Hard Drives for a NAS/Home Server --- Also Case upgrade

[FeaR]

Hi,

I am starting my first home server for Plex/general file storage, and maybe a small game server (Valheim/minecraft etc for me + a few friends if it can handle it). I am planning on running Unraid at the moment. Specs below:

I5 - 4670k @3.4, 16gb Ram @3400mhz, Nvidia 770

Current Drives - two 250gb Samsung EVO SSDs
Currently in an Antec 900

I am wondering, what hard drives should I use? I am looking at 4, 4 or 6 TB hard drives but I am looking for what is the best bang for buck, or if I should consider something else. This would allow for the two ssds to act as cache, 3 storage HDs and 1 for parity. However I also notice there is a good sale on in Canada for the Exos Seagate 16tb drives on newegg. I could make two of those work I think – thoughts?

Also my current case is the Antec 900 (I know, its an oldie - but its what I have laying around) – I am looking for a replacement since I don’t have any drive cages for this and I cant find any online. I was thinking something like the Meshify 2, but looking for suggestions. I would like room to go up to 6-8 drives. I don’t want to go much larger than the A900 if i can help.

I haven’t done any of this before so please let me know of any recommendations. Some of this is to have a bit of a science project and learn more about home servers.

Thanks

[Jojo314]

4x4/6TB drives seems like a good place to start, that’s a good amount of space for most initial home server needs and affords room to grow without spending a fortune with each drive addition, which is the downside to those Exos drives.

Meshify is a good case for this, anything with good airflow and hard drive capability should be fine. Maybe look at Fractal’s Define line as well.

as for which drives to buy, I’d use PCpartpicker to narrow down options and keep an eye out for sales, but Seagate Ironwolf or Western Digital Red drives are the NAS purpose built ones. As I mentioned earlier two 16TB drives is tempting, but you would be limited in your raid configurations with only 2.