Freenas Build: Need help with parts

[LukeL]

Hi, I currently have a Zyxel NSA310 and its fine but I want more storage and better performence.

I want to build my own for under £350.

Here are the parts I'm interested in,

MB: Asus M5A78L-M LX £41.99

CPU: AMD Sempron X2 190 2.50GHz Dual Core Processor £29.99

RAM: Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) £29.98

PSU: Antec VP350P 350W £32.99

Storage HDD's: 2 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB £130.50

I'm torn on a decent case that has enough space for more drives if needed.

I will mainly be using the NAS for backups of 2 pc's, accessing files from pc's iPad and iPhone's. I have a gigabit network (Netgear DGND3700)

The thing I am hesitant about is the performance, when I was setting up my NSA 310 i stored all my data that was going to be stored on my Nas, on my partners pc and was transfering at roughly 120MB/s which i know is near the maximum i can get on a gigabit network, I'm just wondering whether i can achieve the same speed on my potential new build. It took hours transfering all the data from my partners pc to the NAS (it achieved a maximum of 40MB/s)

And also the 2 2TB drives I've chosen, I want them set up as a mirror, will that also affect performance and will i benefit from the actual mirror compared to performace loss, I do want a copy of all my Movies, music, photo's and documents just in case one of the drive fails.

And power consuption is another thing I'm concerned about, It will be on 24/7.

Thank you in advance!!!!

Luke.

 

[joeschmuck]

Off the cuff you should have at least 6GB RAM. If you want it to be faster then you will want 16GB RAM as that is where your money has the most affect on throughput. As for a case, if you have something laying around no mater how ugly, since you're saving money go with that for now and buy a better case once you know how you really want your system to be configured (more drives).

You ALWAYS want to retain a backup copy of any important files, if the NAS takes a lighting hit or power surge, it could all be gone. Also you should have an UPS to protect your system from short term power losses.

 

[LukeL]

Thank you! i just don't want to sink £300 + into this build and regret it. I think i'll choose 8GBram, and i do have an old case.

what speed does your build get you?

 

[joeschmuck]

Follow this link, it tells you in great detail however I have not retested my system since upgrading my pool of drives to a RAIDZ2 with 6 drives.

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...formance-Testing&p=46191&viewfull=1#post46191