i need help with a file server...

[Ashleyyyy]

so i need a good file server for storing all my stuff. 

 

my requirements:

 

- at least 5TB capacity

- needs to be able to connect to Windows, Mac and Linux pc's

- 24/7 operational

- fast enough to copy a few gigabytes at a time without it taking forever.

- reasonably power efficient

 

i have some spare parts: 

core i3 7100

gigabyte B250M-DS3H

16GB DDR4

Corsair RM550X

 

what else besides drives will i need? and what drives should i be looking at?

[NelizMastr]

For what you need, I think those spare parts are just about perfect. All you'll need is a nice case and a bunch of drives.

 

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Needs to be able to connect to Windows, Mac and Linux pc's

For these platforms there's NFS, SMB/CIFS and AFP available. If you want one share to serve them all, I think SMB/CIFS is only real option. AFP is Apple only, and NFS on Windows performs rather poorly, at least in my experience.

If one share per platform is acceptable, use the best to suit each one of them. AFP for Mac, NFS for Linux, SMB/CIFS for Windows.

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fast enough to copy a few gigabytes at a time without it taking forever

Your i3 CPU plus a reasonable gigabit NIC should suffice. 10GbE would be ideal, but I'd honestly not go that route if the rest of your network isn't 10GbE already. 

 

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at least 5TB capacity

24/7 operational

reasonably power efficient

This calls for NAS drives. Ironwolf or Red drives would be decent. When hit with sequential operations, high capacity drives have quite decent throughput, enough to saturate a gigabit link. Your board has 6 ports, so you could go up to 5 data drives + a boot drive without going with a harddisk controller so expansion should be no problem.

 

Less spindles means less noise and power, so you could start off with 2 or 3 drives and expand later as you see fit. Capacity will depend on the RAID level you want. If you're going with a mirror, you'll want to get 2 5TB or 6TB drives, or you could go RAID5 with 3 drives, 3TB each. 

[Ashleyyyy]

3 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

a nice case

suggestions?

 

i'm comfortable with WD drives. so i'd need WD Red drives then right? 

 

and what kind of OS would be good for it? i'm very familiar with Linux so if that would work i'd prefer Ubuntu...

[NelizMastr]

28 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

suggestions?

I see you have a mATX board, so to keep the machine small overall, I'd go for a mATX case with a good amount of drive bays. The Fractal Define Mini is probably the nicest of the small cases in that regard. Nanoxia Deep Silence cases are also quite nice.

 

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i'm comfortable with WD drives. so i'd need WD Red drives then right? 

Yep. Those will work great. I have 2TB WD Reds in my Microserver and they've been in my NAS for just over 2 years before that without issues. The 3TB variant is considered less reliable than the other capacities, so I'd avoid those.

 

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what kind of OS would be good for it? i'm very familiar with Linux so if that would work i'd prefer Ubuntu...

If you're familiar with setting up NFS and Samba on Linux then I suppose Ubuntu could work. I'd look into FreeNAS as well, though, as it's a bit more flexible. Most base level Linux commands are actually Unix based, so FreeBSD, which FreeNAS runs on, shouldn't be a terribly big deal for you either.

[Ashleyyyy]

@NelizMastr i forgot to mention it has to be basically silent at idle, because it will be placed in my bedroom... so.. if i can get a case that has a good layout so i will need less fans to keep it cool i'd like to have that. 

 

i'm not familiar with setting up Samba or NFS... so should i go with freenas right away then?

[NelizMastr]

3 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

@NelizMastr i forgot to mention it has to be basically silent at idle, because it will be placed in my bedroom... so.. if i can get a case that has a good layout so i will need less fans to keep it cool i'd like to have that. 

 

i'm not familiar with setting up Samba or NFS... so should i go with freenas right away then?

I'd look at FreeNAS in that case, yes. Having a proper GUI with all the functions built-in you'll ever need is definitely handy. 

 

As far as noise is concerned, both cases I mentioned are decent options. The most noise will likely come from the harddisks. A disk that's being accessed for read/write operations will always be audible.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

I'd look at FreeNAS in that case, yes. Having a proper GUI with all the functions built-in you'll ever need is definitely handy. 

 

As far as noise is concerned, both cases I mentioned are decent options. The most noise will likely come from the harddisks. A disk that's being accessed for read/write operations will always be audible.

yeah but if it's just sitting idle it won't make noise. those drives won't spin constantly right?

[NelizMastr]

2 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

yeah but if it's just sitting idle it won't make noise. those drives won't spin constantly right?

NAS drives are designed to spin 24/7. If you cycle them 100 times a day, they probably won't last 5 years.

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

NAS drives are designed to spin 24/7. If you cycle them 100 times a day, they probably won't last 5 years.

oh really? it won't be accessed 100 times a day. maybe once or twice.

[NelizMastr]

13 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

oh really? it won't be accessed 100 times a day. maybe once or twice.

Should be fine then. I personally like running my NAS for as long as possible as I run a Synology box, which consumes next to no power. And the drives seem comfortable with it.