I'm building a FreeNAS rig that needs to be 2x4tb drives for a 4tb mirror raid NAS. My budget is $500 and I have come up with two different builds. I will NOT be setting up any kind of auto sync or backup to this NAS, I will mostly be adding movies and tv shows to it and then accessing it from various HTPCs in the house (tv shows and movies are mp4 or x.264 and <=1080p). Could I also set this NAS up so my family can access it via the internet and watch content I have on it. The NAS will be connected to a Netgear WNDR 4500 router and I have a 12mbps down and 1mbps up internet service. Will the 1mbps up be a problem for my family trying to watch content on my NAS?
Case - Fractal Design Core 1100 - $30 CPU - Intel Celeron G1840 - $45 Motherboard - MSI H81M E34 - Free, already have one Ram - G.Skill AEGIS 1333Mhz 2 x 4gb - $58 (8gb for ZFS) HHD - 2 x WD RED 4tb - $320 PSU - Antec Earthwatts 380w - $20 (ebay) Total - $473.00
Build 2: AMD
Case - Cooler Master Elite 110 - $40 CPU - AMD AM1 Athlon 3850 - $36 Motherboard - MSI AM1I - $30 Ram - Team Dark 1600Mhz 1 x 8gb - $53 (8gb for ZFS) HHD - 2 x WD RED 4tb - $320 PSU - Antec Earthwatts 380w - $20 (ebay) Total - $497
FreeNAS will be running off a USB 3.0 16gb Corsair Slider X2. Which also leads me to another question. Say after 6 months the USB flash drive dies or has problems... do I lose my FreeNAS setup or can it be configured and then saved to another storage device as backup?
I prefer the AMD build but from what I've read FreeNAS works better with Intel, so I'm not sure if its really that big of a deal. The Intel G1840 is much more powerful than the AMD A1 3850 but its hotter and may be over kill....? Is the AMD AM1 Sempron 3850 quad core with its SINGLE channel memory good enough for a NAS?
I recently made my own FreeNas server using some old drives for storage and old ram. I built the rest. I got a Intel Celeron G1620 and am using an Asus Z77A MB, and 16GB G-skillram. The biggest thing to worry about with FreeNAS from what I have seen is RAM, 1GB ram to 1TB storage.
I have not used AMD so not sure how well that would work I would search the but from a quick search it seems to be of no difference. You will want to dig a little deeper.
Now when it comes to running the OS on a USB drive I my self am not too worried about the drive failing, but I cannot see a problem with turning of the server and cloning the USB drive and using that, again ill need to dig deeper on that, I am glad I saw your post as I had not thought of backing up the USB drive in case it fails.
I've read many forums of people running their FreeNAS setup off a USB stick. Some of these builds being quite expensive and the data being quite safe, but what if the the USB stick dies? It does happen. I think some of the FreeNAS config is stored in ram but most of it ends up on the USB stick.
I would bet your right by just powering the NAS down and making a copy of the USB stick to another USB stick.
I got a fx8150 in my freenas server amd seems to run just fine and as of the usb drive I use a cheap 4 dollar 8gb microcenter brand have for a while no problems also kodi is great for them to acess movies and is really easy to set up
I personally would go the Intel route since you already have the motherboard, just to use some left over parts. I used an SSD for my install. http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ssd/series/BX100 Your internet connection has to affect on your internal network streaming from your FreeNAS server.