need recommendations for a server case and redundant power supply unit

[Ashleyyyy]

I want to build a proper file server in a few months, that will have all of my data for school on it. 

I need a case that is compatible with a full atx board, hot swappable drive bays (at least 4) and I need a redundant power supply.

 

I will be using 4 4TB WD Red drives in raid 1, so I don't need SAS connectors. 

[Ramaddil]

Just Curious your going to use 4 drives in a Raid 1??  You will only get 4TB worth of usable space.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219024 Has 8 Bays is compadible with ATX and redundant Power supply.

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, Ramaddil said:

Just Curious your going to use 4 drives in a Raid 1??  You will only get 4TB worth of usable space.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219024 Has 8 Bays is compadible with ATX and redundant Power supply.

i'n not an expert on RAID at all... 

what other raid could I use? I want at least 2 of the drives for redundancy..

[Ramaddil]

 

Both of these videos explain what you need to know about raid.. Ideally with 4 drives you can either do a Raid 10 or Raid 5 or RaidZ1 if you use Freenas.  Doing Raid 5 without a Raid card is going to be very slow whereas raid 10 maybe a better option.  You need to do research on these terms and ideas before jumping into this.  

[Ramaddil]

If you want two drives for redundancy raid 6 is a option it offers 2 drive redundancy but again doing this with out a raid card or freenas is extremely slow and a bad idea.  If you need it to be in Windows the only option you have is to buy a raid card or deal with the extremely slow storage spaces option.  They have alot of used ones on ebay.  LSI makes some that support over 2TB Drives and support raid 5/6 that are reasonably priced.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Ramaddil said:

Both of these videos explain what you need to know about raid.. Ideally with 4 drives you can either do a Raid 10 or Raid 5 or RaidZ1 if you use Freenas.  Doing Raid 5 without a Raid card is going to be very slow whereas raid 10 maybe a better option.  You need to do research on these terms and ideas before jumping into this.  

thanks a lot!

I do have an old IBM X3650 server and some old drives I can try some things with. 

 

about the slowness of the drives, as long as it can handle gigabit network speeds it's fine. 

 

I have not decided on an OS for the file server yet.. I was thinking of using Ubuntu since i'm familiar with it. what benefits does freenas have over it?

 

1 minute ago, Ramaddil said:

If you need it to be in Windows the only option you have is to buy a raid card or deal with the extremely slow storage spaces option.  

I won't be using Windows. either Ubuntu or something else if that's better. 

[Ramaddil]

Freenas is designed for combining drives and getting decent performance it is widely used by a lot of people for homeservers.  About the slowness of the drives when I mean slow I mean very slow.  If you use software raid 5/6 on windows your reads will be decent but writes will be 10-15 maybe 30 mbs a sec.  I am not real good with options on ubuntu as far as raid config goes.  Freenas may be a better option or Unraid where you can set up VM's.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Ramaddil said:

Freenas is designed for combining drives and getting decent performance it is widely used by a lot of people for homeservers.  About the slowness of the drives when I mean slow I mean very slow.  If you use software raid 5/6 on windows your reads will be decent but writes will be 10-15 maybe 30 mbs a sec.  I am not real good with options on ubuntu as far as raid config goes.  Freenas may be a better option or Unraid where you can set up VM's.

ok, good to know. 

 

Unraid is paid software right? 

[Ramaddil]

Yes it is.  Both Freenas and Unraid are good choices for what you are planning to do.  

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, Ramaddil said:

Yes it is.  Both Freenas and Unraid are good choices for what you are planning to do.  

ok, thanks! I will do some research! 

[Ramaddil]

Good luck, there are plenty of resources on how to setup a homeserver/lab and how to configure Freenas/Unraid.  Found a lot of great tutorials on youtube for some of these things.  Good choice on your hard drives NAS drives are excellent and I am a Fan of WD.

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, Ramaddil said:

Good luck, there are plenty of resources on how to setup a homeserver/lab and how to configure Freenas/Unraid.  Found a lot of great tutorials on youtube for some of these things.  Good choice on your hard drives NAS drives are excellent and I am a Fan of WD.

yeah, I picked them because I trust WD a lot..

[Erkel]

There is only really one big reputable seller in that market space, and that is Supermicro.  Should be able to pickup a used chassis pretty cheap.

[Wakes Inc]

If that is all you want to do I'd just create a mdadm array in linux.  I love freenas but it's a little much for what you want.