Building NAS need HELP!

[will25u]

Howdy,

 

I am wanting to build a NAS and have a couple of questions and definitely am in need of some assistance.

 

Backstory:  I use a laptop at home(dockingstation) and use PLEX to serve video files to TVs and remotely.  I have an external 4-bay HDD enclosure.  With a 4TB, and 3 1TB HDDs(JBOD).  One day I try to play a video file and PLEX reports that the video file is not there.  Long story short, something happened with the external enclosure and I lost about 80% of my data across all the drives.  I no longer use this external enclosure.

 

Currently:  I have the before mentioned laptop and an old HTPC/Gaming rig from a few years back.  Haven't really used the gaming rig in a while.  A8-5600k w/280X.  I would like to turn the old HTPC into a NAS with fault tolerance.  I know LTT did a unRAID w/Windows virtualized.  And this looks very appealing.  The only thing unappealing about that is having to buy 2 new HDD and the single disk read/write speeds for the disks.  Also my motherboard is limited to 4 SATA III ports.  So that could be an issue in the future when upgrading storage.  I would also need to virtualize a Windows based system for my Wife/Daughter to use, which I know is not an issue with unRAID.

 

1.  Is there a native NAS app for Windows?  This would be the perferable route for me since my family and I are familiar with Windows.

2.  Is there another NAS product that can run headless and also do a VM for Windows?

3.  I have read that ZFS is a superior NAS protocol, but I am not 100% sure on that.  Is this the case?  I know it would allow me to use different sized HDDs.

4.  Would just a commercial NAS fit my bill?  It would also need to be able to use Radarr/Sonarr and some form of NZB downloader.  As well as PLEX.  I feel like I can build a much more robust PC rather than get a commercial NAS.  

 

Any help would be appreciated.  I am not set on any one thing so this is just a work in progress.  

[Radium_Angel]

18 minutes ago, will25u said:

Would just a commercial NAS fit my bill?

This is the route I have taken repeatedly. It's a lot less headache, and using X-RAID (eXpandable RAID) increasing the size of the RAID is a snap, take out 1 drive, put in a larger drive, let it re-sync, done. Wash rinse repeat.

 

No maintenance, no fiddling with, just set it and forget it (backups as an exception of course) no headaches.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, will25u said:

.  Is there a native NAS app for Windows?  This would be the perferable route for me since my family and I are familiar with Windows.

You can easily share files in windows, just right click on a folder and share.

 

2 hours ago, will25u said:

2.  Is there another NAS product that can run headless and also do a VM for Windows?

Most can, but really don't bother with vms here.

 

2 hours ago, will25u said:

.  I have read that ZFS is a superior NAS protocol, but I am not 100% sure on that.  Is this the case?  I know it would allow me to use different sized HDDs.

Its better in some ways, but really you won't notice the difference here.

 

2 hours ago, will25u said:

.  Would just a commercial NAS fit my bill?  It would also need to be able to use Radarr/Sonarr and some form of NZB downloader.  As well as PLEX.  I feel like I can build a much more robust PC rather than get a commercial NAS.  

It will work fine.

 

But really, id just share a folder on the old pc. No reason to change os here. Then add some hdds and use storage spaces to store all your data.