# NAS or build a home server?



## camoxiong (Nov 16, 2012)

My WD Green 1TB is getting full of musics and movies and I only have about 100 GB left. I was just wondering go with a NAS storage or just build a home server. NAS look cheaper to me but I don't know which one to pick. My family does watch a lot of movies and we stream movies from my computer to the xbox 360, and etc.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Nov 16, 2012)

camoxiong said:


> My WD Green 1TB is getting full of musics and movies and I only have about 100 GB left. I was just wondering go with a NAS storage or just build a home server. NAS look cheaper to me but I don't know which one to pick. My family does watch a lot of movies and we stream movies from my computer to the xbox 360, and etc.



NAS is an interesting beast.  If you want something cheaper, with real networking access, build a media server.

NAS generally have price tags at $300 or more.  Add on glitchy support (at the low price end), difficult setup, and poor interaction between multiple device types and you've got a problem.


On the other hand, $300 buys an Atom 525 (soldered onto motherboard), power supply, hard drive, dvd drive, RAM, and low end case.  No OS, but Linux is free.  No compatibility issues, update friendly support, and capable of being updated in the future.  



My money, NAS at low pricing is foolish.  Most packaged NAS solutions use either an Atom or ARM processor, so why not cut out the middle man?


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## Disparia (Nov 16, 2012)

I'd lean that way as well.

I've seen this board recommended a couple times for file serving duties: ASUS C60M1-I AMD Fusion APU C-60 (1.0GHz, dual cor...

$80, 6 SATA ports, and sips power. Not a very beastly CPU, but neither are the CPU's in most NAS units. Price for price, no NAS is going to match the value of a DIY build.

Even if you wanted more performance and/or expandability, i.e. an FM2 board (8 SATA ports) + Trinity, prices start around $145 for that combo.


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## Kreij (Nov 16, 2012)

Inexpensive NAS is notoriously slow. I vote DIY server too.


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## camoxiong (Nov 16, 2012)

I just want something that has low power and has a lot of storage like 6TB+. Well, like you guys said DIY Home Server. So in a Home Server, can I stream my musics, pictures, and movies thru another computer/devices(like tablets, xbox 360, & etc)?


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 17, 2012)

Sure, you can do whatever you want with it generally. Though it's too bad MS has dumped Windows Home Server with 8/2012 but there are lots of good (and free) alternatives, of course. 

Could always roll your own NAS too and even build something that is kinda like a mix between a general purpose server and a simpler "network attached storage" device. Yeah these new little Atom combos are great...

Check out freenas.org and google napp-it for more info. ZFS filesystem on Linux can do some awesome, powerful stuff.


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## camoxiong (Nov 17, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> Sure, you can do whatever you want with it generally. Though it's too bad MS has dumped Windows Home Server with 8/2012 but there are lots of good (and free) alternatives, of course.
> 
> Could always roll your own NAS too and even build something that is kinda like a mix between a general purpose server and a simpler "network attached storage" device. Yeah these new little Atom combos are great...
> 
> Check out freenas.org and google napp-it for more info. ZFS filesystem on Linux can do some awesome, powerful stuff.



thanks


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## TRWOV (Nov 17, 2012)

I'd go with unraid, especially with a home server as hard drive sizes are usually  going to be mixed. ZFS is powerful and faster but it's pretty annoying to administrate unless you max out your server from the start (you can't add drives to a ZFS array, you have to rebuild it). UnRAID costs money but the basic version (1-3 drives) is free. You'd be looking at a 6TB pool if you go with 3TB HDDs (one drive is used for parity and has to be the biggest of the lot).


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 17, 2012)

Good advice; though if you just want to keep it as simple as possible this is supposedly a pretty good NAS that won't quite break the bank:

Synology DS212J Diskless System DiskStation Budget...


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## Kreij (Nov 17, 2012)

Personally, I think that having a home server is better than having a NAS for the simple reason that if you ever decide you want it to have more functionality (say a game server) in the future you can do so.
Also, there is no real reason that you need a server OS for a home file server.


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## Solaris17 (Nov 17, 2012)

DIY server if you already have the machine then blow the money on more drives. It is far more efficent then the budget NAS solutions


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## camoxiong (Nov 17, 2012)

I just want a file storage because my 1TB only have 100GB left and I don't want to use the 100Gb and I just want to stream my musics, pictures and movies to my devices. So a NAS, can I still stream my media?


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## Kreij (Nov 17, 2012)

There is another consideration also ...

Friend : "What's that?"
You : "It's a NAS."
Friend : "Oh, cool."
e-peen +1

Vs.

Friend : "What's that?"
You : "It's my home server that allows file transfers, QOS, acts as a remote access server to my network, I can set up game services and manage access through group policy, it's a web server and will sync all my mobile devices through it's wireless interface."
Friend : "WOW!"
e-peen + 50


On topic : Yes you can stream media from almost any NAS.


