Energy Efficient NAS - home use

modi123

modi123

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I am poking around to see if I want a 24/7 nas or a large external USB drive to archive my data, but I am also looking for it to be as energy efficient as possible. Can anyone out there a bit more familiar with the systems available give me a hand or a pointer?

thanks.
 
well 'archival' use suggest something you would NOT run 24/7, for obvious reasons. Do you want 24/7 storage or archival storage. the box will use an amount of power equal to the drives plus the controller (which you can look up the specs for), while the external drive will use pretty much nil, assuming you'd only have it connected periodically for updates. If you're looking at 24/7 power usage for both then thats dependent on whatever drives you stick in there. the variable speed drives are worth looking at, as are the seagate es.2s and the hitachi p7k series for low idle power consumption.

some boxes will allow you to spin down your drives , thats something you could also look into. I'm not sure of any way to spin down drives in an external usb box.
 
You could build a low power base PC.
Giga mATX G33 mobo and E8400 @2GHz (0.75v)
2x2GB DDR 667
one 500GB Wd GreenPower system hdd
on a PicoPSU that uses <40W while on a normal PSU it is more like <50W

Adding a 3ware 9650SE hardware raid controller brings in another 10W in all cases
and adding a WD 1TB GreenPower drive brings in another <5W/per hdd (when they park their heads and go idle)

note: When you add drives to your system and power draw goes up the difference between PicoPsu(or similar PSU) and regular PSU (and I used a TT 750W!) becomes nonexistent

The thing is, you can put your storage drives to sleep, and get pretty large and efficient fileserver (if you can wait for <10sec to wake up hdds from sleep :)).

I'm finishing this project soon an these are all my measurements.
 
XS Janus said:
You could build a low power base PC.
Giga mATX G33 mobo and E8400 @2GHz (0.75v)
2x2GB DDR 667
one 500GB Wd GreenPower system hdd
on a PicoPSU that uses <40W while on a normal PSU it is more like <50W

Adding a 3ware 9650SE hardware raid controller brings in another 10W in all cases
and adding a WD 1TB GreenPower drive brings in another <5W/per hdd (when they park their heads and go idle)

note: When you add drives to your system and power draw goes up the difference between PicoPsu(or similar PSU) and regular PSU (and I used a TT 750W!) becomes nonexistent

The thing is, you can put your storage drives to sleep, and get pretty large and efficient fileserver (if you can wait for <10sec to wake up hdds from sleep :)).

I'm finishing this project soon an these are all my measurements.
Click to expand...


If it's just going to be a file server, I would get just 1 stick of ram, another stick would just eat up more power. I would underclock/undervolt the processor too, if it's just serving files no need to have a 2ghz processor.

In fact, a miniITX board would probably take the cake for power consumption, and would probably be cheaper then a core 2 duo and motherboard.
 
^ I agree.
This is just my current system, and I posted it as a reference in consumption of modern day hardware.
1 stick of ram and a underclocked/volted e7200 is the lowest intel you can get at this time and it will still have a punch as a regular PC.

You could go for AMD as they underclock to <1GHz, (<30W) but I would suggest dual core as i found out that at <1GHz and, regular WHS setup, my disk copy performance was VERY low.
As soon as I upped the cpu clock on my single core LE Sempron i got normal numbers back.

ITX is a good idea but, I wouldn't go ITX until you can get new tech on them and connect more hdds for upgrade ability.
Just my 2c. :)
 
XS Janus said:
^ I agree.
This is just my current system, and I posted it as a reference in consumption of modern day hardware.
1 stick of ram and a underclocked/volted e7200 is the lowest intel you can get at this time and it will still have a punch as a regular PC.

You could go for AMD as they underclock to <1GHz, (<30W) but I would suggest dual core as i found out that at <1GHz and, regular WHS setup, my disk copy performance was VERY low.
As soon as I upped the cpu clock on my single core LE Sempron i got normal numbers back.

ITX is a good idea but, I wouldn't go ITX until you can get new tech on them and connect more hdds for upgrade ability.
Just my 2c. :)
Click to expand...


yeah, I was wondering how to connect many hard drives to a miniITX, and figured a sata raid controller card, with esta ports, and use some sata multiplexors, but by the time you have done all this, your power is going to be so high with all those drives might as well just build a good low powered system atx system.
 
okay.. so it seems everyone is leaning towards a home rolled system... so there are not COTS that are particularlly energy efficient? Like the netgear toaster looking box?

oh, as for usage I was planning on using it as a backup.. somewhere I can offload all my digital clutter and clear out some hard drive space. I was semi hoping to have it sit in another room or my closet.. so I didn't have to over balance my corner's rats-nest of wiring and cable. If I could find a way to 'wake it up' when I needed it sans having to plug things in that would have been fine.. but it seems that I'll probably go external hard drive with a usb/firewire port..
 
Well, I think it depends on how much emphasis you put on tight integration. If size and pure simplicity aren't an issue for you, then building your own system would allow you to better reap the benefits. That said, I have a Thecus N5200, which has been running just fine since a year and a few months ago. IMO, this box is very solid and has excellent performance if you're doing pretty simple stuff like mapping it to a network drive and just accessing files. If you're setting up something more complicated, however, there's a chance that you may run into issues (just what I see from the unofficial boards).

Also, I think the Netgear unit is overpriced. Thecus N5200B is $639-ish.

Oh, last thing: the Thecus N5200 does support hard-drive spin down with the WD5000AAKS. I have not tried but you may find other users commenting on other drives at thecususergroup (just google it - it's a forum).
 
Just FYI the Celeron 420 is a 30 or 35W TDP, should be able to work for a file server no problem and be more efficient power wise than just about anything out there.
 
I have the ReadyNAS which (I think) is the 'Netgear toaster' you mention. It is kinda nice, but I sorta wish I had built my own. It occasionally disconnects from the network for no reason and takes a reboot to fix.

Here are some parts that I have been looking at that should make a pretty badass NAS.

Case - Chenbro ES34069. This case is for ITX motherboards and has 4 hot-swap SATA bays.

Motherboard - VIA SN10000EG. ITX motherboard with 1GHz VIA C7 CPU and PCI-Express.

Add to this a PCI-Express SATA RAID card and 4 Hard drives and it *should* equal a small energy efficient NAS if you install FreeNAS or Windows Home Server.

I am considering trying this when I am able. It looks like it would be a nice setup, but a bit pricey.
 
I just remembered I have a AMD 500mhz K6-2 processor, mobo, and ram laying around collecting dust. I wonder if I shove that in a case with some hard drives and maybe under clock that processor if I could keep a low power usage.. any thoughts?
 
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