New To FreeNAS, looking for guidance on first build

[WaitingForTesla]

Hi FreeNAS forum,

I'm a tech savy end user with a lot of data to manage. I've been considering a NAS for many years. I've worked in TV post production for a decade or more and have lots of external hard drives of various sizes that I'm ready to consolidate to one redundant NAS server. In post production we work off of networked shared storage almost exclusively so this idea is far from new to me.

I've been lurking for a while and still not 100% confident on what to buy. I'd like to put together a box that can grow with my needs but if I have to do a beginners build and then upgrade later so-be-it. My hope is to invest about 500 or less before storage. I look forward to learning and eventually contributing on the forum. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what the best beginners / budget build would be. I've read a few guides but it's so tough to nail down what to do when there are so many options. My goal right now is simply consolidate and organize my data. Ideally I'd start with 8+ TB of usable storage. Eventually I'd like to get more advanced and access and play higher bitrate video directly on the NAS but for now baby steps.

Thanks.

 

[ccssid]

I would say a sweet spot would be: 6 hdd @ 2tb (but go 3tb to 4tb and save yourself some headache in the too near future) in a raidz2 setup. since you are looking for video.....go with xeon e3 1230 v5 and 16 - 32 gig of ram (ecc of course) . choose mb (most like supermicro here in the forums, some go asrock) , case, etc to your liking. Make certain you will end up with good airflow. a quality 550w psu should suffice.