Let's talk about DIY build it yourself NAS style fileserver

[sauce]

In reality, FreeNAS running on a donated old Pentium thrown in a case with space for a few hard drives could be a fileserver that is as powerful, if not more powerful, than these new $500 "NAS" machines I see for sale. But the downside is, they are ugly. Anyone have any ideas on making them prettier?

There is not much out there in this market. I don't need any space for cdrom, I don't need a full tower, mid tower, or even mini-tower. I just need a box with space for hard drives. It's gotta be low power, quiet, and cool.

Here are my options so far:

1) Build a box using this enclosure: Chenbro ES34069. It's the ONLY enclosure of it's kind. Small (tiny!), 4 hot swap bays + OS drive. It's expensive though. Once you're done building it, it may cost more than a store bought NAS. I figure around $400 without drives. Which kind of defeats the purpose of this project.

2) Build a box using this Shuttle: Shuttle KPC. It looks great and it's ONLY $95! It just needs a CPU and an LGA775 Celeron will cost you less than $50. That's $145 total. The downside is, you only have room for 2 SATA drives. That limits you to 1.5TB (or 3.0TB if you don't need redundancy). It also has a single IDE, so you can throw a CF card on that for the OS.

 

[sauce]

I just priced out a Chenbro config, this is on the CHEAP side. It's one powerful motherf'er though. 4 hotswap bays, eSATA, gigabit network, the works...

$175 Chenbro es34069 (from eWiz)
$130 Intel BOXDG45FC LGA 775 Intel G45 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard (from newegg) has 4 SATAII ports, and eSATA on the backplate
$50 A used Intel CPU and low profile HSF
$20 A used 2.5" IDE HDD for OS
$50 2x1GB DDR2 800

$425 total not including shipping/taxes. And I bought used parts where possible. The slim CD isn't important to me, and the hdds are additional of course.

 

[jraynorlxx]

Hi, I was thinking use the same stuffs several month ago.
The intel board is nice, but I remember that there is no IDE on that board.
For the Cenbro case, did you check the nowdirect.com and logicsupply.com? Their price may be better some time.
for the memory, I would say there are a lot available for a cheaper price. I got my G.Skill DDR800 2X2GB around 1month ago for only $35 from newegg
for the cpu, I might prefer a new celeron 4x0 which should be less than $40 for a new one and powerful enough for most application.

 

[br14]

Hello,
Atom D945gclf2 with 2GB memory stick should cost about $115;
$25 Rosewill PCI card adds 4 SATA ports (including up to 2 eSata).
Add Antec NSKxxxx with power supply for under $100 and you should be able to put together a 6-drive NAS for under $250, less if you find a cheaper case/PS combo that you like.

Not a speed demon but should be comparable to off-the-shelf NAS boxes at about half the price. Be prepared to update the BIOS which could be a major hassle. Runs 2000, XP, Suse, and Ubuntu - have not tried any UNIXes.

 

[00Roush]

Just for a point of reference... My old server used a single core Athlon 3000 at 1.8 ghz and cpu usage was up in the 80-90 percent range when high speed file copies were going on. File copy speeds were 70-90 MB/sec. My current server with a 1.8 ghz dual core Opteron, cpu usage is around 40 percent. File copy speeds are in the about 80-100+ MB/sec which is as fast as the data drive can read/write data from the hard disk.

Basically if you are planning on moving data across the network at high speed you should look at getting a dual core. At least in my opinion.

00Roush

 

[sauce]

Hello,
Atom D945gclf2 with 2GB memory stick should cost about $115;
$25 Rosewill PCI card adds 4 SATA ports (including up to 2 eSata).
Add Antec NSKxxxx with power supply for under $100 and you should be able to put together a 6-drive NAS for under $250, less if you find a cheaper case/PS combo that you like.

Not a speed demon but should be comparable to off-the-shelf NAS boxes at about half the price. Be prepared to update the BIOS which could be a major hassle. Runs 2000, XP, Suse, and Ubuntu - have not tried any UNIXes.

You're absolutely right but, the point was to make it not look like a PC. Those NSK series cases are mostly all towers and the ones that aren't can't fit many hard drives. So I would be paying extra for a better looking NAS style case and hot swappable drives.

