Help me decide on new NAS build

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I have been using Windows Home Server v1 (32bit) since 2009. My main drive just died, luckily I have everything backed up on a second drive.

This is just a personal NAS for myself and wife. We use it for storing and accessing documents like word, excel and such. I also use it to store all my photography in RAW format. The only other thing it is used for is music. I rip all my CDs to flac and stream to any of the PCs or the stereo. At the time of the crash I had about 900+GB of data on a 1TB drive.

What would my logical build be based on? I would like RAID 1 or better so everything is mirrored unlike how I had been doing it and manually backing up.

Should I go with WHS2011 even though it is discontinued? FreeNAS, even though it may be way more than I need? Something else I have not considered? I am building using my own parts. I have a machine based on an Intel Q6600 (quad core 2.4GHz) and 4 GB RAM.

Thanks for any input and information.
 
I am reading up on a dedicated NAS device now. Not liking what I see. A couple of things I dont care for is limited flexibility/future proof. What if I want to add more drives etc in the future? Also these units seem to pack the drives in with little to no ventilation. Heat kills. Last is price, starting at a few hundred to several hundred dollars and I still have to provide the drives? I already have all the hardware.
 
The biggest limitation in the dedicated NAS devices are the number of Drive slots. The biggest benefit is the abundance of software options that are either baked right in, or available at reasonable charges. You simply aren't going to get the same functionality out of a NAS you build yourself. That being said, assuming you are set on going to Roll-your-own route, I'd start with FreeNAS or another Windows 7/8 license and share from there. WHS is a dead product that was flaky to begin with.

What hardware are you starting with?
 
I recently went with Freenas.

Very flexible, robust, and yet simple to use

Media plugins are awesome.
 
What hardware are you starting with?
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I am building in a Coolermaster HAF 912 so there is lots of room and good airflow.
I have my old main system that is an Intel Q6600 quadcore CPU and 4 GB RAM. The motherboard has 3 SATA jacks and a single Gb eithernet connection. Only 2 hard drives right now, WD Black 2TB that I would like to set up in RAID1 or equivalent.

I have downloaded FreeNAS and a couple of other OS to play with first.
 
Hofy said:
I am reading up on a dedicated NAS device now. Not liking what I see. A couple of things I dont care for is limited flexibility/future proof. What if I want to add more drives etc in the future? Also these units seem to pack the drives in with little to no ventilation. Heat kills. Last is price, starting at a few hundred to several hundred dollars and I still have to provide the drives? I already have all the hardware.
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The Synology NAS's come in 1, 2, 4, and more drive bay varieties. They don't all have to be full in order to use them. Get a 4 bay NAS and run it with the 2 drives you have until you need more space. They all have fans in the back, and since they are pretty simple, they don't need very much cooling. Price may seem a little high, but you are getting all the functionality you need built in. If you have to buy an OS and software products for everything that it does, you could easily spend thousands. Also, your long term operating costs will be lower. A Synology NAS with 2 drives in it draws ~20W of power. The hardware you have will idle at several times that.
 
gangolfus said:
The Synology NAS's come in 1, 2, 4, and more drive bay varieties. They don't all have to be full in order to use them. Get a 4 bay NAS and run it with the 2 drives you have until you need more space. They all have fans in the back, and since they are pretty simple, they don't need very much cooling. Price may seem a little high, but you are getting all the functionality you need built in. If you have to buy an OS and software products for everything that it does, you could easily spend thousands. Also, your long term operating costs will be lower. A Synology NAS with 2 drives in it draws ~20W of power. The hardware you have will idle at several times that.
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freenas is free - does it all.

If he already has the hardware...
 
falkenbd said:
freenas is free - does it all.

If he already has the hardware...
Click to expand...

Title is misleading. "What NAS software should I use?" or something along those lines would be better.

"Help me decide on new NAS build" implies desire to (or at least consideration for) start from scratch.
 
I still use whs2011 with stablebit drivepool. Plays nicely with everything on the network (a lot of windows-based pcs), automated backups, etc.
 
Time to bring this back to life. I still have not gotten around to building my NAS. I have had plenty of time to think about it though. LOL

Anyway, I have been leaning toward a Synology now. Mainly due to the small size and low power draw.

I would like your input both good and bad to a couple of things.

External HDD back up. I have an external enclosure (Rosewill RX358 V2) that houses a Western Digital Black drive. Can this be formatted in NTFS and still serve as back up and restore? I only ask as I would like the ability to hook it up to a Windows computer and have access to all my data in the event I am not able to access the Synology.

1 disk or 2? I know RAID is not backup. Since I am doing back up to an external drive(s) (I plan to rotate 2 external drives to an offsite location) Is there and need to go with a 2 disk NAS? In the event that the main HDD fails in the NAS it is no big deal to be down for a few days to drop in a new drive and do a recover from one of the back up externals. (I have narrowed my Synology choices down to the DS 114 or the DS 214+.

