Building a home NAS - feedback on build

[Handruin]

I'm looking to build a NAS for a fun learning project and also to be useful for backup storage. I've pieced together a system after looking around for a while and I wanted to see what you guys thought.

Public Wish List.
(it's missing a power supply because I have a 480W I can use for this)

Basic needs:
6TB RAW space with ability to expand to more later.
Dedicated NAS unit to be placed in a closet somewhere.
Hot swappable drives and bays.
Moderate to low power consumption (will spin down drives during idle).
Future expandable (PCIe slots).
Video integrated motherboard.
GigE LAN connection(s).

Running FreeNAS.
or
Possible use of Windows Home server for experimentation/learning.

With the current build, I feel I can expand it as drives get larger and cheaper in the future. The case has 9 x 5.25 bays that I can use for drives and the board has two PCIe slots that I can add either one or two SATA controller cards in the future to get me to the 9-drive max which is plenty for my needs for quite some time. I'll use the four onboard SATA for the initial four HDDs and then add another PCIe card down the road for four more HDDs if I need them. I decided to try booting from a CF card (using an IDE> CF adapter) which supports UDMA so that I can dedicate 100% of each drive to NAS storage.

I believe the dual core Atom and 2GB RAM should be more than plenty to support this NAS build for up to 8 HDDs, but let me know your thoughts.

Short term goal:
4 x 1.5TB SATA drives
1 DVD EIDE
1 CF boot drive (EIDE)
[5 of 9 bays consumed]
6TB storage

Long term goal:
4x 1.5 TB (using all 4 onboard SATA ports)
4x 2.0 TB (using one 4-port SATA PCIe adapter)
1 DVD EIDE
1 CF boot drive (EIDE)
[9 of 9 bays consumed]
14TB storage

 

[Stereodude]

I'd get a more powerful CPU. You can probably get really close to saturating a dual core Atom with gigabit traffic. I can use over 50% of a E5200 it I'm hammering on it with iperf using the on-board Realtek NiC.

 

[ddrueding]

I'll second the 'dude, and also recommend against a CF->IDE in this instance. The headache I'm dealing with today revolves around corrupted filesystems on CF cards after unclean reboots. It seems to be worse and more frequent than with regular drives. I'd use a 2.5" drive for the power savings. It's not like heat/power are that constrained.

 

[Handruin]

How about these changes to the main board?

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H (integrated video and 6 SATA)
Memory: Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 5000+ 2.2GHz Socket AM2+ 65W
Internal OS drive: SAMSUNG Spinpoint M Series HM160HI 160GB 5400 RPM 2.5" SATA
DVD-R: Sony Optiarc AD-7240S-0B
NAS drives: (4x) SAMSUNG Spinpoint F2EG HD154UI 1.5TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb
Removable drive bay: (4x) Athena Power MR-125B Black SATA
Case: Rosewill R901-P BK

Total: $740.88

Previous config price (with atom CPU and CF card): $775

Do you think this CPU has enough performance to handle this NAS config?


==============

What would be the best way to mount the 2.5" OS drive without consuming one of the 5.25" bays? The case looks like it has a small spot at the bottom that I think I could mount the drive right to the bottom of the case (drill holes into it).

 

[ddrueding]

Don't bother drilling holes, double-sided poster tape does a great job with 2.5" drives. I've been doing it for years without issue.

I also wouldn't fool around with 4 separate consumer-grade hotswap bays. Just get one of these and don't worry about it anymore. It also ups your max drive count to 15

 

[Stereodude]

Don't bother drilling holes, double-sided poster tape does a great job with 2.5" drives. I've been doing it for years without issue.

I was going to recommend Velcro.

I also wouldn't fool around with 4 separate consumer-grade hotswap bays. Just get one of these and don't worry about it anymore. It also ups your max drive count to 15

As long as he's not worried about it being quiet. oke:

 

[ddrueding]

I was going to recommend Velcro.
As long as he's not worried about it being quiet. oke:

There is a jumper to disable the fan, or allow a fan swap. If you don't use the jumper the alarm will be very annoying.

 

[Stereodude]

There is a jumper to disable the fan, or allow a fan swap. If you don't use the jumper the alarm will be very annoying.

Disabling the fan is a recipe for having your drives melt down.

 

[ddrueding]

Disabling the fan is a recipe for having your drives melt down.

Um, no. Disabling the fan and not handling the cooling some other way would cause them to run 30-ish above ambient. Still in many peoples comfort zones depending on what ambient is. Or just silence the alarm and put in a quieter fan.

 

[Stereodude]

Doesn't it use two 40mm fans?

 

[sdbardwick]

Specs (and picture) on Newegg say 1x90mm fan. Also looks like the Newegg picture is rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks for the suggestion, I like the idea of using that unit to hold more drives in less bays. Noise won't be a huge concern, but a few people in the comments mentioned different fans I could try if I find the noise to be too much. I plan to put this machine somewhere else as a 'set and forget' type of appliance. The price isn't bad once I noticed it also comes with 5 SATA cables! If I bought 5 of the other individual bays it would cost me $70 and they don't come with cables (or active cooling).

