NAS options?

[RanceJustice]

Hey guys. I was wondering if you could suggest to me a nice, quiet, compact NAS setup? You see, I have three old SATA segate 160gb drives laying around and doing nothing, and I hoped to get them into a nice NAS/file server kind of setup.

Looking at newegg there are a huge selection of expensive little NAS boxes that typically come with 500gb-1tb worth of storage. I'd love to get a nice little box like that, but I don't want to pay the premium for preinstalled HDDs. Here's what I'm looking for.

1. Relatively small case. Maybe something that can hold between 5-10 drives. Nice looking and quiet is a plus.
2. SATA support is a plus, as is USB2/Firewire. Gig Ethernet would be nice too
3. Can be administrated/monitored from either windows or linux. Web based GUI is cool, SSH is helpful too. No entirely proprietary windows only management service. Bonus points if it runs on open source (ie, like the linksys wireless routers etc..)
4. Encryption possible.. selecting individual drives/files/volumes with truecrypt etc.
5. Powered by a high quality raid card with good speed etc

Any ideas?

 

[Argion]

I have been looking for a similar solution. I think that I am going to go for the ReadyNAS NV made by infrant. It is a bit on the expensive side ($600 about), but I think it is worth it.

 

[RavenD]

Have you considered taking an older box and throwing in a controller card and gigabit NIC, insalling linux, and software raiding the drives? Or even throwing together a cheap celeron/sempron combo with 512mb-1gb of ram and onboard video, and sata controller card. Can control it via ssh and webmin.

 

[Lazn_Work]

http://www.freenas.org/ (website seems temporarily down) And any old hardware you got laying around.

==>lazn

 

[swatbat]

Yea for what you want I would say building something would be the best way to go. I've never used freenas but it looks pretty good. May want to play around with it.Other then that webmin runs on pretty much any unix system and would let you do web administration for a linux/freebsd build.

 

[Johnboy12358]

I can vouch for FreeNAS. Its a little rough around the edges, but its really nice and gets the job done well.

 

[RanceJustice]

I was looking at FreeNAS.

Any idea of what kind of hardware I'd need to run something like this? I really didn't want to have to basically build a PC. Size is definately a concern. Could it be done on the mini-ITX format successfully? I want it to have enough power/speed to do what it has to.

I already have a "main" SFF box (see sig) so smaller than that would be nice I think. Of course, that may not be possible.

Any hardwear suggestions for maximum power/heat + noise ratio? I'd imagine I'd need...

1. Case. No idea where to start with this. Small and stylish would be nice.
2. Proc - Sempron or... maybe a Via? Do they fit on mini-ITX? What kind of power do I need? Perhaps a laptop proc? Like a Yonah core duo? Old Pentium M (centrino version, not P4)
3. Mobo - kinda dependant on proc...
4. Raid card - I'd expect I'd need a good one. 5 channel? SATA? Could get expensive but that's okay. I'd imagine this would have the largest performance increase. Linux friendly/compatable would be nice, especially if I'm using free NAS
5. Power supply - Hmmm... even with a low consumption processor I'd imagine I'd need something that can sustain the raid card and up to 5 drives or so. Can this be done externally? I notice a lot of the prebuilt NAS have a power brick.
6. NICs - onboard gig ethernet... maybe 2?

Thanks for all your help so far.

Anything I'm forgetting?

 

[paradoxblue]

well u wont find a mobo able to hold 10 drives. so you will need raid cards.

plus you want 10 drives??.. and a psu to support them.

I think you jsut blew the thought of mini atx outta the water since i don't see ten drives being small.

go with freenas. they list all the min hardware you need. then but a cheap case with lotsa bays and fill it up.

 

[Lazn_Work]

I was looking at FreeNAS.

Any idea of what kind of hardware I'd need to run something like this? I really didn't want to have to basically build a PC. Size is definately a concern. Could it be done on the mini-ITX format successfully? I want it to have enough power/speed to do what it has to.

I already have a "main" SFF box (see sig) so smaller than that would be nice I think. Of course, that may not be possible.

Any hardwear suggestions for maximum power/heat + noise ratio? I'd imagine I'd need...

