New FreeNAS build

[thaxphenomx]

I stumbled upon FreeNAS the other day and it looked very promising for what I want to do. I am hoping to build a dedicated NAS to stream media to all my HTPC's throughout my house (I currently have 2). My house is prewired for Gigabit ethernet so all I need is a dedicated box. I built a system on newegg and wanted some feedback on my choices for components before I pull the trigger. Also, would you recommend I use ZFS with RAID 5? Does FreeNAS allow all the drives to be pooled so my HTPC's can just point to one location? Thanks

Rosewill 12 bay (with rosewill cage) case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147154

MOBO (8 sata ports)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138366

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113283

SYBA Sata card (4 more sata ports to get to 12 the case supports)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124008

Power supply (12 sata)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010

USB to run FreeNAS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208544

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231489

Hard Drives...I already have 5 of the WD20EARS but in the future I will purchase more of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891

NIC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033

 

[CAlbertson]

With that many drives I'd go with raid z2,not z1. and also buy the WD red drives not the green drives. Are you really going to install 12 drives? If so put them in two raidz2 arrays of six drives each

One more question: How will you back up this data? It is best to think of that now. If the data is importance enough to buy a expensive NAS to hold it, then you maybe don't want to loose it. If that is the case then two rules must always be true (1) The data exist in at least three physical copies and (2) the data exist in at least two geographical locations. For most peole this means one local and one remote backup plus ther primary storage.

Figure that if on average a drive lasts three years before it fails. then if you own 3 drives you should expect a failure every year. If you own 12 drives expect one to fail every 90 days. Maybe I was pessimistic and they really last 6 years on average. then expect two failures per year. My point is that you want "Z2" because with so many drives you will see failures

You also want the RED drives not the GREEN drives. The big difference is in how the drive reports a failure. the red drives don't mask problems.