So I'm considering..

[Ollie1132]

I'm thinking about possibly making a NAS next year mainly to have a lot of storage space as the way I have my PC setup theres not really room for HDDs and as such I only have a 128GB SSD for my OS and a couple of games. I was thinking possibly (may be misguided thinking) but a NAS seems somewhat the best idea as I'd be able to change and upgrade it late etc. Although I could get an external HDD (which I had until it failed) this isn't ideal as I don't want to always be carrying my steam library on me incase something happens obviously! So I was thinking of possibly making a NAS sometime within the next year. Though currently I'm unsure of where to start other than looking at which HDD's would be best and deciding it's probably going to be using an AMD setup for low cost + power draw and the fact it's purely a NAS. Any real suggestions? I was thinking maybe a trinity setup with some Western digital Caviar Reds a 60GB SSD for the OS (which is probably going to be linux based) yet to properly look into cases but would like something thats mAtx so the builds small and easy to keep out of the way of things. Suggestions are more than welcome!

 

[Ollie1132]

My first thought is that having an SSD in the box might be a little bit pointless. I'm just not sure what it would help with?

CD

Uhm mainly just so that the OS is seperated from the RAID array? was my idea at least.

tbh if all you want is storage then I would just look for a cheap prebuilt NAS.

If you don't mind sorting out the OS then the best route is the HP Proliant Microserver as it is more powerful than most 4 bay NAS.

If you are going to build your own, I would say the SSD and Trinity processors are going to make much difference to an always on file server and you could probably save yourself some money there. You can build a NAS in the M-itx format and there are some nice cases by Chenbro, CIF and Fractal Design that are geared towards home builds (Chenbro and CIF do cases with hotswap bays). The main issue you will run into with M-itx is the lack of SATA ports as most boards seem to have 4 at most (there are some ZOTAC boards with 6).

I was thinking of building my own purely so I can have what I want. Was going to go for a mATX/mITX build with a case that has about 5 or so slots for HDD's. And okay if I drop the SSD and just go for the trinity setup just because it is somewhat cheap? Or would an intel i3 setup be just as cheap? Does the processors abilities actually affect the NAS very much?

 

[Ollie1132]

I personally went with an m-itx with the Pentium G630T, plenty of processing power for NAS duties and low power but others do go the AMD route for it.
Cheapest will probably be the AMD route with the Sempron 190 which is more than enough processing power for standard NAS duties. I think the best combo of low power use and cost is the Pentium or Celeron processors.

To give you an idea of how little CPU power you need for NAS duties, my self build replaced a QNAP TS-109 Pro II with a 500mhz CPU in it. That was more than enough for its job as torrent server and handling a couple of streams over the home network.

Fair does may grab a mItx/mAtx on the cheap and a celeron. Probably looking at £80 or so total for a decentish combo? Then its about £300 in Cavair Reds for the raid setup. And I have to find a case.