Judging by the case I selected, I'd have to alter the case to fit this drive carriage into it because the 5.25" bays have tiny shelves in them. It's not a big deal, but something I didn't think of until reading the comments on newegg.

What did you guys think about the change from the atom to a the AMD 5000+ for CPU power? Do you think that would suffice for this NAS unit and GigE transfer?

 

[Bozo]

Specs (and picture) on Newegg say 1x90mm fan. Also looks like the Newegg picture is rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

The one I have uses a 90mm fan that is very loud. I replaced it with a temperature controlled fan from Antec.

 

[MaxBurn]

I like the suggested drive cage much better, you can stick the OS drive in there as well.

On the case I am thinking maybe you want to consider something that has air filters on the intake air flow? I find even crappy filters like the ones on the P180 do quite a lot. maybe a case with a more traditional design that you can home brew some air filters?

Is there any reason you can't just go with a Celeron? I think even at this level the Core2 Celeron holds an advantage in speed and price over the 5000+.
If you wanted to use the server for something it couldn't handle you could swap in a quad easily as long as motherboard selection is considered beforehand.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116075

 

[ddrueding]

I can tell you that a Coolermaster Stacker fits quite a few of those Supermicro drive enclosures without any mods. That was the combo for my first mondo file server.

 

[Mercutio]

I use IDE drives at this point for boot and loading OS (if necessary), to preserve my SATA ports for use in arrays. The ports are there and generally aren't being used for anything else, so why not?

 

[Handruin]

I like the suggested drive cage much better, you can stick the OS drive in there as well.

On the case I am thinking maybe you want to consider something that has air filters on the intake air flow? I find even crappy filters like the ones on the P180 do quite a lot. maybe a case with a more traditional design that you can home brew some air filters?

Is there any reason you can't just go with a Celeron? I think even at this level the Core2 Celeron holds an advantage in speed and price over the 5000+.
If you wanted to use the server for something it couldn't handle you could swap in a quad easily as long as motherboard selection is considered beforehand.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116075

I have to go research the C2D Celerons. Any time I hear Celeron it leaves me thinking slow and cheap which is why I didn't even consider it. Your idea with the motherboard is something I already thought about on the AMD side. If the X2 5000+ proves to be inadequate, the quad core Phenom also fits into that board.

 

[Handruin]

I can tell you that a Coolermaster Stacker fits quite a few of those Supermicro drive enclosures without any mods. That was the combo for my first mondo file server.

I'm sure it does, but that case is 4 time as expensive as the one I'm considering. If I were planning to go as large as your setup, I'd consider it. Your simple suggestion of the supermicro drive cages brought me from 9-15 and even then it's 6 more drives that I previously intended.

 

[Mercutio]

I have to go research the C2D Celerons. Any time I hear Celeron it leaves me thinking slow and cheap...

They are slow. They are cheap. They're also very power efficient and sit on generally higher-quality motherboards (solid caps, cooler northbridges). AMD works really well for a low-cost all around desktop, but the things AMD brings to the table largely aren't things you need to have in a file server.

 

[Handruin]

I use IDE drives at this point for boot and loading OS (if necessary), to preserve my SATA ports for use in arrays. The ports are there and generally aren't being used for anything else, so why not?

I was just being stubborn with the cables and didn't want thick IDE. I can get one of those rounded ide cables to use.

 

[P5-133XL]

You don't need a CPU that is anything other than slow and cheap for a file server. You will rarely be CPU bound.

 

[Handruin]

They are slow. They are cheap. They're also very power efficient and sit on generally higher-quality motherboards (solid caps, cooler northbridges). AMD works really well for a low-cost all around desktop, but the things AMD brings to the table largely aren't things you need to have in a file server.

Does that mean you're in favor of a C2D Celeron over an AMD 5000+? Both CPUs are 65W, with AMD being a 45nm vs the Celeron at 65nm. The price difference is $5 less for the C2DC.

 

[MaxBurn]

I guess that would come down to the motherboard you choose then.

The only reason we were considering this in the first place was concern the ATOM might not really be up to the task of saturating gigabit transfers? Stepping up to AMD 5000+ or Celeron C2D is enough to eliminate that? I can't say, I don't have the experience.

 

[Handruin]

You're correct. The reason I bumped this from the Atom to the AMD (or possibly C2DC) is because SD suggested it was possible to saturate it over GigE connection which is important to my project.

I looked through a ton of motherboards to find the five basic criteria I needed on the AMD socket (same would apply to an Intel 775).

1.) Integrated graphics
2.) At least 4 SATA (but now I want 6).
3.) At least one PCIe expansion of 4x or higher (preferably two).
4.) GigE network port.
5.) SATA supports AHCI.

I'm willing to spend more on a motherboard if it supports more SATA, but finding a board with 8 SATA ports and integrated graphics is slim pickings. From what I've seen, the boards which come with 8 SATA are geared to those who want multiple graphics cards.

