Best software to make my own NAS?

Ace Modder · 14 Mar 2015 at 22:39

Hi

I'm thinking about making my own NAS box.

Using something like this.
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2550D4I#Specifications

But my major concern would be the OS, I dont want to use windows, would prefer something more NAS orientated, which supports streaming to my phone for music etc, and FTP and various other things.
Any ideas?

I currently have a synlogoy box DS210J but want to upgrade, but thinking making my own would be better.

lsg1r · 14 Mar 2015 at 23:01

xpenology (synology os based) seems to be liked by a fair few on here but not sure if it supports the motherboard (most use it on the hp n54l)

You've got freenas and ubuntu server (likely other linux distros).

Personally I'd still likely use windows (server) because I know everything you want to do works without major issues (I'm doing or have done most of them).

And as a side note, depending on the drive side of things it may actually be cheaper to just grab a synology, the avoton boards aren't that cheap from what I've seen.

Ace Modder · 14 Mar 2015 at 23:08

The board is around £250.
A new NAS with 4 bays is around the same price, but making my own allows for future upgrades and is much more powerful anyway.

Of course my case choice is going to be key, I want small but support for 10 HDD's

EDIT - I've just downlaod amahi, and I'm currently setting up a VM to test it.

Ace Modder · 14 Mar 2015 at 23:09

lsg1r said:
xpenology (synology os based) seems to be liked by a fair few on here but not sure if it supports the motherboard (most use it on the hp n54l)

That website seems to be dead atm too.

skyripper · 14 Mar 2015 at 23:30

I got on better with Nas4Free than FreeNas in terms of interface. Anything complex normally explained via Google or youtube

Frozennova · 15 Mar 2015 at 06:50

The most common options are

FreeNAS
NAS4FREE
Xpenology (Synology DSM on your own hardware)
unRaid
FlexRaid

FreeNAS and NAS4FREE are mostly the same OS but with some big GUI differences.

memyselfandi · 15 Mar 2015 at 07:16

If you are trusting your data to this then choose a software stack that you understand and are comfortable with. There is no point in running something you cannot effectively troubleshoot if there is a problem and you data is suddenly no longer accessible or that you cannot configure optimally.

Personally I would consider NAS4Free/FreeNAS or even a straight Linux server but that's because.i have worked with unix for a lot of years. If you know Windows inside and out then you should consider just using that unless you are willing to learn another OS and accept the risk that in the short term, while you are doing so, your data could be at risk.

Andre · 15 Mar 2015 at 08:03

I use ubuntu with plex, greyhole, sickbeard and sabnzb
Plex gives you all your sharing possibilities (buy plexpass for off-network access)
Greyhole (included with amahi) lets you use your drives as jbod, but with redundancy on a per-share use. You can set it to duplicate content from none to all of your drives - and as they are a standard format, if something goes wrong just slap them in another machine and access the content!
Sickbeard and sabnzb - I don't think I need say anything! Couchpotato is another possibility

And of course, it is a standard Linux install, so ftp, owncloud, vpn etc. are readily available

Ace Modder · 15 Mar 2015 at 13:06

Think I'm going to VM them all and test for my fave.

Ace Modder · 15 Mar 2015 at 13:10

does anybody have the Xpenology ISO? Because the website to download it is down at the moment.

Mercurial · 15 Mar 2015 at 20:22

It is only the forum that is down.

Use http://www.xpenology.nl/ to obtain the bootloader and for tutorials for installation.

You get DSM from Synology themselves in any case.

Good luck!

Steveocee · 15 Mar 2015 at 21:25

I use Ubuntu server with samba for local distribution and plex to access stuff from outside my lan.

Raid is easy to set up and can be graphical if you install and run webmin.

Confused · 15 Mar 2015 at 21:34

I use Windows Home Server 2011, because I am most familiar with Windows.

On top of that, I use StableBit DrivePool to give me the management of my disks - adding multiple disks of different sizes to a single pool, with the ability to easily add or remove disks whenever I need. I do not need to duplicate everything, so I only duplicate the folders which are important to me - my documents and Photos, which are duplicated on each physical drive. Everything else, I only have a single "copy" of.

Pho · 16 Mar 2015 at 10:26

I know you don't want to use Windows but I use Server 2012 + StableBit DrivePool as above, for the same reasons.

It's brilliant and being able to throw in disks of any random size into your RAID array and have control to choose what goes onto what disk and what is replicated is great. My photos for example are duplicated 3x for ultra paranoia

.

cactusweasel · 16 Mar 2015 at 13:23

Mercurial said:
It is only the forum that is down.

Use http://www.xpenology.nl/ to obtain the bootloader and for tutorials for installation.

You get DSM from Synology themselves in any case.

Good luck!

This is the best software to use, there is nothing as good.

dhallam · 19 Mar 2015 at 16:44

I use windows server 2012r2 on a HP Microserver and use the inbuilt software RAID5 to create an array over 4 x 2TB drives. Not the fastest but I can hot swap into any windows system and re-initialize the raid to get to the data and can have 1 drive failure.
Also got a nice vbscript that emails me if a drive goes down.