Guide to building your own diy NAS Server
Table of Content
I wanted a system that met my current needs with room to grow. My rough target was to start with 20 TB of usable storage and extra headroom for up to 30 TB if I add disks later. When I bought my Synology NAS, I initially installed three 4 TB drives and left the fourth slot empty. That gave me a total of 7 TB of usable space with Synology Hybrid Raid. Three years later, I was running out of space, so I added a fourth drive, bringing my total usable space to 10 TB.
I collected three spare 1TB drives for storage, plus a spare DVD drive to handle the installation. When FreeNAS is installed, it takes over the entire drive you install it on. To keep all of the storage drives available, I also grabbed a 2GB USB key, to host the the operating system. FreeNAS will run on just about anything, so an old PC you’re not using anymore will work just fine. For optimal performance, you’ll want to have at least 4GB of RAM.
TrueNAS and ZFS 🔗︎
A NAS enclosure will likely use a laptop motherboard which has a very limited upgradability. A typical desktop motherboard will have more RAM slots and PCIe slots available to further increase the potential of your system. Similarly, many motherboards will only be sold with a few SATA cables – leaving you short if you want to include several drives in your NAS build.
It’s larger than the SilverStone DS380B, but Fractal Design’s Node 804 supports motherboards up to Micro ATX, which unlocks additional possibilities with a NAS build. Any PC chassis will do, but you will need to take into account the number of drives that can be installed. The more bays available, the more drive you can install and the larger the available capacity will be. When it comes to building a NAS for Plex, this is where specifications matter more. If you’re considering 4K transcoding, you will require a considerably powerful processor . Everything else can largely remain the same as the home NAS build.
You’ll need some technical know-how
For the OS, you can go with any free NAS software, though two of my favorites are openmediavault and FreeNAS. Depending on how experienced you are with such software packages, the initial setup process may be a little daunting at first, especially if you're coming from a pre-built NAS enclosure. Intel has a wide range of processors that will do the job, depending on what tasks you want the NAS to perform.
Building your own DIY NAS from an old PC is an excellent way to get advanced features and plenty of storage space without paying out for a brand name. It’s also the best way to create precisely the NAS system you want, without compromising on detail. You can also use FreeNAS to manage your redundancy settings, as the system incorporates ZFS – a file system volume manager and RAID controller designed to manage your RAID setup. One of the most respected NAS software solutions currently available, FreeNAS is accessible, with a great interface and a range of features to meet both home and business needs. A CPU doesn’t need to be the latest model, and you’ll save a lot of money by using a previous generation model.
Estimating my storage capacity needs 🔗︎
Network Infrastructure Transfer Speed – Ensure your modem/router support transfer speeds up to 1 Gb/sec. If yours does not, then I highly suggest that you invest in one that does. A gigabit ethernet port allows for transfer speeds of up to 1Gb/sec (1000Mb/sec). Keep in mind that internet speed is different than network speed. NAS drives are built to run 24/7 and have a higher read rate than typical HDDs. More Difficult to Configure – Between the hardware, operating system, and software configuring everything can be a difficult task.
Before you get started with the software aspect, you’ll first have to make sure you have the right hardware for your NAS server. OMV has rather modest requirements, and like we mentioned can even be run from SBCs. Simply put, a NAS is a server that creates a centralized and shared storage data repository that’s accessible over a network. The processor is where most of our budget will be reserved for.
Step 1: Installing FreeNAS
Depending on how you plan to use the NAS, you can create multiple folders with varying user permissions as per your requirements. You can now remove the installation media and restart the computer. It’ll boot into the OMV installation and drop you to the login shell. Login using root and the user and the password you specified during installation.
As soon as I get a new disc, I rip the raw image and make a streamable video file. Between the raw ISO copy and the streamable MP4s, a single disc can occupy 60 GB of disk space. A NAS server’s primary job is storing data and making it available to other computers on your network. You could also use your NAS to make your files available to you over the Internet, using it as a remote file server you can access from anywhere.
Technically speaking, you only need to use approximately 8 GB RAM on the average for a NAS server built for home use. However, there is nothing wrong with upgrading the RAM capacity of your NAS server to 16 GB if the need arises. There is no use upgrading the RAM if it is not needed since it can affect your budget in creating the NAS server. Click Add Windows Share, and give it a name in the window that pops up. Click the drop-down menu next to ‘Path’ to assign your NAS to an address that Windows will be able to find. Select Browsable to Network Clients, as this feature will let you use the Windows Explorer menus to access your NAS as you would any other folder on your PC.
Based on actual observation, most of the CPUs that are available for sale in the market have too much processing power compared to what a NAS server built for home use actually needs. This is the reason why you just have to select the most affordable CPU available provided that the CPU chosen must also be compatible with the motherboard and RAM of the NAS server. First and foremost, you need to select the kind of case you will be using to enclose all the individual parts of the NAS server.
On top of that, we must make sure that the NAS server power supply does not make any unnecessary noise while it is running. Just click Start on a Windows machine connected to your network, and in the Run text box type YourNASnamehere and press Enter. Windows will connect to the NAS, and you can start dropping files in.
Please keep in mind that these are my personal impressions, not conclusions or recommendations; they are purely my opinion of products that I may or may not have used. Because each unit’s price and release date are taken into account in each score, you won’t see absolute performance. A new Intel Core i7 2600k was possibly the best product in Intel’s history. At the time, it had all of the bleeding edge features of its time, as well as a significant performance improvement over its predecessor. Because there are few recent software updates and little in the way of feature kit, it is unlikely to be exceptional.
Plenty of storage space
Watch out for 12th Gen Intel boards as some are DDR4 and others will support DDR5. EVGA's 500W GD power supply is an excellent unit for any PC with an 80 Plus Gold certification and backed by a plethora of positive reviews. You also won't require anything more than 500W, so this PSU should be good for future upgrades and builds with a dedicated GPU. With a NAS system, the aim is to keep the footprint small but have ample room to throw in several storage drives and capable components.
Comments
Post a Comment