BUILD Shuttle XS35GTA-803 V3 as a NAS ?

[SimonBruun]

I've been on the edge of buying a Synology DS1515+, with 3 or 4 WD or Seagate NAS disks. But the whole thing becomes quite pricey at the end.

But then I though, what else can do with that kind of money - which i guess it is around 1400$ in my country.

I have a Shuttle XS35GTA-803 V3 (+4GB extra RAM) lying around (didn't cut it as a HTPC)
http://www.shuttle.eu/products/discontinued/complete-systems/xs35gta-803-v3/

I did a bit of searching of free NAS OS software, and ended up here - Hello guys ;)

So my question is, do you guys think I can make a descent NAS out of my Shuttle ?

My personal concern is that it only got USB2.0 ports for external disks. Will that be bottleneck, or can it go past the speed of one USB2.0 port, when for instance raiding 3 disks + 1 redudency disk, in 4 different USB2.0 ports.

But my concerns might not be in the right place, what are you first thoughts around such a build ?

 

[jgreco]

No. Please see the hardware requirements; FreeNAS requires a minimum of 8GB of RAM, a system with ECC is strongly preferred, and USB for attaching disks is not acceptable or safe.

Sorry.

 

[SimonBruun]

Wow, that was fast - Thanks Jgreco

That idea is scratched then :)

 

[jgreco]

Hate to disappoint, but it just isn't a real good idea. If you're going to do USB, you'd be better off seeing if you can get your home network NAT gateway to serve files. A lot of them can these days.

 

[SimonBruun]

Thanks for the advise, just checked, but no luck. it don't look like it can serve files.

My mind is all over the place atm. I guess i'm not a 100% sure exactly what my needs are.

If interested here is my "story".

I have a HTPC (Gigabyte BRIX i7). witch is running windows 24/7 as it also serves as a misc. server - including storage.
I have a USB2.0 HDD dock connected to the BRIX - something like this: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81VwuYhpEUL._SL1500_.jpg
I've placed 2 HDD in the dock, and made some shares, and mapped them as network drives on my main PC

This has served me for a while. but it didn't have great speed, and no redundancy.

So the other day one of the two docked HDD in the BRIX starts to give up, corrupting data and stuff. Witch is what has brought me here, and thinking of buying a NAS.

Recently I bought a new monster gaming PC. In fact the only thing the new PC lags, is a massive amount of storage.
I thought it would be enough with two 250GB SSD RAIDED as one 500GB disk, partitioned 100GB to Windows and 400GB to Games.
This turns out not be true, I'm managing my bits and bytes on the Gameing PC, witch I don't like.

The reality is, that the "BRIX NAS thingy" only serve my MainPC for storage I don't use it for streaming and other stuff, so in some sense it would be better for me just to pull the HHDs out the dock, and place them in my main PC.

So after some consideration, I've come to the conclusion that it might be enough, just to boost my mainPC's storage. and then discard that half-assed usb dock thing I've got going on.

I don't like the idea of putting a regular HHD in my new high performance PC. so I'm thinking I need SSD's for the job.
I was almost ready to buy a DS1515+ so I'm thinking I can treat my self to a raid of 5 "500 GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD" and put them in raid with one used for redundancy.

This will give me 2 raids
1. Raid = 2 x 250GB = 500GB for C-Drive (windows and desktop junk)
2. Raid = 5 x 500GB = 2TB for D-Drive (Games and storage) - Or could be 3 x 1TB drives - abit more expensive, but I think is more future prof, as my mother board only got 8 SATA ports.

Again thanks for guiding me, and I think i'm going with the SSD solution, unless you are slamming your head against the keyboard right now :P