Putting a NAS together

  • I am putting together a NAS from parts that I have from an old computer.


    Currently I have an ECS AM3 black motherboard
    an AMD Athlon II x2 @ 2.8 GHZ
    4 GB of DDR3 Ram
    a 450 watt Power supply
    several old HD that I can use for the operating system (or I am considering purchasing an SSD)
    I am only going to be using this for a media server, light torrenting, and PC backup
    I am debating what setup I want to proceed with as far as HD go.
    I am considering just getting 2x4 TB HD and putting them in Raid 1.
    My main questions are is an SSD going to be that much of a difference (is it necessary to have one for caching)?
    Do you think that with these components that it will be a reliable / well functioning NAS?


    Thanks alot!


    Brian

    • Offizieller Beitrag


    These opinions are all my own


    It depends on what you want to do. If it's just gonna be a simple file server running NFS/Samba, maybe use it for FTP or downloading Torrents, streaming movies that do not need transcoded.. I'd anticipate it being just fine. I actually used an AMD Sempron 145 for this for a while, and it was fine. If you're planning to run PlexMedia to transcode streaming video, host virtual machines, etc.. I suspect that CPU is a bit long in the tooth for that...


    SSD's are fine so long as you buy the *RIGHT* SSD... which is probably gonna run you at least $50-$60 here in the US. See the thread somewhere on here where peoples SSD's are lasting about a month because they bought the *WRONG* SSD. Personally, I think SSD's are a bit over rated for the OS drive. Yeah, it will boot faster, webUI will probably be a bit snappier, but for reliability, I'd go with a platter drive. Since you also have these around.. it's nice because there's no cost involved. Just use the smallest drive (gigs) you have, since it will be used for just the OS, and not for data.. and the OS really only takes about 3gigs if you don't have a lot of services installed/running. I've got a lot on my setup, and I'm only running about 9gigs.


    As for your 2x4 Raid 1.. it's fine I guess. I'm not a big fan of raid 1, as it doesn't protect against accidental file deletion.. I'd rather set up some automatic rsync jobs (that do not delete automatically) to mirror the data from Drive A to Drive B. I also had some weird issues w/ raid 1.. but that was directly related to my motherboard I think.. so rsync was an even better solution.. but now having used rsync for a while.. I wouldn't go back to raid 1 if it worked properly.


    Hope that helps

  • Hi,
    let me describe my experience..
    Which options do you have? To buy a commercial NAS, probably a Synology device or to Build your own. As I like to have screwdriver in my Hand I Chose on purpose the Second.


    What should a NAS do? Grant access to files that you don't want to have on your local PC for some reason...


    For this any old PC would work, See my signature... You should Pay attention on the storage part, I mean a raid Controller and Big hdds. Are a Must.
    Don't worry about the Speed, it. Will be more than sufficient


    Regards, hl

    OMV 2.1
    AN EXAMPLE HOW OLD PC PARTS CAN BE USED:
    Fujitsu-Siemens P5915 (Motherboard D2151-A21), Intel C2D E6600, 4,0 GB DDR RAM, 3Ware RAID controller on PCI slot, up to 6 HDDs in total can be installed due to case changes (currently 2x1tb in RAID1 mode on the board as "holy backup" share & 2x1tb as regular share on 3Ware, one 2tb as storage for two easyVDRs & one 320gb for OMV and ownCloud share), power consumption about 100 Watts (this is OK for that setup...)


    OMV switched on automatically per wol when main PC is switched on...
    OMV switched off per autoshutdown if no IP traffic on main IP over 10 minutes...

    • Offizieller Beitrag


    While I agree w/ you, that I'd ALWAYS build vs buy.. He has to pay attention to speed because of what he wants to do. For just a simple file server... I'd agree just about anything will do. When he states he wants to stream video... that changes the equation entirely... especially if he needs transcoding.

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