intensive but I also want to do a few other things with my nas.  I think that my nas will run a couple plugins, namely: Emby (similar to Plex), SickBeard, Transmission, CouchPotato, and OwnCloud.  This will be running FreeNas with the following Hardware:

CPU: Pentium G3260 (3.3 Dual-core)

MOBO: ASROCK h97M Anniversary Micro ATX

RAM: 1 8gb stick of Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3-1866 (I know I need ECC, but that's expensive...)

Storage: 6 1TB WD Reds in Raidz1 or Raidz2

PSU: EVGA 500w 80+

NIC: Intel 4port 1000Mbps

 

I have never built a nas before so I literally have no idea if this is a good build or not.  Any advice will be appreciated!

[The Sloth]

 

[Rohime]

Personally, i'd start with only 2 drives (raid1) at much larger format (like 4TB+) and then add more drives / convert to RAID5 when you need the space.

 

What are you getting for a BACKUP device? --- eSATA attached high capacity/multi-drive enclosure is usually the most effect starting point.

 

What are you using for a case?   I like the Fractal Design Array R2

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, Rohime said:

Personally, i'd start with only 2 drives (raid1) at much larger format (like 4TB+) and then add more drives / convert to RAID5 when you need the space.

 

What are you getting for a BACKUP device? --- eSATA attached high capacity/multi-drive enclosure is usually the most effect starting point.

 

What are you using for a case?   I like the Fractal Design Array R2

raid 1 is a bad idea. what would be better is 3 drives in a raid 5 so you can do it easily. you can't change raid type without reformatting. 

[newgeneral10]

6 minutes ago, Rohime said:

Personally, i'd start with only 2 drives (raid1) at much larger format (like 4TB+) and then add more drives / convert to RAID5 when you need the space.

 

What are you getting for a BACKUP device? --- eSATA attached high capacity/multi-drive enclosure is usually the most effect starting point.

 

What are you using for a case?   I like the Fractal Design Array R2

I haven't thought about backing up my nas, especially not if i have raidz1 or raidz2.  The nas would hold backups of my other pcs though.  And I wanted to rackmount it so i was getting a logisys 8401.  Also, The reason I have many 1 TB drives as apposed to a few bigger drives is that I read that you can't increase the number of drives in a raidz1 or raidz2 array but you can increase the size of each drive.  My thought process is that if I want to build to something completely massive and amazingly overkill like 6 x 12 TB drives then i need to start with 6 x 1 TB drives as opposed to  1 x 12 TB drive

[fjdhdhcyfhf]

NAS virgin should be the title.

16 minutes ago, newgeneral10 said:

Storage: 6 1TB WD Reds in Raidz1 or Raidz2

 

did you say you have 6X 1tb drives and 400GB of data?

i  would do 2 drives in raid0 with the rest as backup drives. if you have 6 drives you have 2 spare for offline storage 

[newgeneral10]

1 minute ago, SCHISCHKA said:

NAS virgin should be the title.

did you say you have 6X 1tb drives and 400GB of data?

i  would do 2 drives in raid0 with the rest as backup drives. if you have 6 drives you have 2 spare for offline storage 

That's just what I have now, I am planning on getting much more through sickbeard and couch potato

[Rohime]

7 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

raid 1 is a bad idea. what would be better is 3 drives in a raid 5 so you can do it easily. you can't change raid type without reformatting. 

Umm, ok.   Confirmed - but surprised - that in this day and age ZFS / FreeNAS does not support online conversion from RAID1 to RAID5.    (my QNAP NAS certainly does, i've done it before)

[Rohime]

3 minutes ago, newgeneral10 said:

That's just what I have now, I am planning on getting much more through sickbeard and couch potato

You'd be doing that without admitting to it in writing though wouldnt you?

 

Also - what's this about using something other than PLEX.   Shame on you.

PLEX is love, PLEX is life.

[newgeneral10]

1 minute ago, Rohime said:

You'd be doing that without admitting to is in writing though wouldnt you?

 

Also - what's this about using something other than PLEX.   Shame on you.

PLEX is love, PLEX is life.

I've used plex and I like it, I just want to try something new.  Also, I would be running a Kodi frontend on my HTPC and I feel like Emby has a better integration with Kodi.

[Rohime]

27 minutes ago, newgeneral10 said:

I have never built a nas before so I literally have no idea if this is a good build or not.  Any advice will be appreciated!

Another suggestion:

500W power is almost certainly to much.

As a NAS is (typically) an "always on" device, I would be looking for a smaller Platinum rated PSU - it will save you lots of $$$ on power bill over time.

Suggestion:  Use PcPartPicker to get the expected power draw for your parts, then get a gold or platinum rated PSU where the PcPartPicker number is right in the middle of the power supplies efficiency curve.  

The Seasonic 660W 80+ Platinum for example is 92% efficient at 50% loading (which is probably very close to what you would need).  http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=326 

[newgeneral10]

3 minutes ago, Rohime said:

Another suggestion:

500W power is almost certainly to much.

As a NAS is (typically) an "always on" device, I would be looking for a smaller Platinum rated PSU - it will save you lots of $$$ on power bill over time.

Suggestion:  Use PcPartPicker to get the expected power draw for your parts, then get a gold or platinum rated PSU where the PcPartPicker number is right in the middle of the power supplies efficiency curve.  

The Seasonic 660W 80+ Platinum for example is 92% efficient at 50% loading (which is probably very close to what you would need).  http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=326 

Sweet, thanks!

[Dark]

Make sure that 6x 1TB disks doesn't cost the same/more than 3x 2TB disks.

 

Truly no point in spending more per GB only to meet a single drive count requirement (you can always migrate data to a new array down the road).

[newgeneral10]

I'll look into that. But would 6 drives be faster than 3 drives in raidz?

[Dark]

11 minutes ago, newgeneral10 said:

I'll look into that. But would 6 drives be faster than 3 drives in raidz?

There are a lot of dependencies with that. 

On paper, sure, 6 should be faster than 3 but that's reliant on your host resources (especially since this is a software raid) and network speed.