My First NAS

I currently have a four-year-old PC which I plan to refurbish to become my first ever NAS device, since I'm now at the point of my career that I need tons of storage for scratch disks, Dropbox dump, and to store my multimedia files. Since this will be my first NAS build and I'm a total n00b on the subject, I have a lot of questions.



First of all, here's the specs of the aforementioned PC:



- Intel Pentium G630

- Biostar H61MGV3

- Geil DDR3-1066 4GB RAM (x2, 8GB total, single-channel)

- Sapphire Radeon HD6570 2GB

- 3 Hard drives: 250 GB and 1 TB Western Digital WD Blue, 500 GB Hitachi Deskstar

- Corsair VS450 450-watt PSU

Now, for the questions:

1. Will the Pentium cut it for this build? I don't plan to spend too much as I still need to buy new, higher capacity hard drives and I'm on a strict budget. I will not turn on the system 24/7 so I don't plan on replacing the PSU, too, if I can help it.



2. Is there a way to sync my Dropbox folder in this system while using FreeNAS? I'm still learning the ropes but I hope that it'll work as I'm really keen on the possibility (no more Selective sync for me).



3. Are having only 4 SATA ports problematic in the future? I plan to ditch the 250 GB and get an additional 3 TB drive and a cheap SSD just for FreeNAS. Also, what RAID level can you recommend for this build?



4. What else can you suggest, hardware and software-wise? Do I need to update the board's BIOS? Buy a RAID controller? Good case to haul everything in?

hopefully you took advantage of the drives from black friday....sure they weren't nas grade but they were right on the money for a budget builder :) 

anyways i do recall many recommendations for ecc memory on a freenas build.....it looks like your current setup is only good enough for a simpler approach as i don't think your cpu supports it....i could be wrong of course

http://ark.intel.com/products/53483/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G630-3M-Cache-2_70-GHz

i'm going for a raid 5 setup with an adaptec 4 port card....rather go with something better but i've already spent my budget on the 5tb drives.....but i'd go with a dedicated card if you're going for raid

maybe the ssd will make a nice buffer? i dunno as i'll probably be salvaging an old hyperx 120g drive for my os drive and will prolly partition it after rewatching the nasferatu vid

as for dropbox i dunno but its always a good idea too update your firmware/bios to the latest

 

 

 

 

 

As far as my research shows, that mobo doesn't support raid. You are likely going to need a raid controller. Having 4 sata ports is a big problem as well, imo. The cheapest way to get a ton of storage is with a lot of cheap 3tb hdds (hence raid = redundant array of inexpensive disks). That isn't a lot of storage if you use something like raid 5. At least, it isn't for me. You might not need much room though. Look into raid controllers, you can find some on ebay (Wendell suggested looking for raid controllers on ebay in the nas video, I do believe). I'm no expert on this stuff though. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can give a more solid recommendation.

Pls do some research on this forum and via google about building a NAS. I think there would be much more suitable ways of doing what you plan doing without FreeNAS and with your current HW.

FreeNAS REQUIRES at least 8GB of ECC RAM, generally for every TB of storage, 1GB of ECC RAM.

I will point you in right direction by this link, there is everything you ever needed to know:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/

that link is making me rethink my approach thanks :)