Not being able to use an Atom-based CPU isn't a big deal only because I was able to spend less money on a full motherboard and CPU compared to the Atom solution I found. I think the Atom solution would have consumed less power and generated less heat, but not been as CPU powerful.

 

[MaxBurn]

Weeel there is this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182193
Comes with 2gb memory at $125.

 

[Mercutio]

That's an awfully consumer-friendly board to have a Supermicro label on it. Wow. Especially with HDMI.

 

[Stereodude]

Just don't plan having any options in the BIOS.

 

[Mercutio]

Date, time, installed memory, parallel port modes... what more could you ask for?

 

[Handruin]

That's a nice find MaxBurn. When I compare prices, that board saves me about $5 from the AMD config I priced out. I've never used a supermicro board so I'm a little hesitant.

 

[Stereodude]

They're very stable, but I wouldn't hold your breath for there being a pile of BIOS options for tweaking or overclocking. It'll be like an Intel board very bare bones in the BIOS.

 

[P5-133XL]

Date, time, installed memory, parallel port modes... what more could you ask for?

Parallel port modes? It's been years since I needed to deal with those. All the newer printers are USB. Now, boot order: theres something setup needs...

 

[Mercutio]

Parallel port modes? It's been years since I needed to deal with those. All the newer printers are USB. Now, boot order: theres something setup needs...

I've found Intel G41 boards that still had Parallel port options in the BIOS despite the faxt that they did not have parallel ports.

I've also dealt with Vostro desktops that lacked SATA boot order options.

Go figure.

 

[Handruin]

Do I need a special cable or converter with a ATA 2.5" drive like this Samsung Spinpoint M5 HM160HC 160GB? I can't find a picture of the back interface. I've never bought a laptop drive, so I don't know if I need anything else for it. When I googled 2.5" drives, it looks like I need a 2.5" to Desktop 3.5" IDE Hard Drive Adapter Converter.

As for the motherboard and CPU. I've decided to switch from the X2 5000+ because I'm finding very little information on the 2.2GHz variety of this CPU. The motherboard I was going to pick doesn't show it as supported. I'm going to try the AM3 socket Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz which is shown to be supported. It should add a little extra CPU power which should be more than enough for this project.

 

[Stereodude]

They're the same as the desktop drives on the back. The same cables work.

 

[ddrueding]

That is exactly the adapter you need.

 

[Mercutio]

They're the same as the desktop drives on the back. The same cables work.

This 100% wrong for IDE drives. The back is a 44 pin interface and the pins are closer together. You need that adapter.

 

[Stereodude]

This 100% wrong for IDE drives. The back is a 44 pin interface and the pins are closer together. You need that adapter.

I misread his post. I though he asked about SATA drives, not PATA.

 

[MaxBurn]

Would you be interested in this extra stuff I have laying around?
2x: 10GB IDE 2.5" IBM Travelstar IC25N010ATDA04-0

A little on the small side but it is free + ship. I can even throw in the 2.5-3.5 adapter you need.

I also have two 3.5" WD600LB-00DNA0 drives.

 

[Handruin]

That's very nice of you to offer. The 10GB drive is more than enough for freeNAS to run. I think it only needs 64MB to install. The drive I picked would offer the possibility for me to use the windows home server to see if I like it better than freeNAS. The WHS requires 80GB of space at a minimum. I may still take you up on the offer for the two drives. I'll PM you to figure out the details on the Travelstars.

 

[Handruin]

I know I'm digging up my old thread, but I figured this was as good of a place as any to give an update.

I decided to do a mixture of new and old hardware to build my home NAS device. Here is the final build of materials:


CPU: AMD X2 4600+ (Existing item)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 (Existing item)
Memory: 2x 1GB Corsair XMS DDR2 800 (4-4-4-12) (Existing item)
Memory: 2x 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 (4-4-4-12) (Existing item)
Video: BFG 8500GT (Existing item)

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 (black)
Power: Antec NeoPower 480 Watt (Existing item)
Boot Storage: 1x Hitachi 250GB T7K250 SATA Hard Drive (Existing item)
NAS Storage: 5x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB 32MB
1x SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B Black 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure
2x Dell Perc 6i RAID controller (2 SAS to 8 SATA)
4x SFF 8484 SAS to SATA Cables
2x PC Bracket back plates that fit the Perc 6i into a standard slot in a case.
2x Scythe 40mm chipset fan (for Perc 6i) (Existing item)
Software: OpenFiler


My next phase down the road will be to add up to two more of the SuperMicro 5 bay hot swap enclosures to give me up to ten more hard drives. I'll buy these as drives increase in size and come down in price. I'll then integrate my second perc 6i controller into the other 16x PCIe slot and move the video card into one of the PCIe 1x slots (with some modifications to the slot). At that time I'll likely have to upgrade the power supply to handle the additional load. I have a PC Power & Cooling 750 that should be able to handle everything at that time. I would also like to add an Intel GigE NIC into one of the PCIe 1x slots to give me more network bandwidth for all the storage.