Build my own NAS server or buy a NAS Drive ?

I'm currently reviewing how much storage I have and how I'm storing my data.

Currently it's spread over various different drives, internally in my PC and on various external HDD's and portable drives as well as USB memory sticks.

This quite honestly un organiszd way of storing data is now driving me to distraction and thought it was time I stored in one place.

I was looking to just buying a NAS box and then putting my HDD's in that but the ones that take more than one SATA drive seem quite expensive, and buying a ready made job usually comes with a drive (although perhaps cheaper than me building a dedicated PC for this task) but if I buy a NAS drive then I have no room to put it next to the router, so that then leaves me with a wireless option but seems even more expensive again.

If however I were to build a dedicated PC for the job that means I could have any amount of drives in there (case depending) although I am looking at an MATX build in some form of small form factor case which means I could only install 2 drives inside it but I could then attach my 2 TB WD My Book Essentials drive to it. I'd also be able to keep it tucked away in my room without it taking up too much space.

Currently in my PC I have 4 HDD's, 1 WD 1TB Blue (mymain drive) 1 Seagate 1 TB LP (6900 RPM, also stores all ym music and movies etc) a Seagate 500 Gig, and a Samsung 500 Gig F3 drive which I use for all my steam games once downloaded.

I've seen some MATX stuff go quite cheap on various forms recently, wouldn't need to be anything overly powered, I should think a low end core 2 duo or even a low end Athlon 64 would do the job.

At this moment in time I am favoring the dedicated NAS PC but that said I am more than happy to listen to opinions of others. Not looking to spend a great deal of money on this project and would be quite happy to source the parts second hand.

Although not sure what I'd do for an OS, I do have an XP Pro license spare although again will be happy to listen to other suggestions.

It depends. Buying a pre-built NAS will probably work out cheaper, use less space, use less energy, be easier to use, and may be less noisy, but mileage varies. Custom builds are significantly more flexible in nearly every way, including the scope of software support is only limited to the time and effort you put into it, and will probably be faster. So if you don't mind, or enjoy a bit of pain and teething problems, or you have some esocseric software requirements, then custom is good, otherwise, you'd be better off with a pre-built solution.

I'd also be able to use it as a download box too, negating the need to have my main box on over the night which in itself draws alot of power.

I'm sure you've already seen the threads, but there's quite a lot in here and here - although of course the HP deal has expired now, the info is still relevant to any custom-build NAS.

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Originally Posted by Behemoth

I'd also be able to use it as a download box too, negating the need to have my main box on over the night which in itself draws alot of power.

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A lot of pre-builts have download functionality built-in. Including http, ftp, bittorrent, and some even do usenet.

Hmm making the task that much harder now to choose which way to go !

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Originally Posted by snootyjim

I'm sure you've already seen the threads, but there's quite a lot in here and here - although of course the HP deal has expired now, the info is still relevant to any custom-build NAS.

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It may be worth seeing if HP extend the cashback offer again. They've extended it every month since december last year so far. Here's hoping they do it again!
If they do and it's £100 again, they are well worth it with some caveats.
1. They are only quiet when they have 1 drive in them. When they have 2, the drives resonate together and they get pretty annoying.
2. You have the faf of deciding and testing and maintaining whatever you decide to install on them.

However once I've settled on what storage OS to use on mine, I plan on changing my setup to have 2x2TB RAID-1 in the HP Microserver and and SSD+1TB faster drive for my main PC.
The NAS will be used for media, Virtuialization and backups (with replication to another site)
The PC will then simply have the OS, software and the smaller user data on it, backing up to the HP Microserver.

That would be ideal in the long run, although it looks like I may have some free parts coming my way soon so I may be able to do this by only buying a case and PSU.

Would be a much sweeter deal with hardware RAID 5/6, but you can't have everything :p

Anyway, the main reason I recommended the thread was because of the software discussion re: NAS usage, since the boxes aren't NAS units specifically. From that point of view, it's no different to building your own.

Not much of a problem really, software RAID5 will easily work on that machine.

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

Not much of a problem really, software RAID5 will easily work on that machine.

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Well, it just restricts you in terms of software. I know this wouldn't bother you in the slightest, since unix is built for this type of thing, and you'll probably think I'm a pillock for suggesting it, but I would've liked to use Server 2008 - and software RAID is a whole different kettle of fish on Windows.

I wasn't going to say anything. ;)

*Breathes a sigh of relief*

It's a good job we don't have any avid fanbois, or this thread would be 18 pages long by morning.

Anyway, sorry for the off-topic behemoth

No worries for the thread de-rail, I've been on freecycle and seems to be no end of kit going at the moment, I just missed out on a Q6600 with 4 gig of ram and a motherboard :(

Wow! Never seen anything even close to that on there, it\'s usually a cigarette-burned sofabed.

Tell me about it, was pretty torqued off about that !

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Originally Posted by Behemoth

No worries for the thread de-rail, I've been on freecycle and seems to be no end of kit going at the moment, I just missed out on a Q6600 with 4 gig of ram and a motherboard :(

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Watch out for that. If it\'s just for storage, power efficiency is key.
Well it\'s the difference between costing £30 per month in electricity and about £2 per month.

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Originally Posted by Behemoth

No worries for the thread de-rail, I've been on freecycle and seems to be no end of kit going at the moment, I just missed out on a Q6600 with 4 gig of ram and a motherboard :(

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I'm glad you did, leccy bill would have eaten you alive spitting the bones out asking for more...

lol yes that was something that did cross my mind.

I've just been reminded I have a Socket A box sat out in the garage doing naff all, so thinking of getting a decent PSU and new case for that and putting in a 4 port sata card, good idea/bad idea ?

I am thinking of building a NAS too, which I can also run VMs on etc. I was quite tempted by the HP microserver however I decided to wait to get my own miniserver (as I really wanted more PCIE slots) and it seems that intel is targetting this section of the market, with some low power Xeon chips and Micro-ATX motherboards, asus, gigabyte, supermicro and tyan are all making matx boards for them (some major buy in there!) I like the look of the tyan S5510 myself, 3 gigabit nics, IPMI2 2 x8 PCIE (opened ended) 2 x4 PCIE (8 mechanical) combine that with a 45W 4 core E3-1260 and up to 32 GB of ECC memory. Case wise PC-V354 looks nice being m-atx and fitting 7x3.5" drives and 4x2"

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Originally Posted by Behemoth

lol yes that was something that did cross my mind.

I've just been reminded I have a Socket A box sat out in the garage doing naff all, so thinking of getting a decent PSU and new case for that and putting in a 4 port sata card, good idea/bad idea ?

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My socket A boxes drank power like crazy even when idle, and turned it into lots of heat with noisy fans.

Any modern fileserver box I would want to be capable of decent gigabit ethernet performance, and for all the heat and fan noise Socket A just wouldn't be up to that task.

Socket AM3 chips start at £24 for single core:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168973

which is rated at 45W at load, should sip just a few watts when idle.

would be great if I could find a mobo just as cheap !