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## TheLostSwede (Nov 17, 2012)

I guess it comes down to what you want to do beyond streaming media really.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that you can't take your 1TB drive and bung it into a NAS, as the NAS would have to initialize the drive which means wiping all the data, so just a little heads up here.
A modern NAS from the likes of Synology, QNAP and Thecus as well as a couple of other companies have easy to configure UI's and some even offer HDMI connectivity so that they can do double duties as media player as well as streamer.
Most also allows you do run a wide range of programs on there ranging from simple media servers to mail servers and wordpress and what not. Sadly a decent NAS doesn't come cheap, as anything with a Marvell processor or similar performs pretty bad when it comes to file copying to/from the NAS itself, despite the NAS having Gigabit Ethernet interface.
Apparently the thing to get is HP's ProLiant MicroServer, as it's got an AMD processor and it looks like a NAS rather than some cheesy second rate PC - http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html?dnr=1


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## Ramo1203 (Nov 17, 2012)

I also had the same choice to make some time ago.
If you want a good NAS, you need to spend a lot, those entry-level NAS aren't very fast. Some are also very picky about the drives for example. The NAS would be a simple, easy, choice. I would recommand a DIY server if you can build it yourself, really the best choice, because you can customize it 100%.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 17, 2012)

All good advice.


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## TRWOV (Nov 17, 2012)

TheLostSwede said:


> Apparently the thing to get is HP's ProLiant MicroServer, as it's got an AMD processor and it looks like a NAS rather than some cheesy second rate PC - http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html?dnr=1




If you want a DIY version this case would look pretty sexy as a home server: LIAN LI PC-Q08B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Comp...

Has 6 drive bays and you could  install this in the 5.25" bay to put more hard drives in: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...dex=527&cl_index=2&sc_index=5&ss_index=17&g=f


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## camoxiong (Nov 18, 2012)

thanks for all the help, I guess I'll build a home media server. 3 x 2 TB, 1 for parity


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 18, 2012)

Ok, but RAID 5 kinda blows, especially with the "Fake RAID" onboard controller.


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## mlee49 (Nov 18, 2012)

Kreij said:


> Personally, I think that having a home server is better than having a NAS for the simple reason that if you ever decide you want it to have more functionality (say a game server) in the future you can do so.
> Also, there is no real reason that you need a server OS for a home file server.



Some NAS do support game server capabilities, and with the majority being hot swappable expanding can be easy.

While transfer speeds will take a hit, power savings will be a recognizable difference over a separate build. 
Think about you electricity bill, if that matters.

I've has a 2 bay Synology NAS for two years now and its been great. I paid $350 including 2 640GB drives. Lots of support for raid, DDNS has been great, and streaming is a breeze. Super quiet and never hear a peep out of it. Been on for weeks at a time, never an

That being said, transfer speeds are fair. Definately could be better, but it is two year old tech.
Check out smallbuilder.net. It helped me decide.


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## Kreij (Nov 18, 2012)

I too have a NAS here at home, mlee. 2 x 320GB drives in RAID0
I only use it for backup so performance is not that big of a deal (yes, it's slow).
If it dies I would probably just go with an external USB drive to accomplish the same thing.

I would love to build a massive, 16 core server with 64GB or so of RAM and terabytes of space, but I don't have any use for it.


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## camoxiong (Nov 19, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> Ok, but RAID 5 kinda blows, especially with the "Fake RAID" onboard controller.



I might get a raid card


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 19, 2012)

Anything at newegg cheaper than like $350 is really not worth a  crap over Intel onboard. Get something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ServeRa...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item1c2d5be818

Rebranded LSI (can be flashed with LSI firmware, killer deal. Though it needs an add on chip to do RAID 5. Bracket $11. There is also the IBM M5015 but the great deals on those are gone at present.


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## camoxiong (Nov 20, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> Anything at newegg cheaper than like $350 is really not worth a  crap over Intel onboard. Get something like this:
> 
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ServeRa...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item1c2d5be818
> 
> Rebranded LSI (can be flashed with LSI firmware, killer deal. Though it needs an add on chip to do RAID 5. Bracket $11. There is also the IBM M5015 but the great deals on those are gone at present.



I did my research and I found out that LSI has some good raid card.


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## TheLostSwede (Nov 20, 2012)

FYI, you can flash those cards http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

I've been trying out some of the various "free" NAS programs with varying luck.
FreeNAS is a pita to configure and as far as the Ubuntu based ones, I can't even get them to boot, nor Ubuntu for that matter, as it appears there's some issue with booting from a USB drive or something and I can't seem to find a solution for it, which is really frustrating.
None of the OSes I've tried come close to a dedicated NAS in terms of ease of use, so there's at least something for going for a pre-built box.


