First off, I apologize, I've been spending most of the day reading all the documentation I can find and my head is spinning a bit and I would greatly appreciate some hardware advice. Sorry in advance for the wall of text, but more information is better?
The main point of confusion that I'm running into is there are a lot of hardware threads that are talking about what you need if you want to run a NAS with 8 RAIDed drives and spend about $1000. But that isn't really what I want to do.
My goal is to have a box that acts as file server, HPLC-lite (streaming video and music to other PCs). I'd like to RAID two of the drives together (the two 2Tb WD Blacks) and then also have some more storage space. Call it 4 drives total.
I have some parts available to me, and they are as follows:
2x8GB 204 pin DDR3 12800 RAM (cheap hynix stuff)
4x4GB 240 pin DDR3 10600 RAM (again, cheap hynix)
Antec VSK-3000 microATX case
2x Western Digital Black 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA6Gbps
1 TB Seagate SATAIII drive (don't know the exact model)
Toshiba 32Gb mSATA (anyone know if the various mSATA to SATA converters have problems with FreeBSD?)
So in essence I need a mobo, CPU and PSU and my budget is not enormous. ~$350 is likely all I can really swing right now.
Basically what I'm wondering is given that all the hardware threads I'm seeing seem to be focusing on larger NAS setups than I'm really envisioning what sort of hardware should I be looking at?
Motherboard is my real stumbling block because I don't want to get something that is going to be a pain to make compatible but I can't really stretch to get a SuperMicro board.
EDIT: I'm a pretty tech savy person, I work in the IT field but have only limited Linux/Unix experience. I'm largely going to be following how-to guides to install FreeNAS hence why I'd like some hardware that isn't going to require me to compile drivers for everything. However, once the system is up and running to a basic level of functionality I want to start diving into it and discovering all the awesome stuff it can do.
The main point of confusion that I'm running into is there are a lot of hardware threads that are talking about what you need if you want to run a NAS with 8 RAIDed drives and spend about $1000. But that isn't really what I want to do.
My goal is to have a box that acts as file server, HPLC-lite (streaming video and music to other PCs). I'd like to RAID two of the drives together (the two 2Tb WD Blacks) and then also have some more storage space. Call it 4 drives total.
I have some parts available to me, and they are as follows:
2x8GB 204 pin DDR3 12800 RAM (cheap hynix stuff)
4x4GB 240 pin DDR3 10600 RAM (again, cheap hynix)
Antec VSK-3000 microATX case
2x Western Digital Black 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA6Gbps
1 TB Seagate SATAIII drive (don't know the exact model)
Toshiba 32Gb mSATA (anyone know if the various mSATA to SATA converters have problems with FreeBSD?)
So in essence I need a mobo, CPU and PSU and my budget is not enormous. ~$350 is likely all I can really swing right now.
Basically what I'm wondering is given that all the hardware threads I'm seeing seem to be focusing on larger NAS setups than I'm really envisioning what sort of hardware should I be looking at?
Motherboard is my real stumbling block because I don't want to get something that is going to be a pain to make compatible but I can't really stretch to get a SuperMicro board.
EDIT: I'm a pretty tech savy person, I work in the IT field but have only limited Linux/Unix experience. I'm largely going to be following how-to guides to install FreeNAS hence why I'd like some hardware that isn't going to require me to compile drivers for everything. However, once the system is up and running to a basic level of functionality I want to start diving into it and discovering all the awesome stuff it can do.
