MY DIY NAS Wish List

[manoel1117]

Hello ,

I'm considering doing a DIY NAS. My reason(s) for not going with a Synology DS214+ concern prospects of future upgrade(s) & flexibility.

This is my proposed parts list:

+ Cooler Master Elite 130 - Mini-ITX Computer Case

+ ASRock Q1900-ITX Intel Celeron J1900 Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo

+ CORSAIR CSM Series CS450M 450W ATX12V v2.4 and EPS 2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

+ G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-8GBSQ

+ Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" NAS Hard Drive ( x 2 )

My operating system choices will be:

+ Ubuntu Server + OwnCloud
or
+ FreeNAS

This comes in at ~$50.00 less than a similarly configured ( 3TB Raid ) Synology DS214+.

If anyone cares to offer critique of my hardware choices, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

- M. A. Noel

 

[stevech]

Hello ,

I'm considering doing a DIY NAS. My reason(s) for not going with a Synology DS214+ concern prospects of future upgrade(s) & flexibility.

This is my proposed parts list:

+ Cooler Master Elite 130 - Mini-ITX Computer Case

+ ASRock Q1900-ITX Intel Celeron J1900 Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo

+ CORSAIR CSM Series CS450M 450W ATX12V v2.4 and EPS 2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

+ G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-8GBSQ

+ Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" NAS Hard Drive ( x 2 )

My operating system choices will be:

+ Ubuntu Server + OwnCloud
or
+ FreeNAS

This comes in at ~$50.00 less than a similarly configured ( 3TB Raid ) Synology DS214+.

If anyone cares to offer critique of my hardware choices, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

- M. A. Noel

Look first at the software feature list, last look at hardware.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
+1 on that. We pay for features on commercial NAS, not the box. When I decided
on small NAS after some careful consideration I went for small brand name boxes.
It is like a P&P. Right away I could put it to work. Only thing I did was memory upgrade which was very easy ~30 mins. job.

 

[hungarianhc]

A couple thoughts...

First of all, +1 on the previous note someone wrote about prioritizing software. You never really described what you want to do with the NAS. If the price differential is only $50, I would consider that a wash... Dig into the software and see which will offer you the experience you want.

I have had Synology boxes in the past, and they worked great. I'm currently on a custom FreeNAS box right now. FreeNAS is awesome, but it's not for the faint of heart. It's not that user-friendly, the community is active, but not very noob-friendly, and it's very rough around the edges. That being said, it works. Rock solid. Totally stable. And you get ZFS...

On the note of ZFS, in order for it to work properly, you need to have ECC RAM, and I'd probably recommend 16GB of it. I don't believe that ASRock board supports ECC RAM so you'd have to spend a bit more to get a board that supports it as well as the ECC RAM. If you're not going to do this, then don't go w/ FreeNAS.

 

[stevech]

In DIY, folks often talk about basic file serving. Not much else functionality, e.g, time backup with versioning for one.

Think first about what functionality beyond file serving you need/want and the software that is not bespoke that provides such.

Too often, people look at boxes and hardware and not much else.

 

[TonyH]

Similar analogy?, I choose best speakers I could afford B4 I decide on a HiFi amp when buying audio system. Many folks spend most of budget on fancy amp and drive
crappy speakers with it. And unhappy on sound quality wondering why, LOL!

 

[stevech]

yeah, similar. DIY box doesn't do much without a complete feature set in software. But then, some people don't want more than file sharing, and don't pay attention to good version backups, photo/music apps for all the smart phones, etc.