Suggestions for parts for a NAS build

[Ethnod]

I'm looking to build my own NAS at home. I'm looking for something that will work over the wireless network, will have no issues transcoding but I wont be needing 4k or anything (by the time I get to 2k/4k I'll be upgrading or replacing it) and it won't need to stream to more than just one thing at a time.

 

I'm hoping to keep my budget on the lower end but I'm not going to cheep out in fairness (I don't actually have an actual number in mind, I'll just wait another month if I need to)

I've a few external HDD's that I will probably plug in also for extra storage so Motherboard cant be too minimal as I will want at least 5 or 6 usb ports.

Will most likely have an SSD as a book drive unless there is a reason not to.

 

I'm also looking to use it as a backup server as well, even if its a manual thing I do myself. 

 

Looking for suggestions of hardware so I know where to start looking and so I can keep en eye out for deals over the next few months.

[Electronics Wizardy]

how many tb do you want?

 

rack mount?

 

wath programs are you using?

 

Id probably go used server like r510 or c2100, or if you want diy, b250, g4560, 8gb of ram. unraid is easy to use and works well for a home server. USB stick for boot.

[Razor Blade]

All I can really say is if you are considering retired enterprise grade hardware keep in mind there will generally be limitations for HDD size on an OEM raid controller (for example 2TB on an IBM servraid 8k or 3TB on a Dell PERC 6i) so if you're thinking of popping in some 4-6TB drives put a raid controller in your budget. Also old server hardware is power hungry...it is a lot of compute power and if you're only going to use it to store data and transcode movies it would consume waaaay more power than truly necessary.

[Ethnod]

I was actually really hoping to avoid that headache I was just thinking of using half decent retail over the counter hardware.

 

Any advice for hardware? Especially a Motherboard, that’s one I am really stuck on, too many choices 

[Ethnod]

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

how many tb do you want?

 

rack mount?

 

wath programs are you using?

 

Id probably go used server like r510 or c2100, or if you want diy, b250, g4560, 8gb of ram. unraid is easy to use and works well for a home server. USB stick for boot.

 

I'd say something like 12tb should be enough, I doubt I will go any larger than 24. I was thinking of using the external HDD's as extra secondary backups (redundancy for my backups)

 

No rack mounting, and ideally no server hardware

 

as for software, I could do with some advice, without putting much thought into it I was going to look into FreeNAS

[Thermite]

2 hours ago, Ethnod said:

 

I'd say something like 12tb should be enough, I doubt I will go any larger than 24. I was thinking of using the external HDD's as extra secondary backups (redundancy for my backups)

 

No rack mounting, and ideally no server hardware

 

as for software, I could do with some advice, without putting much thought into it I was going to look into FreeNAS

FreeNAS is good especially if you plan to never need any more storage than you originally buy. If you need expand ability for storage you should use unRAID. If I were you I would use unRAID damn thing just works is much simpler than freeNAS and has just as good forum support. UnRAID isn’t free though they have different license levels and it is a one time fee. You own a license forever once you buy it. UnRAID boots off of USB so you can use your ssd as a write cache.

 

For hardware you should probably get an older Xeon CPU and supermicro motherboard that has enough SATA ports for the amount of drives you need. If you need more dries there are tons of HBA’s (host bus adapters) for sale online. GET ECC MEMORY “save yourself” there is a reason people use it. If you buy smart this doesn’t have to be expensive. Use eBay and make sure you buy validated parts otherwise it may not be compatible. There are validated parts listings on supermicro’s site for memory and cpu’s.