Choosing hardware for my future NAS

    The data that I will like to have into the NAS are now in a 2 TB 3.5 HDD in my PC. Only a half of it are free (1TB approximately). The type of files that are saved are: photos, videos, text documents, etc. That I open them rarely.


    The main objective is saving into the NAS that files + sync/backup photos from two mobile phones and other backups.


    My idea is making a RAID 1 with two 4 TB 3.5 HDD (where I will save the data decrived above) and leave initially free the rest of slots for futures needs.


    Then I will use two external HDD to make backups peridiocally for data are saved into the NAS.


    Then I will use a SSD (240/500GB) for Operative System (OMV).


    I hope that I will be a good strategy.


    Quote from BernH

    Also, I should add that if you want to go the N100 route as Chente did, It doesn't have to be the exact same Asus board he used. Asrock makes N100 boards in both the ITX and Micro-ATX form factors. The boards have 2 built in SATA ports instead of the 1 on the Asus board, and the M-ATX board has 2 pcie slots (1@ x1, 1@ x16 size running in x2 mode) so to get an extra x1 slot which increases the ability add an extra NIC or SATA card if required.


    Likewise, with these systems, externally connected storage is still possible for expansion.


    If I was building one of these i would probably lean toward the micro-atx form factor for the extra pcie slot and the fact that there are a lot more options for cases that take ATX style boards with internal HDD bays than there are ITX cases

    The motherboard AsRock Mini-ITX (N100DC-ITX) could be interesting as you said, it has two SATA ports and I could be used initially my RAID 1 with two 4TB HDD. And then, on the future if i would have need I could buy an adapter PCIe or M.2 to SATA adapter.


    But I have seen that AsRock Mini-ITX (N100DC-ITX) have to be external power supply and it could be a problem if on the future need to plug more HDD.


    The other motherboard AsRock Micro-ATX (N100M) the power supply into the case. More easy to giving power fore more disks, although I will have to consider that it is an Micro-ATX, that it means a bigger case.


    Also I have seen other motherboards brands as:

    - https://androidpc.es/placa-base-pasiva-intel-n100-i3-n305/

    - https://cwwk.net/products/cwwk…tx-board-type-motherboard

    They have 6 SATA ports integrated. Are them as the same quality as Asus or AsRock boards?


    At this moment, my candidate components are:


    - Mini-ITX Jonsbo N2 or Fractal Design Node 304 (+/- 100 €) Jonsbo N2 / Fractal Design Node 304

    - Asus PRIME N100I-D D4 (108,80 €) ASUS Prime N100

    - PSU Cooler Master V850 850W SFX Gold (167,98 €) PSU Cooler Master

    - M.2 to (x6 SATA) WANGCL (26,99 €) M.2 to (x6 SATA) WANGCL (I think that it doesn't use port multiplier as chente commented)

    - HDD Seagate IronWolf 4TB (x2) (230 €) Seagate IronWolf 4TB

    - SSD 240/500 GB (x1) (0 € already have someone)

    - SATA cables (12€) SATA III

    Total: +/- 645€


    Taking a walk on some of main NAS manufacturers:

    - QNAP TS-453E-8G (782 €)

    - Asustor Drivestor 4 Pro Gen2 AS3304T v2 (415 €).

    In all cases I would get a system with less options and performance and in addition I have to add 230€ for HDDs.


    Quote from Quacksalber

    What worked best for me was my NAS from TerraMaster (T6-423).

    The Qnap TS-853A also works well. You need to install fanncontrol yourself.


    The other NAS from Qnap that I have / had work(ed) well, but I had to investigate some small issues (e.g. adding special params to the bool command line).

    TerraMaster (T6-423) and Qnap TS-853A I think there are high price and also I need to add the HDDs.


    Thank you again for your future comments, suggestions and help :)

    • Official Post
    Quote from stivex

    - M.2 to (x6 SATA) WANGCL (26,99 €) M.2 to (x6 SATA) WANGCL (I think that it doesn't use port multiplier as chente commented)

    Yes, that should work. The chip is ASM1166, which is adequate.

    Quote from stivex

    - Mini-ITX Jonsbo N2 or Fractal Design Node 304 (+/- 100 €) Jonsbo N2 / Fractal Design Node 304

    - Asus PRIME N100I-D D4 (108,80 €) ASUS Prime N100

    I'm using the N2 and an N100I-D. Working well.


    I am using the m.2 for the boot SSD.

    For SATA I only have two disks so far, so I am using a JMB58x card in the Wifi slot. I also have an ASM1064 PCIe card with 4x SATA for expansion later.


    This doesn't leave anywhere for 2.5Gb Ethernet, but that's not an issue for me yet.

    Hi Colleagues, I am using either Asus N100I-D4 for some time, bought it after good opinion here in the omv forum.

    But I have big troubles with that motherboard regarding stability - I had my disks connected via ASM1064 into the Pcie x1

    But I found the issue that often after reboot the disk were not visibile (cold restart was needed - full power cycle)

    Also I found that after link down for NIC (for instance when router switched off due to missing power or after pluging off the cable (for test reasons)) controler also disappear from the system and also full power cycle was needed.

    Example logs below:

    I thought that the problem is the the controller, so I bought another, this time ASM1166 connected to M.2 slot and thus needed to connect my M.2 disk via adapter to Pcie x1 port.

    Result? This time disks from M2 port was fine, but instead, the Nvme disk was disconnected (which gave me 99% sure that the problem is not with the controler but with the MoBo behaviour and issue with PCIe x1 slot)


    I spent a lot of time searching for information and solutions, including chatgpt, etc but without succes


    Does anybody has idea what's wrong and how to fix it?

