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Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Sat Jan 09, 2016 10:29 pm
by DFire
I have been considering building a NAS, but curious of I should buy a NAS unit or just get a cheap second-hand computer and put HDDs in that instead?

I mean a NAS unit (diskless) run about $200 for 2-bay, I have been searching eBay and found some for about $70.

So the question is, should I get NAS unit or cheap computer it?

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 3:58 am
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
How much storage do you need?

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 6:02 am
by dflynn
It all depends on what you are storing, if you are storing Music and Videos I would opt for the NAS. If you have old HDD's and you don't need immediate access to the info you can get a cheap external drive bay and just plug in what ever drive you want in. If your computer has enough bays, just add the old HDD's It all depends on what you want to use it for. A NAS would be faster access to the data you store if speed is a consideration.

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 6:36 am
by DFire
@t3 - I want to get a 4-bay if possible, use 3-4TB drives

@dflynn - videos only. TV shows, movies (about 2GB each).

I currently have 2x 2TB drives in my PC right now, but thinking of going to ITX case sometime in future and would like to start setup of a NAS soon. Then my PC doesn't have to be on for shows to be accessed. Plus I run Plex for my videos.

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 8:58 pm
by Knightwolf654
if you want to build one out of a old computer and just buy some HDD, for an operating system you can use freenas.
i have been using it for years now and it has some plugins to run some other services along with it.

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Mon Jan 11, 2016 4:25 am
by DFire
Knightwolf654 wrote:if you want to build one out of a old computer and just buy some HDD, for an operating system you can use freenas.
i have been using it for years now and it has some plugins to run some other services along with it.


Do you use an old PC for that or have it installed on an actual NAS system?

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:34 am
by Knightwolf654
when i started it was just an old pc, that was about 3 years ago. but because of the things i was keeping on it i needed better reliability so i re-built it according to recommendations from their forums.
now it runs on server class hardware and has multiple redundancy. i can loose two hard drives in my main raid configurations before i loose any data and have the OS in a raid 1 on two ssd's. if you want to go as far as i did here are my system specs:
Xeon E3-1220 V3
ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard
Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 ECC Ram
SanDisk ReadyCache 32GB SATA III x2
WD SE 2TB 7,200 RPM Sata 3 HDD x6
CORSAIR RM Series RM550 550W

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Mon Jan 11, 2016 3:01 pm
by DFire
Nah, I'm not looking at going that far, just want something simple enough to house all my storage drives off my pc. Nice system though.

Re: Topic of NAS

PostPosted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 9:46 pm
by λndersony †
I bailed on NAS, had a Windows Home Server (you can log into it and see its Windows Server 2003 stripped down) which had 5 drive bays and did everything for you .. I still have it, if you want it.

Most recently, I use the same OneDrive account between 3PC's, 4 tablets, and 3 phones. I force the PC's and tablets to download the entire content of the OneDrive allocation. So I have redundancy galore (1 PC is offsite, as well as 2 tablets = work). The PC's in particular have the OneDrive local store located on USB Flash Drives plugged into the back of the PC's, so that I can pull that data portable at will.

Cost ? M$ gives it away .. and if you use Bing Search, even more ... I bought 3 64Gb USB drives for the PC's (don't remember what I paid honestly, but it was black Friday at Best Buy .. not much).