DIY NAS - 2015 Edition

In my article here , NAS builds are built around FreeNAS. After doing some reading and all I find that the set of features offered by FreeNAS are pretty incredible. Experimenting the installation and getting the hang of the installer and "how tos" i find that it is pretty simple and the difficulty of using and maintaining FreeNAS has been minimal even for a big Windows user like myself. After going through a lot of articles and reading alternative options such as Open Filer, NAS4Free, Windows Home Server I eventually finalized on FreeNAS.

If I was to build a NAS box for home use here are the parts that I would would be needed to get you up and running. In this articles, I do not focus on the performance or the validity of the parts but this articles just gives anyone reading this an idea on what parts are needed to build a NAS solution for oneself.

Why Build a NAS?

The Original plan was to create something for backing my data into a single location what no matter what machine i access from, Linux, Windows, MAC i should be able to find the data i need when i need. Between viruses, Harware Failures, and our own mistakes, there are just too many things that can go wrong with important data. And a NAS device comes in handy in helping create a backup plan. However, there are other possiblities and uses for a NAS box:

• Storage

• Backup

• Media Streaming

In this day and age, with files and data growning at an exponential rate, there is always a need for some sort of external storage. Attaching that external storage to a network and building it using PC hardware, that would be otherwise rejected to would be left un-used, opens enough possibilities that it should be considered by anyone who need external storage, or storage space to backup, save their important data.

Motherboard

As for the form factor for the motherboard, I’ve decided to stay with the Mini-ITX form factor for two reasons: size and power consumption. Firstly, I appreciate the small footprint of Mini-ITX. Secondly, the NAS remains on 24/7, always consuming power; paying a slightly higher cost on a form factor that uses less power pays for itself once you factor in the cost going towards electricity.

For the Motherboard, i would suggest ones with integrated processors that are cooled without fans. for ex: Asus C60M1-I AMD C-60, it has an integrated CPU, fan-free cooling, and 6 SATA ports all on a Mini-ITX form factor board at a reasonable cost. There might be other Motherboards which might suite other people or might be a better option to the one that i have mentioned here.

CPU

As for CPUs i actually do not know the best fit, or anything of that sort since usually for projects like these, i have chosen Motherboards with onboard CPUs.

RAM

In this project, one suggestion could be using around 4GB of non-ECC DDR3 RAM. Of course there are people who might suggest using ECC RAM or even suggest going as far and telling you to add more RAM on the NAS box. i guess they would be correct in suggesting those but in my case i felt that running a NAS box 4 GB should do. If you feel that adding extra RAM or even changing them to ECC RAMs, you could go and use them, nothing wrong with that.

Case & Power Supply

As for Case and power supply, i have actully not done any research in that area since i always used cases that were already available with me. i would suggest you do a complete research in this before going ahead an purchasing one.

Storage

FreeNAS Drive

As you may know if you have done some reading into FreeNAS, FreeNAS can be installed and made to off a inexpensive USB Flash drive. You could use a typical 4 or 8 GB flash drives (it would be an overkill since FreeNAS needs around 2GB of space). Flash drives are small and usually people just leave them permanently plugged into the USB ports.

NAS Drives

When choosing NAS drives, i suggession would be Seagate or WD, since i have had good results using either. of course you could also use any Drive that you prefer. Since these would be the heart of you system where you would be storing data which would be really important to you, i would really suggest that you do a thorough research into which drives would suite best for your purpose, also do a complete study and analysis on capacity planning, make sure that you take into account that amount of data that you currently have and factor in the data growth. It would also be useful to leave a few SATA ports on the motherboard unused so that if you need, you could add additional Hard drives.

Conclusion

Although this articles might not be useful to some, here it just gives you an idea as to what needs to be looked into and thought out before you go and build yourself an NAS box. Some might even find this article not complete, i have tried here to give users reading this an idea of stuff that goes into building a NAS box for home use.

#NAS #FreeNAS