So I've been debating whether to buy a pre-built pretty much plug-n-play NAS (network attached storage) for a few months now (my 2x 500GB drives are at 75% capacity now). For those who don't know, I'm really picky when it comes to picking out things to buy. When it comes to spending a significant chunk of money I'll usually ponder it for weeks or even months playing with the numbers or items, etc. When it comes to computer equipment it may take longer because I convince myself I should wait for something new to come out so the current item I'm looking at becomes cheaper.
Well anyway enough about me, onto the dilemma at hand. Well, not so much a dilemma anymore. So anyway when I starting looking at NAS's I was debating on RAID 1 or RAID 5. RAID 1 NAS's go for anywhere between $100 and $300. RAID 5 NAS's go for anywhere from $300 to well beyond $500. After that I looked at features, and since there are a plethora of them I won't go into the details. But basically I needed to be able to share data between multiple windows computers (CIFS) and stream media to other devices (UPnP). It would also be nice for Linux support (NFS) and FTP support. So the one I had eventually picked out was the Qnap TS-409 Pro unit, which costs $599 at Newegg! THEN you have to buy the hard drives to go in it!
Then my coworker shows me FreeNAS, which is a bit of software that will allow you to turn any computer into a NAS. Then I got to thinking, how kewl would it be to build my own NAS? After looking at FreeNAS it became an enticing project! FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD (which is based on Unix), and offered all the features I wanted and then some. Then came the thoughts of physical footprint and power usage. What were my options? I had looked around a few local computer shops and mega stores and whatnot to find a case that would fit at least 4 hard drives but would be pretty small. Today everything kind of fell in place (especially after hours and hours of research!) when I found the perfect enclosure.
Case: Chenbro ES34069
Motherboard: Intel D945GCLF2
CPU: Integrated Intel ATOM 330
RAM: 1 or 2GB, depends on if I can scrounge up some or if I have to buy it
Controller: Promise SATA300 TX4
Hard Drives: Undecided at the moment, probably 4x 1TB
Case, Motherboard/CPU and Controller comes out to $382 at my favorite local shop. Newegg doesn't have the case, but I found it at another online vendor and the total is $361. I'll probably buy it local because I get a discount and I don't have to worry about shipping (and they're really good with returns in case I run into trouble). My cousin's wife works for Seagate, so I'm gonna see if I she can get some hard drives for me.
The case has 4 integrated hot-swap trays as well as a spot for a 2.5" hard drive. This means I can install FreeNAS onto the 2.5" and have the 4 bays for my RAID array. The case is also pretty small, measures 10.24" x 5.51" x 10.24". The Atom CPU is a low power CPU. The motherboard also has 2 SATA slots so I can run a hard drive from there for FreeNAS and run the 4 storage drives off the controller. FreeNAS has software RAID capability so I'm pretty set. I spent a few hours checking and cross checking to make sure all the hardware I had selected were compatible and would work together. FreeBSD doesn't have drivers for all controllers and many manufacturers would write windows drivers and be done with it. I also had to make sure that the Promise card would work in the Intel motherboard since Promise cards tend to be picky and throw up errors in non-verified boards. Promise's compatibility list for this card was dated March or April of 2008, a full year ago, so I had to do some digging and was able to find out that the card and board did indeed work together.
So.. I'm pretty excited to get started now.
