New To NAS Storage question

[ZalMax]

Hi All,

Thanks for taking a moment to look at this post and provide some feedback.

I was planning on buying a prebuilt NAS/Storage system. I basically use my storage to feed my HTPC and iTunes collection to iPads/Macs around my house. I had 3 external drives handling this, but over the past month they have all died.

When planning a new strategy I thought it might be wise to have a little bit of failure protection, since I was only able to recover my iTunes materials and all my ripped DVDs are now going to need to be reripped (not looking forward to that).

At first I thought about a Drobo or equivalent etc., but after reading through many posts in these forums I thought this type of solution might be best. I have an old PC with the following in it:

Asus Striker Extrmeme mobo
Intel Core 2 Extreme processor
8GB Ram
800watt PS
a couple 150GB Raptor hard drives (not planning to run anything but the NAS once my new gear arrives, so these drives are basically irrelevant I suppose)

The board support 6 sata connections and has a few pcie slots available. I removed one of my video cards.

What I plan on adding (either has been ordered or will be):

5 X 3TB WD red Nas drives (already ordered)
some backplane bays AMS DS-346TL to turn the front 5.25s into multiple 3.5s (about to order)
Some misc cables/adapters so I can hopefully connect it all (already ordered)
1 pcie expansion card Vantec UGT-ST644R so I can connect all 8 drives since the board only has 6 slots (about to order)

After all that here is the question:

I want to use RaidZ3, so I can have some protection against drive failure. Then I got to thinking I have several more open bays available, and I was going to order some additional 2TB WD Red drives, I was thinking 3. That would essentially give me 21TB of Raw storage. What is the best way to set this up? Should I use the 3 X 2TB drives and 1 X 3TB drive as the (mirrors?), or does the system simply select which disks it wants to use. Is there a better way to configure this aside from RaidZ3? Do any of you experts have some advice for someone new to this? I am also wondering how big these "snapshots" of the array are. Are they the same size as the actual data on the drives? If they are smaller does it make sense to use the smaller capacity drives to house only the snapshots? All my important files/pictures/family videos are going to be stored not only on this array but also in the cloud, so I am not nervous about my "sentimental" items. I would however love to not have to rip my movie collection once every few years.

I really appreciate any advice/suggestions you can offer.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, as a general rule, if you follow the sticky in the hardware section, that's the kind of feedback you can/should expect.

For example, use ECC RAM(which means totally different hardware). You'll probably need more RAM as 8GB is the bottom of the barrel for initial builds.

 

[ZalMax]

Thanks for the feedback Cyberjock. I watched your presentation, and found many interesting items. I think perhaps I should hold off on a self build based on all the things that can go wrong without purchasing proper hardware. I guess many of us have a bunch of old components kicking around that we would like to use and not recycle, but it seems that the overarching message from many posts throughout the forum are to buy proper equipment before attempting this home made NAS solution. The "extra" gear many of us have lying about was designed for regular home use and/or gaming, and may not be the best choice. I suppose I'll just try out a pre made system, and see where that leads later on. Thanks for saving me from some headaches in the short term, and as I have time to read and learn more about this software perhaps it will make more sense to rebuild from the ground up.