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## TheGuruStud (Nov 20, 2012)

I snagged a couple BNIB promise supertrak ex16350s. I paid 125 each (which was too much, he was letting them go for 100 later).
That's a 16 port hardware raid card (raid 6 too) and it came with 2 port splitters (so 4 drives each) and power adapters. 

It's going to make a nice 12 TB server 

Forget raid 5. Go 6 or 10. You want to be able to sustain multiple drive failures. Drives are too big and unreliable nowadays. One of those pos could end up erroring before it finishes rebuilding 2-3 TB, then you're up shit creek.


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## Aquinus (Nov 20, 2012)

TheGuruStud said:


> Forget raid 5. Go 6 or 10. You want to be able to sustain multiple drive failures. Drives are too big and unreliable nowadays. One of those pos could end up erroring before it finishes rebuilding 2-3 TB, then you're up shit creek.



Sounds like a familiar statement. 

RAID-10 doesn't offer much in terms of better redundancy, just faster write speeds. You can lose at most 2 disks with 4-disk RAID-10 however you only need to lose 2 disks in some cases to kill your RAID. For media, RAID-6 would be more reliable and better geared for what he wants to do. RAID-10 makes more sense if you're going to be doing write-intensive work like video editing or running a database server.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 20, 2012)

Right...it's just RAID 1 striped into 0. Less boring and more worthwhile perf-wise than reg RAID 1 but no "safer". And as I recently learned and mentioned in one of these threads the Intel ICH's RAID 10 can't read from all four drives (pretty sure it was read...at any rate the perf is generally not great either).


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## Aquinus (Nov 20, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> Right...it's just RAID 1 striped into 0. Less boring and more worthwhile perf-wise than reg RAID 1 but no "safer". And as I recently learned and mentioned in one of these threads the Intel ICH's RAID 10 can't read from all four drives (pretty sure it was read...at any rate the perf is generally not great either).



Right, but RAID-5 gives you 3 drives worth of space in a 4 drive configuration where RAID-10 only gives you 2 drives worth of space. If it's just media, you want that extra space and you're not going to care as much about your write speeds because you'll be reading more than anything and you're going to want that space. Good HD video eats up a lot of space.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 20, 2012)

Fair enough.


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## camoxiong (Nov 21, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> Right, but RAID-5 gives you 3 drives worth of space in a 4 drive configuration where RAID-10 only gives you 2 drives worth of space. If it's just media, you want that extra space and you're not going to care as much about your write speeds because you'll be reading more than anything and you're going to want that space. Good HD video eats up a lot of space.



Your right, so RAID 5 it is.


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## yogurt_21 (Nov 21, 2012)

I call my home server a NAS, so there. 

I picked up a 771 xeon server threw a 4 gigs of ram in it and loaded it with wd greens (*waits for newtechie to come in and say wd greens are terrible for raid, despite the fact I've been running those in raid, plus the ones in my primary rig for years without issue, not one single error)

it's a 4tb "NAS" (home server configured for NAS) simple dual core Xeon setup, works great. 

Mines in a 2 post rack in my den and not everyone finds 2 post racks lying around nor rails for a 4 post rack case that fit a 2 post rack, but there's plenty of other options. Got an old 775 rig? shoot even Athlon 64 x2, almost all of those old rigs you have lying around will beat the prebuilt NAS enclosures. 

freeNAS works well, but even desktop windows works with folder sharing, map the drive and have it replace your documents main folder and you're set. Just save everything to the NAS and use an external drive/online service to backup the most important things on the NAS on an automated schedule. This way you have redundancy without having to think about "whens the last time I backed up my stuff?"


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 21, 2012)

Well WD Reds and RAID Editions (REx) may be "geared towards" NAS and RAID arrays but sure a Green or whatever other drive would work just fine.


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## Aquinus (Nov 21, 2012)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> Well WD Reds and RAID Editions (REx) may be "geared towards" NAS and RAID arrays but sure a Green or whatever other drive would work just fine.



Some RAID controllers may throw WD Greens out of your RAID if lack of TLER becomes an issue. For example, on my X79 the C600-series RSTe RAID controller will kick drives out of your RAID occasionally when you enable patrol read which scans the drive in its free time for errors. So even though it kicks drive out, verifying the integrity of your RAID will always come out good.


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## TRWOV (Nov 23, 2012)

Another case that screams "Home Server!!!": http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2&prod=94


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## camoxiong (Nov 27, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> Another case that screams "Home Server!!!": http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2&prod=94



Yeah, I was watching Linus Tech Tips and saw him use a small Fractal Design case


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## TheGuruStud (Nov 27, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> Another case that screams "Home Server!!!": http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2&prod=94



I bought the arc midi b/c it was 60 bucks and will still hold 10 drives (2 in the 5.25s).

I really wanted the Define XL (so good looking and full of features), but at 110, it just wasn't worth it for a server/nas. It's stupid good for a regular PC, though, if you love silence.


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