High Capacity With Expandability

[Commadner_Crap]

Hi All
Im looking into a first real NAS system i have am currently running 3 separate store bought boxes but have run out of storage on all and am needing a better solution for all my needs.
I have a collection of hard drives im going to be using and would like a build that will accommodate all and also have expadability to fulfill outer roles/add more storage when i need to.
Hard drives to place in it :
2x Iron Wolf 4tb mirrored as a main media storage (will stream to outer devices)
A 2 TB mirror for a backup for my file drive
A 3 TB Backup for my Main Boot Drive and Game Drive
2x 1Tb as backup drives for other computers
and a 240gb ssd for cash for the free nas if that's possible
i will need all outer components and any input on the way i build this machine/structure my drives would be appreciated
Im aiming for a budget of around £250 if this is a stupidly low budget let me know as im unsure of specs needed for this kind of a build
Thanks Commander Crap

 

[BigDave]

Im aiming for a budget of around £250 if this is a stupidly low budget let me know as im unsure of specs needed for this kind of a build

Recommended hardware resource, start there. Then read Manual Documentation, ZFS Primer and hit
the bulk of the resources section of these forums. Demonstrate a bit of proactive-ness.

 

[danb35]

Im aiming for a budget of around £250 if this is a stupidly low budget let me know

It probably is, unfortunately. The best bang-for-buck that I know of right now, in new gear, is the HPE Proliant ML10. Here in .us, you can get them as low as $169. You'd need to add some RAM (they come with 4 GB; FreeNAS requires at least 8 GB). They have room for up to 6 disks, though you might need to be a little creative to get all those disks in place. It could easily store all your data if you went for a few larger disks, but if you're wanting to use all your existing disks, you'll run out of room. To handle more than 6 disks; you're just looking at more expensive hardware.

 

[Chris Moore]

2x Iron Wolf 4tb mirrored as a main media storage (will stream to outer devices)
A 2 TB mirror for a backup for my file drive
A 3 TB Backup for my Main Boot Drive and Game Drive
2x 1Tb as backup drives for other computers

It is not clear to me if this is the amount of data you currently have or if it the amount you want to have in the new server.
If this is what you have right now, and you are out of space, you need a server (to give you room to grow) with about twice as much storage capacity. That will allow you to move all your existing data to the new server and still have free space.
The list you provided is in the ballpark of 11TB, so I would suggest a target of 20TB for the new server.
You can get that much storage on a RAIDz2 array using 6 drives at 8TB each. This would give you about 28TB of ZFS reported capacity but you would need to self limit storage to about 22TB because if you fill a ZFS pool beyond 80% it starts having performance problems.
You can subdivide the storage pool in software, so there is no need for any physical separation of the storage.
You could put the 6 drives in the chassis suggested by @danb35 but the cost of just the drives is going to be significant.
The Toshiba N300 NAS drive in the 8TB model is running about $235 last I looked, so 6 of them will be $1410 on top of the $169 for the server to put them in.

Im aiming for a budget of around £250 if this is a stupidly low budget let me know

So, the price you are targeting might cover the computer, but not the storage.
Do be sure to look at all the resources pointed out by @BigDave as you really need to understand what you are doing before you start.