BUILD My first build

[boewalls]

Hi guys and gals,

I am very new to the freeness world and am completely intrigued. I have decided to build a freenas, not only to use but to also challenge myself in something new.
I have NO idea where to begin other than I have already bought a Fractal Node 804 case. It will be a mini-ATX system. I want to have 8+ drives. I want it to be fairly robust because I probably won't do this again for sometime. Price is important but not as important as performance and capacity. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!!!

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi guys and gals,

I am very new to the freeness world and am completely intrigued. I have decided to build a freenas, not only to use but to also challenge myself in something new.
I have NO idea where to begin other than I have already bought a Fractal Node 804 case. It will be a mini-ATX system. I want to have 8+ drives. I want it to be fairly robust because I probably won't do this again for sometime. Price is important but not as important as performance and capacity. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!!!

Read the stickies and you'll be well on your way. Once you have a configuration chosen, post it, explain what you hope to accomplish and we'll try to help you further, if needed.

Also, do you mean miniITX or microATX?

 

[joeschmuck]

To be honest, before you begin purchasing parts you should figure out what you want the FreeNAS device to do for you. This is actually a very serious question that you should consider. You can't just say you want 8+ hard drives and that's it.

Here is my list:
1) Reliable
2) Reasonably fast throughput for backups (>50Mb/sec)
3) Able to store 7TB of data, not encrypted
4) Fault tolerance of 1 drive failure
5) DLNA Support
6) Not expensive

I exceeded my list as it sits like this now:
1) Highly Reliable
2) Maxed out 1Gb/sec network and will easily do better with a 10Gb NIC if I could afford it, but I don't need it.
3) 7.3 TB of data storage (over double what I estimated my storage needs to be)
4) Fault tolerance of 2 drive failures
5) The main system was cheap compared to the price of the drives (what you will pay regardless of the system you purchase) so I feel like I came out with a very reasonable cost for this device.
6) My system is also capable enough to use all the add-ons the FreeNAS has to offer such as Plex for my media streaming/DLNA support.

Another factor might be... If you have a drive failure, how long are you comfortable with it resilvering the new drive before your system can handle another drive failure? People who choose very large drives, use only a RAID-Z1, and have a drive failure are at risk of data loss if they have another drive fail before the new drive is resilvered. Always go with a RIAD-Z2 setup for that reason alone.

My tagline lists my equipment. I'm not promoting it but it's good reference for someone.