Looking to build a freeNas box need suggestions

[justinwebb]

I am looking into building a NAS box running freeNas and need suggestions on what hardware and such. I am not looking for a powerhouse as I need it quiet and energy efficient so no core i7 lol. I was looking at some embedded solutions such as e-350. Anyone running one of these or have some spare parts lol.

[Gergwheel1647545492]

I have one of WD Green HD's (2TB I think) and it works great, just don't let the system go into sleep mode or you have to wait 2-3 seconds for the HD to come back up. As far as proc's i can't help at all there.

[JaSSon]

How about this? Should have more than enough performance, should be very power efficient, and it'll be cheap!

[justinwebb]

Not enough sata connectors, I have (4) 4TB drives full of movies and files, will also be storing all my ROMS for the arcade.

[JaSSon]

Not enough sata connectors, I have (4) 4TB drives full of movies and files, will also be storing all my ROMS for the arcade.

 

What are you talking about? It has plenty of Sata connectors! There's an open PCI-E slot.

[greg1647545532]

I've been running a Promise SmartStor (2-bay) NAS box for nearly 5 years now. My friends all told me to build a PC for this, but I wanted something extremely low power and quiet, and it fit the bill. It's had no problem streaming 1080p video, although I'm only doing an SMB connection to my WDTV LIVE boxes, so it's not doing any DLNA transcoding or PLEX serving. I need to upgrade soon and I'm going to get something similar.

 

Not sure what your main priority is, but if it's low power consumption, I wouldn't rule out something like that.

[justinwebb]

I thought about going that route just figured it might be cheaper to get a small mini itx case that holds a bunch of drives and a embedded mobo combo and use some of the other parts i already have. I have a E-450 that i use for my carpc that works well and thought about getting the same thing again. Thanks for the ideas so far glad to see others use something similar.

[unfunnyryan]

This is my build...

 

http://i.imgur.com/I1w5B14.jpg

 

It's a cheapy AMD CPU/Motherboard bundle from microcenter with 8gb of leftover ram I had. LSI raid card from ebay that powers 8 2TB seagate barracudas in RAID6. The other two drives are 1TB WD Blacks in RAID1 for the OS. I run Ubuntu 12.04, with webmin, subsonic, plex, a few voice servers, and a ton of more basic server packages.

 

My advice would be start big on the drives so you dont have the trouble of upgrading a bunch. Onboard raid is fine for linux, just skip RAID5 if you're using 2TB or larger drives.

[Shmaa]

I am running a miniITX setup with a 2120T (35watt). Very efficient setup.

 

http://xtremeoutlawseries.com/DSC01104.jpg

[justinwebb]

any more details about your setup?

[EssFo]

I picked up a used Drobo 5N on Ebay a while back. 10TB. I would never buy it new but it was a good deal and it's GB Ethernet.

 

Drobo 5N

[gillbot]

I use this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135344

This CPU: http://www.microcenter.com/product/419487/Celeron_G1620_27GHz_LGA_1155_Boxed_processor

16GB DDR3 SODIMM I had laying around in a generic ITX case. Boots to mSATA SSD and I use 4 TB drives on the USB 3 ports for storage.

 

As a backup I also have this: https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/app/cust_alp/p/1189,1193

It's full of 2TB HDD's in raid 5

Protection: Parity (RAID 5)

Write Caching: Enabled with UPS

Periodic consistency check: Enabled

 

Total Drive Size:7.28 TB

Capacity:5.4 TB

Used:2.97 TB

[gillbot]

Send this guy an offer: http://www.clevelandracing.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22479

[Shmaa]

any more details about your setup?

 

Some if this is probably overkill for your needs, but it will give you an idea.

 

Asrock H67 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Intel 2120T CPU

Areca 1882 RAID card

Norco 4220 case

 

Draws about 50watts at idle 110 watts with all the drives spinning

 

Running NAS4Free (used to be freenas). Embedded version so it boots from a usb stick.