1. Case. No idea where to start with this. Small and stylish would be nice.
2. Proc - Sempron or... maybe a Via? Do they fit on mini-ITX? What kind of power do I need? Perhaps a laptop proc? Like a Yonah core duo? Old Pentium M (centrino version, not P4)
3. Mobo - kinda dependant on proc...
4. Raid card - I'd expect I'd need a good one. 5 channel? SATA? Could get expensive but that's okay. I'd imagine this would have the largest performance increase. Linux friendly/compatable would be nice, especially if I'm using free NAS
5. Power supply - Hmmm... even with a low consumption processor I'd imagine I'd need something that can sustain the raid card and up to 5 drives or so. Can this be done externally? I notice a lot of the prebuilt NAS have a power brick.
6. NICs - onboard gig ethernet... maybe 2?

Thanks for all your help so far.

Anything I'm forgetting?

The reason I suggested freenas and building your own is that if you look at ready made solutions you are talking $820 for one that supports 4 drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822329002 and you wanted 5 - 10 drives.

==>Lazn

 

[nevamore]

Hey guys. I was wondering if you could suggest to me a nice, quiet, compact NAS setup? You see, I have three old SATA segate 160gb drives laying around and doing nothing, and I hoped to get them into a nice NAS/file server kind of setup.

Looking at newegg there are a huge selection of expensive little NAS boxes that typically come with 500gb-1tb worth of storage. I'd love to get a nice little box like that, but I don't want to pay the premium for preinstalled HDDs. Here's what I'm looking for.

1. Relatively small case. Maybe something that can hold between 5-10 drives. Nice looking and quiet is a plus.
2. SATA support is a plus, as is USB2/Firewire. Gig Ethernet would be nice too
3. Can be administrated/monitored from either windows or linux. Web based GUI is cool, SSH is helpful too. No entirely proprietary windows only management service. Bonus points if it runs on open source (ie, like the linksys wireless routers etc..)
4. Encryption possible.. selecting individual drives/files/volumes with truecrypt etc.
5. Powered by a high quality raid card with good speed etc

Any ideas?

I second using a ReadyNAS from http://www.infrant.com/ . Mine is the ReadyNASx6 and is SO easy to set up and use. I bought mine over a year ago and put a pair of 80 GB SATA in them. In fact, now that they are full, I came here to hardforum to look for bigger drives to put in it. It has built in hard drive monitoring of your individual HD temps and S.M.A.R.T. Also, on the fly, RAID recreation when I install new drives. It emails me if it detects any potential issues.

If you want something that you buy, install your drives and let it sit in the corner and quietly do its job then check out http://www.infrant.com/

 

[Lazn_Work]

I second using a ReadyNAS from http://www.infrant.com/ . Mine is the ReadyNASx6 and is SO easy to set up and use. I bought mine over a year ago and put a pair of 80 GB SATA in them. In fact, now that they are full, I came here to hardforum to look for bigger drives to put in it. It has built in hard drive monitoring of your individual HD temps and S.M.A.R.T. Also, on the fly, RAID recreation when I install new drives. It emails me if it detects any potential issues.

If you want something that you buy, install your drives and let it sit in the corner and quietly do its job then check out http://www.infrant.com/

That is what I linked to above (an Infrant solution) but they are pricy, and only hold 4 drives, he wants 5-10 drives.. Infrant doesn't have anything that big.

==>lazn

 

[nevamore]

oops. I missed the 5-10 drives request. His OP mentioned he was going to use his 3 existing 160 GB drives so I was going off that. He can easily get 1+ TB with 4 drives though

 

[Johnboy12358]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131035
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103537
Stick a Gig of ram in there, and load up with four of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140
on the onboard controller, Software RAID5 them (right at .9TB) using Free NAS and throw it in the case of your choice. I dont *think* the mobo is mini-atx, but it is shorter than standard so you could get a shorter tower. Use the onboard nic for now, upgrade to gige later on using the pci-e 1X slot, and upgrade to an uber raid card later on (an Areca or something) in the PCI-e 16X slot.

 

[Bookmage]

I used older hw I already had and picked up the cheap 4 port sata syba card off newegg for <30$. Hooked up 4 x 320GB SATA drives and ran linux off the onboard IDE. Setup samba, SRAID5+LVM on CentOS and i ihavent had to touch it in a year. Its an old P3 733Mhz on an abit mobo w/one pci slot. It worked so well I converted the same system but used 4 x 200GB SATA & 3 x 200GB IDE to get 1TB on SRAID5. For something much simpler, I would vote freenas.

