Looking to build / buy a FreeNAS system, advice?

[johnsonsa93]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking into building a FreeNAS system to wirelessly stream movies and TV shows via my home network. I have amassed a large collection of movies and TV shows over the years (~1000+ HD movies (5+TB) and 4TB+ worth of shows).

I would prefer to build it with SSD's so as not to worry about failure of the drives as I would hate to loose all of them via a failure.

Would it be more beneficial for me to go the pre-built route of getting a diskless system like this one here and purchase 6 - 8 SSD's that I purchase separately. Looks like it would run me roughly $2000.

Or could I save some cash by building my own by purchasing a RAID enclosure and setting everything up through a Raspberry Pi (or something else like a server set up) and installing everything myself. If I was going the build it myself does anyone have advice where to start or useful how-to videos?

I am fairly handy with computer and technology, so I'm not concerned about the actual work and getting lost in it. I have replaced my motherboard (and most other hardware) on my laptop and done a lot of internal modifications on other machines like desktops, xbox's and cellphones as well as having one a little bit of coding on mac and linux systems.

Hopefully you guys can point me in the right and I really appreciate everyone's thoughts and advice.

Thanks!

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

1. For bulk data such as video media, SSDs are stupid expensive and entirely unnecessary. Conventional drives are a much better value proposition.

2. SSDs can fail, too.

3. I'm not sure a Raspberry Pi has the horsepower to transcode streaming media. If you were absolutely positive you were just throwing files at devices it would probably work but that's the hard way to accomplish your goal.

4. FreeNAS is just about perfect for this sort of application. Plex plays well with FreeNAS and can even run on the same hardware.

If you haven't run through some of the FreeNAS resources here, I'd start there. Once you see what's available and how the platform works, you'll have better questions and know if FreeNAS is a good fit for your use case.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Jailer]

SSD have a finite life and will eventually fail just as regular hard drives will. Maybe @Chris Moore can chime in with some of his ebay deals he seems good at sniffing out

 

[Chris Moore]

wirelessly

?

ebay deals

No. It has been my experience that streaming media by wireless networking is an exercise for others.
Storage I can deal with. Streaming media, I do that too. Wireless.... I avoid it as much as possible.

 

[Jailer]

FreeNAS is still a good use case for that. Plex works great on FreeNAS and you always seem to find good deals on used server equipment on ebay.

As for wirless, yeah Im with you on that although I do have one Plex client that connects wirelessly that has been reasonably reliable.

 

[Chris Moore]

I would prefer to build it with SSD's so as not to worry about failure of the drives as I would hate to loose all of them via a failure.

What is your budget and how much storage do you anticipate needing within the next five or six years? How quickly is your data growing?
You need to plan for the future with an investment like this, not just for what you have right now. As stated by others, even SSDs eventually wear out and the capacity compared to spinning disks is terrible.

Would it be more beneficial for me to go the pre-built route of getting a diskless system like this one here and purchase 6 - 8 SSD's that I purchase separately. Looks like it would run me roughly $2000.

But, how much storage is that giving you? For $1600 in spinning disks (not counting server hardware) you could have 8 x 8TB drives in RAIDz2 which would give you about 31TB of usable capacity and enough performance to do normal home use Plex streaming of media. I have supplied component lists many times for builds where the rest of the hardware would be in the $450 to $550 range for very capable FreeNAS server gear.

Or could I save some cash by building my own by purchasing a RAID enclosure and setting everything up through a Raspberry Pi

A pie does not begin to fill the bill to run FreeNAS, so I am not going to consider that to be a remotely possible concept. Sorry.

Hopefully you guys can point me in the right and I really appreciate everyone's thoughts and advice.

You just need to make a decision about whether or not you want to use FreeNAS and have the advantages of the ZFS file system.

 

[IQless]

8 x 8TB drives in RAIDz2

And get another 8TB drive, burn it in and let it sleep on a shelf above your server until the day comes (and it will come), that one of the drives dies. Makes it much quicker to get back to a healthy pool. A healthy pool, is a happy pool!