• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Can't decide on what option for storage solution

RPGWiZaRD

RPGWiZaRD

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2009
Messages
1,217
I'm running out of space and I need to buy more but I've for a while now considered maybe going for a NAS setup. I just can't decide if I really want it or which option is best:

1) Simply buy a new 2TB HDD and connect to my main computer with the other HDDs and rely on my luck. I've had good luck so far, I usually replace my HDDs after 6-7 years of use, whether they seem to work perfect or not. So far I've had no HDD crashes but I've had one Maxtor back in the day with quite a few bad clusters so I stopped using it and bought once a Seagate HDD which had unreliable SMART values and had quite a lot of noise that I didn't end up using.

By far the cheapest option (assuming it will pass my ~1 week monitoring trial to try estimate if it's a DOA or trustable for long-time use) = ~105 EUR

2) Use my old computer, i7-860, Gigabyte P55-UD5, 4GB RAM etc (overkill for NAS I know!) but at least I'd get some use for it. The motherboard is perfect for NAS use with as much as 10x SATA ports with RAID5 and RAID10 support for up to 6 HDDs. And it has 2x gigabit NICs. The problem here would be the somewhat high added 24/7 power consumption, what I estimate roughly 100~110W on idle. I run also my main comp pretty much 24/7. Was thinking of buying 3x 2TB hdds for a RAID5 setup so 4TB of space + 2TB for redundancy if so. The comp would be put somewhere in a "closet room" that stays a bit cooler than these other rooms, so would have no probs with temp + noise in my case.

Middleground option = ~315 EUR + higher 24/7 maintenance cost (+100~110W extra)

3) Buy a NAS. I've found for example a QNAP TS-420 I liked with its interface + software options that is very suitable for this kind of home NAS fileserver use for 350 EUR with 4 bays. Then I'd also buy 3x HDDs + stuff one of my Samsung F2 1.5TB in it.

Expensiest option = ~665 EUR (Slightly higher power consumption vs option 1)

I'm really running in circles here! I can't for the life of me, decide. Please help! xD
 
Last edited:
Do you regularly share/steam files to other PCs or devices?
 
Last edited:
If your are in Europe with expensive power you could also consider buying a lower power board for making your own NAS. Running a full-blown first generation i7 has it's cost. Don't forget air conditioning cost might come on top.

A new board could also have ECC memory. How important is your data?
 
We don't usually have air conditioning built into houses in Finland. :p

Data is pretty important but I won't commit suicide if I lost it. xD It depends a little what data but most of the data it's not really that important anymore. Therefore I think gambling with no backup or extra redundancy like I've been doing so far might work for me still.

I don't regularly share files with other PCs, pretty much never. I'd just consider it nice to have all the storage in one place, right now I have 5x hdds + 1x SSD hooked up to my main comp... at one time I had 7x hdds.
 
I agree with uOpt. Build a cheap and small NAS for those drives. I have 3HDD plus my SSD OS and I thinks its too much for me. I like 1 OS SSD + 1 HDD for small extra storage.. however in my case my movies gets streamed to other PCs in my house as well.. man i should stop lagging and get a NAS going too..
 
I would roll option two. If you take out the graphics card in that computer it should idle at probably around 85 watts (according to most of the sites I could find). What you could do as well is find the lowest idle power chip for that socket type which would likely run you 50-100$. Also, what is the 300$ cost for option two coming from? Are some parts missing?

An unexplored option 4 is building a computer from scratch. You could just build a regular computer which typically idle in the 30-40watt range or look into the atom/avaton boards which can idle at or below 20watts.

A regular computer with low end processor complete build will run you ~400ish. Atom will likely be the same upfront cost with lower power consumption and performance, and avaton will be more expensive but will be more server like in its functionality (ECC, higher performance and more sata slots).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top