Optimal setup for a home file server

Hardware Hub Networking
1

Hello forum!

I am running a small server at home that I put together myself to use as some kind of multi-purpose-file-server or NAS. The main task for it is to be a central hub for back ups of my PC, laptop and phone. But secondary I like the thought of having my "main" file system stored there, so that I can reach all of my files from any computer in the house. I figure that the transfer speed via 1 Gib/s ethernet should be sufficient for read/write intensive tasks like video editing etc since the r/w speed of my 7200rpm HDD will be the bottleneck anyway (WD RED).

Do you have any tips for making a good setup, that will not have worse performance over cable than an internal HDD would have?

Should I run it over dual 1 Gib/s ethernet cables via a switch? Maybe upgrade to a Cat.6 cable, fix some better switch and run 10 Gib/s instead? RAID 0 to enhance disk performance etc? Something completely else that is critical that I forget about?

Thanks! 

2

I have WD Reds in my server and they will easily read and write above 150MB/s, the gigabit network is going to be your limiting factor as far as speed goes. Having multiple network cards with link aggregation will only increase your speed to multiple computers, not a single computer and 10gb ethernet is very expensive. Plus it's not really worth doing unless you're running a RAID setup anyway. Gigabit for the most part is pretty good, if you're doing a lot of large file transfers or working on large files over the network instead of locally then it might be worth looking at higher performance options but for normal use you should be fine.

3

Are you referring to a raided WD red or single drive?