 

[sauce]

You know, you gave me another idea. I searched newegg for small cases that would go good with a 3-in-2 or 5-in-3 cage with SATA backplane and cooling fan. HTPC-style cases share the good looks that I'm looking for in a NAS. There are a few low cost candidates, especially these:

Athenatech A3712BB.450 for $70, plus a 3-in-2 cage for about $100
HEC 7106BB for $40, plus a 5-in-3 cage for about $125

And then there are really nice looking ones like this:
LIAN LI PC-V350B (only fits 3-in-2)
NZXT DUET (only fits 3-in-2)

 

[br14]

Definitely Lian-Li - a well designed quality case that looks good.
I would not put a drive cage in because I like an optical drive for installs, troubleshooting, etc.
You will probably find more info/opinions on the cases at anandtech and silentpcreview forums. The people here know their stuff, but do not appear to discuss the base hardware much.
Just keep in mind that some of the flimsier cases can be noisy with all these drives, and the actual material thickness specs are hard to get nowadays.

 

[sauce]

Since you mentioned Lian Li I found this case. It doesn't really look like a NAS, but its built short-and-wide (check out the placement of the PSU), has incredible cooling, and built like a tank like any other Lian Li.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112158

Then you can add a Lian-Li EX34 4-in-3 SATA hdd cage. Totals together about $160 without PSU. You can also buy a 5-in-4 or 5-in-3 instead of the EX34 for hotswap.

 

[br14]

If you do not mind a conventional PC look, consider a heavy-gauge (1mm or .8mm) steel case rather than aluminum - less vibration/noise and sturdier.

 

[lan_ops]

5 in 3

Do you guys know of any fan less 5-3 ?
I was looking at a case 12bay which comes with the fans. So no need for the extra fans. The bonus is that you can then read serial numbers off the hard drive in front if there is no fan. The Case fans are mounted on the door, which swings open. I am looking for a case to house up tp 20 drives for my unraid system. (I know unraid can only do 16 drives right now) , but I plan on doing raid 0 or 5 for the parity drive / cache drives, so the extra 4 -5 drives is perfect!

 

[Bill321]

With these Supermicro 5 in 3s, the fan snaps out easily. Have to change a jumper then to disable the fan alarm, though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405

 

[truerock]

Still looking for the ideal NAS enclosure

I just think it is odd that it is hard to find good NAS enclosures. I have not found one I really like.

In my opinion, the HP MediaSmart Server has the ideal enclosure. Its form factor is basicaly a power supply on the bottom, with a motherboard of the Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing (EPIC) form factor on top. The 4 HDD bays are stacked on top of that.

EPIC motherboards are hard to find. An Intel mini-ITX form factor motherboard is the most common small motherboard form factor (6.7 inches square). So, I guess I would like to find a NAS enclosure similiar to the HP MediaSmart Server enclosure that is about 1.5 inches wider (a total of 7 inches wide). I guess it would need to be about 10 inches deep and about 10 inches high (add another 2 inces to the height for a DVD bay).

I'm looking at this motherboard:
Intel BOXDQ45EK $135 mini-ITX 6.75" x 6.75", LGA775, Q45 Chipset, DDR2 800, 1333MHz FSB
The Q45 chipset is geared to low power

I'm looking at this CPU:
Intel BX80557E6750 $177 Core 2 Duo E6750 Dual Core Processor, 2.66GHz, 2x2MB, 1333MHz FSB, LGA775 Socket T
Again, because it is low power.

And, of course the defacto low power HDDs would be:
Western Digital WD7500AAKS $320 Caviar Green, SATA-300, 2 TB, 32MB Cache, 7,200 RPM
or
Western Digital WD7500AAKS $95 Caviar Green, SATA-300, 1 TB, 32MB Cache, 7,200 RPM
I'm considering 4 HDD RAID-5.

I have not a clue as to an operating system. I'm thinking FreeNAS - but if that has problems with print-drivers it might make Windows XP Pro a better choice (Windows Home Server supposedly has problems sometimes with XP/Vista print-drivers). I'd like to be able to use my NAS box as a print server.