New NAS Box Build

[Michael Hodge]

I am new to the forums and didn't know where to post this. I have been doing research on FreeNAS and searching around for some hardware for my new NAS box and wanted to get some feedback and suggestions on what I have so far for my build. I want to be able to attach 4 x 4TB hard disks in a RAIDZ(RAID5) with maybe some room to upgrade to 5 disks. I would like to use ZFS so at least a 16GB capable motherboard and a processor that will be able to handle the load of a max of 3 users at peak times. I would probably be running CIFS, NFS, SSH, rsync, AFP and UPnP.

Case: thinking about the BitFenix Prodigy. Still not dead set though.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811345017

Motherboard: Definitely Mini ITX or Micro ATX. Suggestions would be wonderful.

Processor: Probably an Intel Atom, E350 or E450 not sure yet. Suggestions please.

HDD: Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB was my initial thought, but if you think I can get away with cheaper 4TB drives that would be better.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178393

Thanks for you help in advance.

 

[ksman]

I looked at that case in a store locally and i was not really a fan of it but if your looking for a small footprint its not bad. Check out the Fractal Design Node 304 sold by New Egg and some local dealers. Its a pretty solid case and It has space for 6 hard drives and its running 2 rather large fans, even if you don't need that much space now you might in the future.

Regarding your motherboard i would just make sure you have enough on-board SATA spots so that your not running some off the motherboard and others off a SATA card. I found the ASUS Intel H77 mini ITX and it had 6 spots and so far has worked great. I have had it up and running four a couple of months now without any problems.

I went with an I3 processor and probably should have went with an I5 but so far its been working fine.I would def go with at least 12 gb of ram and if you can swing it then 16gb.

Hard drive is personal preference. I went with regular desktop hard drives for another off the shelf NAS that i purchased about a year ago and its had some corruption problems. the WD 3TB Reds are designed to run 365/24 and i am running 6 of them on my FreeNAS. If you have a backup of your nas then it shouldn't be much of an issue as long as you don't have a multiple drive failure.

 

[Michael Hodge]

I like the Fractal Design Node 304 case you suggested. I have a Micro Center around where I work and I was thinking about going in and checking out the Prodigy and the Design Node since I haven't seen either in person. I agree about having a lot of SATA ports and the extra 2 will allow me to expand later on. I have an i3 2120 laying around so I'm thinking about using that. Do you have any benchmark data for how well your Asus P8H77/i3 performed? I think I may just go with cheap desktop drives for now since I will have the redundancy of a RAID 5 and if they really start dying THAT quickly I'll just start replacing them with NAS drives. For the 1GB to 1TB RAM rule, does that include the parity drive that will be taken being that it is in the RAID Z? I am curious how that works. I am still not sure about the Design Node vs. the Prodigy since its a good $35 more than the Prodigy (at Micro Center) and only 1 more 3.5" bay, although I do like the classy minimalist look of it. Thanks for the suggestions though I'm just about ready to make the purchase now.