Thanks
 
Another Synology Advocate here. I'd always recommend a minimum of 2 bays.

Start with mirroring so if one disk dies you don't lose anything or experience downtime etc... then life is made incredibly esay when you need to grow the disk (swap one, move the data then swap the other).

I have a number of them deployed at client sites, use the 1813+ at home and the RS3614RPXS at my colo.
 
Hofy said:
Anyway, I have been leaning toward a Synology now. Mainly due to the small size and low power draw.
Click to expand...

You'll be happy with it, just remember to keep it updated.

Hofy said:
I would like your input both good and bad to a couple of things.

External HDD back up. I have an external enclosure (Rosewill RX358 V2) that houses a Western Digital Black drive. Can this be formatted in NTFS and still serve as back up and restore? I only ask as I would like the ability to hook it up to a Windows computer and have access to all my data in the event I am not able to access the Synology.
Click to expand...

I Have a 412+ with 3 2TB. after the synolocker panic i purchased a combo deal of two external USB's to make revolving backups as an "oh shit" backup. Pretty much just plug it in to the synology's usb or esata port, give it a few moments then you'll see it in File station. You should be able to plug it in to any computer that can read the format you formatted the drive in, I'm pretty sure mine are NTFS

Hofy said:
1 disk or 2? I know RAID is not backup. Since I am doing back up to an external drive(s) (I plan to rotate 2 external drives to an offsite location) Is there and need to go with a 2 disk NAS? In the event that the main HDD fails in the NAS it is no big deal to be down for a few days to drop in a new drive and do a recover from one of the back up externals. (I have narrowed my Synology choices down to the DS 114 or the DS 214+.
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1 or two bay devices are hardly any better than an external USB. If you are serious i would go no less than 4 bay with 3 drives, While you can put different sized and speced drives in, you may 'lose' space. check the synology RAID Calculator for more information. I'm kinda in the same boat... if my NAS is down for a while it wouldn't kill me... however It would be annoying and piss me off. 3 drives so you can just order a new one put it in and rebuild with no downtime unless a 2nd drive fails in which case you got a back up already on external :) also gives more room, and more room to expand.

example, two 2TB drives in SHR raid. gives you 2TB of space. You start a video editing business and need more storage for raw video and samples. you get two 4TB and throw i in you now got 8TB. Now one of the two 2TB Drives die, you replace it with a 4TB now you got 10TB and no down time. Who needs 10TB of storage? Probably the same people who needed more than 640k of RAM :)

Always consult the raid calculator before you buy though.

Synology's community forum is pretty good too.


EDIT: 2 bays/drives mirrored does give a back up too. my post implied that it doesn't.. just clarifying so i don't get beat up TOO much ;-)
 
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I have a DS213 with 1TB drives mirrored (my storage needs are modest). This gives me drive failure tolerance and I also use the Crashplan package for house-burn-down tolerance. I've got better things to do with my time than deal with backing up to external drives. The $3.35/mo I spend on Crashplan is worth every single penny.
 
gangolfus said:
I have a DS213 with 1TB drives mirrored (my storage needs are modest). This gives me drive failure tolerance and I also use the Crashplan package for house-burn-down tolerance. I've got better things to do with my time than deal with backing up to external drives. The $3.35/mo I spend on Crashplan is worth every single penny.
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I leave one plugged in for quick local restores and it always stays attached and auto backs up every night. Crashplan does a larger set and backs up constantly. Doesn't get easier than that.
 
/usr/home said:
I leave one plugged in for quick local restores and it always stays attached and auto backs up every night. Crashplan does a larger set and backs up constantly. Doesn't get easier than that.
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I've only restored a hand full of files in the couple of years I've been using Crashplan, so I don't need quick restoration capabilities. But that sounds like a great solution if you do.
 
I use FreeNAS (now NAS4free) and it's fanstastic. I have yet to have one issue with it.
 
I must be getting stupid in my old age. A single drive unit? I want at least a 2 drive if for nothing else to grow the disk size when I need. While I would like a DS214+ I am going to have to go with a DS214se due to funds. Good thing about these Synology units is they hold their value so I can upgrade later.

Thank you for your input and guidance everyone.
 
Look into just Linux with mdadm raid. I find that has been the simplest and since it's very vanilla you don't really have to worry too much about committing to a specific platform hardware or software wise. You can then install Samba if you want SMB shares, or you can do NFS or even iSCSI. Whatever you want.

Personally I like using a SSD for the OS drive to keep all the front bays for strictly data.
 
..another FreeNAS user .. works great . Plex media plug-in is splendid indeed.
 
Well the 214se is on its way. I should have it Wednesday.
 
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