I just picked up the ReadyNas X6for around $540. I needed another Video server and Im sticking 4 x 500GB Seagates in it. The drives come in later this week so I'll see how that works.

If I had to do another from scratch, I would pick up the cheapest AMD S754/939 cpu w/ a 50$ mobo that had 3 x pci slots and cram 3 x of those cheap syba sata cards in it. that would give me 12-16 sata drives depending on the mobo.I would use those 5 x 3.5 to 3 x 5.25 drive racks to store the drives and cram them into a case w/enough 5.25 bays. In my case, probably a rackmoutn w/8 x 5.25 bays. If your looking for a small SFF case, then your only lookinfor half a dozen drives or so. the QPack w/some mods would fit a 5 x 3.5 drive rack easily and save space. You could pick up one of hte nicer enclosures here
or get just the bracket... I'll have to look up the link if you want, but I picked mine up for like 30$

for cheap id say pick up the 30$ 4 port sata card & run linux sraid on it.

 

[Johnboy12358]

Just out of curiosity, since I havent been able to try that specific setup yet, how bad is it when you saturate the PCI bus with that many drives on it? I was planning on setting up something similar with a Piii 600 and a bunch of sata drives on those cheap syba cards as a stepping stone to a more robust system, and I was wondering about how the speed is when you go over that 133mbps mark.

 

[Bookmage]

I have not had any problems with saturating the bus. My max usage woulda been streaming 3-4 videos over the network at once... or copying/streaming to 3-4 computers... I dont think I max out much... ethernet is 100mbps and the drives may get like 80?mbps... i dont remember the exact numbers of hand, but essentially I am limited by the ethernet speed and dont have too many problems since Im not streaming full dvds yet...
I recall reading somewhere that streaming DVDs was like 6-7MBps? So even when I do choose to stream full DVDs I should be alright between a couple computers....

lets see who can reference the exact numbers and do the math...

Ive got one server on that setup streaming music and the other streaming videos/music vids... to an xbox and a couple pcs...

 

[Bookmage]

I just remembered I can get some bench numbers using bonnie++

[videos@angrist]# bonnie++ -d /data/ -s 1024 -m Angrist

Version 1.03 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
Angrist 1G 8790 80 21309 25 12547 18 10359 90 23407 40 444.2 3

nothing great, but its enough to stream video off of... newer systems might offer better performance... dunno... if thats a bit low, im open to suggestions to improve it... and i welcome other methods of benching....

 

[Project2501]

I'm doing the same thing that
Mashie did.
The only difference is that I'm using a Via PD motherboard and Seagate 7200.8 400GB drives. Unfortunatly I'm having problems with power to the drives, big pain in the ass. Good luck, check his forums for more options/opinions.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I recall reading somewhere that streaming DVDs was like 6-7MBps?

DVD constrains the available bandwidth to 10 megabits. That's about 1 MB/s, and I don't think I've ever seen one that high. Usual is less than a meg a second. 100 mbit ethernet is enough for several simultaneous clients.

25 MB/s on six disks is pretty lousy, but it's plenty for what you're doing with it.

 

[general]

Hey guys. I was wondering if you could suggest to me a " You see, I have three old SATA segate 160gb drives laying around and doing nothing, and I hoped to get them into a nice NAS/file server kind of setup.

Looking at newegg there are a huge selection of expensive little NAS boxes that typically come with 500gb-1tb worth of storage. I'd love to get a nice little box like that, but I don't want to pay the premium for preinstalled HDDs. Here's what I'm looking for.

"1. Relatively small case. Maybe something that can hold between 5-10 drives. Nice looking and quiet is a plus."
"nice, quiet, compact NAS setup?"

Do you want compact or 10 drives? You don't get both.

"2. SATA support is a plus, as is USB2/Firewire. Gig Ethernet would be nice too"

If you choose a ready made device it will probably be all SATA. You can build a server and just slap a RAID card in there.

"3. Can be administrated/monitored from either windows or linux. Web based GUI is cool, SSH is helpful too. No entirely proprietary windows only management service. Bonus points if it runs on open source (ie, like the linksys wireless routers etc..)"

If it's a NAS, how things are done internally really shouldn't matter to you. You just connect to it.

5. Powered by a high quality raid card with good speed etc

Any ideas?

Your best bet is to probably get one of the devices on newegg and part out the drives and put your own in. That said, NAS devices are not cheap.