I've currently got an original Buffalo Terastation (if you haven't heard of them, they're a really basic 1TB NAS which came out a couple years ago) and its slow performance is beginning to annoy me. At the moment all my data is currently running without backups as well, so I plan to build a new, faster NAS, and move the terastation elsewhere to just run scheduled backups of the new NAS.
I've been considering this upgrade for a while now and keep putting off actually buying anything, but in the limited research that I've done I think using hardware raid would be wise. It seems hardware raid is more expensive, but faster, relieves stress off the CPU and is more redundant as if the hardware raid card screws up, I just pop another one in and don't have to configure a thing (or at least that's what I've been told??) which apparently isn't the case with buying a new motherboard with software raid.
So I'm currently looking at an approximate system of the following:
Motherboard - £35
1-2GHz CPU - £35
2-4GB RAM - £35
400W PSU - £40
Decent hardware RAID card with support of 8 HDs - £200
4 500GB HDs - £160
Case - £40
That means I'm looking at a NAS at around £550. I'm thinking of using a half decent CPU and a fair amount of RAM so that I can run Windows Server 2008 that I can get for free of Dreamspark allowing me to possibly host the websites I'm running at the moment from home in the future and giving me so many more options over something like FreeNAS. The hardware raid should then allow WS2008 to run flawlessly on an average CPU.
Is the above overkill - especially the hardware RAID over software RAID (software raid clearly saves me alot of money)? Also will I benefit from getting a decent £50 or so Intel gigabit network card on a motherboard with fast ethernet or just getting a motherboard with gigabit already (the increased options with a decent NIC would be wanted tho')?
Cheers. Love to hear all comments.