First time caller...

[redruns]

Hello to the FreeNAS community.

I have read and read and studied and experimented, and realized that I know just enough to really get myself into trouble. I appreciate the work that this group and the forum members have put into helping to solve problems and come up with best practice guides and simplified instructions for people like me who have a recreational interest in building and implementing a NAS solution for home and small business.

What lead me here was that we wanted a better backup solution for the files stored on the laptop. One thing led to another and I was looking at a prebuilt NAS solution at a retailer. I thought I could build something for half the price with twice the storage and many times the processing ability. So far I'm in for two thirds of the price and five times the headache. My server will be to store and share art and photography, backup data, store and serve up video.

I have collected some equipment and will be building a server over the next while as time permits. This site and the forums have helped me anticipate that I will have a problem with something, and that this forum is a great place to find help because someone has already had the problem. My selection of parts is just meeting the minimum requirements, but I have balanced the budget with risk. Even though, since making purchases on some components I have found that for the same or less price I could have sourced a better or planned for a better end result. But isn't that the way it always goes?

onward

 

[Spearfoot]

Welcome to the forums! Good luck with your new system.

 

[Tigersharke]

Research and plan as best you're able. One is never guaranteed to know when a part will suddenly be sold for less. I can't guess exactly what you have so far or how you've planned. My own thought on a motherboard is that its capable of at least 32GB RAM and has at least 4 sata ports. As for the hard drives, if smaller capacity is cheapest, then those are easily switched out but it will take time and best if the ZFS setup can handle up to 2 drives removed. The only other details I prefer are Asus and AMD. I am far from an expert on all this as well, and I do not presently have a running FreeNAS. I help out in other areas, particularly with creating themes for forums (this is my second forum to theme and surely not the last). I also absolutely agree that most retailers (ie, Big box stores) would sell a NAS box for a lot more than one can build theirself and also have that much more control.

And I wish you success!

 

[redruns]

I only have an evening every once and a while to tinker, but I've got it all together and it works. My hardware is a fat kid at the hurdles, but it finished.

Taking a page of my own out of the "how to do it wrong" documents, I made this list work with 9.3

ASRock FM2A68M-DG3+
2X4 GSkills DDR3-1333 RAM
AMD A6-7400k CPU
3 x 1 TB WD Red
480W power supply

I'll make another with more suitable parts over the next year, and turn this list into a work desktop.

I can't say thank you enough for all the well written posts describing "how to" and solving issues. Along with the awesome documentation, the well written guides helped immensely.