    • Official Post
    Quote from wojciszpl

    But I have big troubles with that motherboard regarding stability - I had my disks connected via ASM1064 into the Pcie x1

    If you have good reasons to believe the motherboard is unstable; revolving issues with unrelated functions, like drives installed on PCIE ports and ethernet ports, are an indicator. Note that mobo's are unfixable. If you have a spare power supply, you could try that.

    A good test of *part* of the mobo is memtest 86 which can be allowed to run for extended periods. There are a few installable stress packages, referenced -> here. Also -> this is another option. Unfortunately, these tests are mostly for CPU, RAM and disk I/O but they might reveal a pattern.
    ________________________________________

    I had a motherboard failure, recently, that had all sorts of random problems. Ethernet connectivity, kernel problems, memtest86 would freeze before completing a single test, on any combination of dimm sticks (to include a test with just a single stick installed). Strangely, the mobo would get through a boot cycle (with warnings) but that was all it would do. In the bottom line, the mobo was a write off.

    It may be that the RAM is running with the wrong settings or at the wrong clock speed. This can also cause a system to become unstable.

    Please show us

    Code
    sudo inxi -mxxxz

    You will probably need to install inxi first:

    Code
    sudo apt install inxi

    After I bought this mobo I launched memtest for 24h (as always do for new hardware) to make sure that everything works smooth.

    And after a long period of time I see, that the problems occurs only in specific situation:

    Link down or unplugged cable RJ45 -> NIC is propagating this on the PCie bus and (I don't understand why) stuff connected to the Pcie x1 bus is going to D3Cold state from which it can't come back to live.

    Quote from wojciszpl

    After I bought this mobo I launched memtest for 24h (as always do for new hardware) to make sure that everything works smooth.

    And after a long period of time I see, that the problems occurs only in specific situation:

    Link down or unplugged cable RJ45 -> NIC is propagating this on the PCie bus and (I don't understand why) stuff connected to the Pcie x1 bus is going to D3Cold state from which it can't come back to live.


    Uh, maybe the NIC is behaving badly and killing the PCIe bus. I see that the on-board Realtek NIC, the NVMe and the SATA controller I have in the WiFi slot (m.2 e-key) are all on the same PCI bus.


    I haven't had the issue you mentioned but also my network link stays up always. I can't try disconnecting it right now deliberately.


    You could get another NIC for the x1 slot, or an e-key NIC, or even USB.

    In my case it looks like the Nvme port stay working fine, the same for Wifi card, but the Pcie x1 slot is causing issues.


    Below output of my lspci, for me looks like NIC is sharing bus with the pcie x1 slot in which I have ASM1064 controller:

    And exactly this controller is stopping working after link is down:

    I see the same PCI tree (I have the same board). I will try disconnecting the network cable when I can and see if that upsets the SATA controller for me too.


    Do you have the backports kernel installed - 6.12?

    I am using kernel 6.8pve (but tested also 6.5pve - result was the same), because with standard kernel there was no support for the iGPU hardware acceleration.

    which one do You use? Do You use hardware accel (Plex, Jellyfin)?


    Would be greteful for You check and information, this will answer if this is global problem with that board or it's just mine is broken

    I'm using the standard Debian kernel - 6.12.43+deb12-amd64. I use Jellyfin but I don't care about transcoding, so I don't know if the hardware acceleration works. But 6.12 is newer than the 6.8 you're using.

    Quote from hmoff

    Just tried left it for 90 minutes and it worked perfectly.

    thanks for cheking! looks then that I have probably some damaged board.

    I even tried today with external NIC via USB, and when nothing was plugged in into internal NIC or when NIC was disabled via BIOS, then Pcie x1 slot didn't work


    Can You please tell me what version of BIOS do You have? And when You bought the mobo, where and model of Your expansion pcie card?


    thank You!


    edit:// can You please share output of:
    dmidecode -t baseboard ?

    Quote from wojciszpl

    I even tried today with external NIC via USB, and when nothing was plugged in into internal NIC or when NIC was disabled via BIOS, then Pcie x1 slot didn't work

    This is also the case with my Asus. I had a 2.5 GBit Lan card installed in the PCIex slot. Just as I had deactivated the internal LAN, the 2.5 GBit card no longer worked. With a 2.5 GBit Lan card in the WLAN slot, there were no problems with the inner LAN port deactivated. I haven't had the Asus in operation for a long time.

    For the A+E Key (Wlan + BT) m.2 slot, there are also SATA cards with two SATA ports. Maybe it's better to use one in your case.

    Quote from mischka

    This is also the case with my Asus. I had a 2.5 GBit Lan card installed in the PCIex slot. Just as I had deactivated the internal LAN, the 2.5 GBit card no longer worked. With a 2.5 GBit Lan card in the WLAN slot, there were no problems with the inner LAN port deactivated. I haven't had the Asus in operation for a long time.

    For the A+E Key (Wlan + BT) m.2 slot, there are also SATA cards with two SATA ports. Maybe it's better to use one in your case.

    it's exactly the issue I have.

    I had also sata card (jmb582) for the M.2 Wifi slot, but it's not enought SATA ports for me, that's why I need Pcie x1 -> 4SATA or M.2 -> 6 SATA


    After my investigation, it looks that Pcie x1 slot and internal NIC are sharing the same CLK. I heared about some beta BIOS which is splitting the clk for those ports, but not sure if it's true, until will get info from asus.

    I made a ticket to ASUS support, we will see what they answer.


    I lost a lot of my time for solving this problem, so I think no more asus in future :)


    Which mobo are You using now?

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