My First NAS Machine

I

INVRTD

n00b
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
2
G'day all,

I have been reading through this forum for some time, I have been trying to answer as many questions as I could before posting and asking, I have started hitting a few brick walls, but hopefully I can ask them in a good way, I appreciate any help you can offer.

Basically I Want to make a big external hard drive with some level of redundancy :), eventually joining the ranks of the +10tb members.

My current set up is 2 external 2tb drives, I am out of room and lack of raid makes me nervous, lots of effort has gone into the data.

Planned Systems
  • Case - Factal Design - ARC 3 MIDI
  • RAID CARD - Rocket Raid 2680 - (using 2 SAS breakout cables)
  • My plan is to start with 3x2tb green drives and set these up in raid 5, migrate the data off my current drives onto the raid and add one of the two drives, the other will be used for backup of photos, home movies etc, kept off site - add more as required
  • motherboard and CPU - no idea what to get ?????

My Questions (there is a few =D)
  • I have no idea what motherboard and CPU to get besides on board graphics, and suggestions welcome
  • would 4 gig be sufficient ram
  • would running Windows XP and running the raid as a mapped single drive work
  • what size PSU do I need for this with all 8 drives
  • what are people's thoughts of rocket raid cards
  • will a normal 180 gig drive be ok for a system drive? Is there any noticeable advantages for having a SSD for system drive?

Any other thoughts and suggestions are more than welcome, I'm new to this and looking forward to learning :D

Cheers Alex
 
INVRTD said:
  • I have no idea what motherboard and CPU to get besides on board graphics, and suggestions welcome
  • would 4 gig be sufficient ram
  • would running Windows XP and running the raid as a mapped single drive work
  • what size PSU do I need for this with all 8 drives
  • what are people's thoughts of rocket raid cards
  • will a normal 180 gig drive be ok for a system drive? Is there any noticeable advantages for having a SSD for system drive?
Click to expand...

Before you jump straight into hardware details, I might recommend doing some research on some actual NAS setups. While Windows XP "would work," if you are building this to be a dedicated NAS, why not work with an O/S designed for that purpose?

Picking an O/S first will be important, as compatibility may dictate some of your purchase requirements. Even choices like will 4GB of RAM will be "sufficient" will depend your setup and what you're trying to do. Some of the NAS systems can chew through as much RAM as you give them, as they'll use it as a level of cache for performance.

Try checking out FreeNAS, OpenFiler, Unraid, or a Solaris/ZFS setup with OpenIndiana or Solaris Express.
 
Last edited:
I'd check out FreeNAS, Solaris Express, or OpenIndiana and look at doing a ZFS-based system. Just my personal suggestion. Once you decide fully what you want to do, it will be easier to choose hardware.
 
excellent, looks like i have some 'light' reading to do =), many thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top