Which SATA controller to use (first NAS build)

[HeadCase]

Hello,

I'm a first timer for FreeNAS and I'm building my first NAS for home use. I just got hardware for it and I would appreciate your help with these few questions.

Hardware is :
AsRock B75Pro3-M MoBo (choosen because it has 8 SATA interface and 4 memory slots for easier upgrade if needed later)
Intel Pentium G860 processor
2*8GB DDR3-1600 memory (I decided to take 16GB over 8GB just make sure it shouldn't run out)
2*3TB Seagate 7k2 rpm HDD (later I will add 2*2TB seagate barracuda XT HDD's that are now in my HTPC system)
8Gb Corsair USB3.0 memorystick for FreeNAS
Coolermaster K3550 case (it's cheap and has enough room for harddrives)
Corsair CX500 V2 PSU

Q1. Which SATA connectors are best to use for HDD's? MoBo has 2*SATA3 through ASMedia ASM1061, 1*SATA3 and 5*SATA2 through intel B75 chipset. Should I use ASMedia controller for 2*3TB drives to get those drives connected to SATA3? If Intel is better is there any downsides if I connect one drive to SATA3 and second one to SATA2 connector (planning to use them as RAID1 mirror set).

Q2. This is more a SW question but let's say that for me it's enough that my files are backup once per day. Is raid1 mirror still best solution or should I just use one drive as "regular" and create automated backup of files to second drive?

Q3. Is that hardware ok for my use? I have two machines in my household ("mainmachine" and HTPC). HTPC will use NAS for media storage (read movie files and record media center tv-recordings etc.). Mainmachine will use NAS for datastorage of image files, office documents, photos etc.. All machines are connected together with gigabit router.

 

[cyberjock]

All of your questions are answers so regularly I won't even answer you here. Use the search function.

 

[Stephens]

A1: I don't know about that specific board and SATA port combinations, but basically as long as they're "real" SATA ports, you should be fine whichever ones you use.

A2: If you want to make an image of a HDD to another internal HDD, go ahead and mirror so it's done automatically without a separate backup step. But RAID isn't backup. You can lose both drives if a power supply goes flaky on you. You might want to back up stuff you really want periodically to other media (external drive, DVD, etc.)

A3: Yes.

NOTE: I believe USB3 support is disabled by default in FreeNAS, and a USB3 stick won't boot appreciably faster than a USB2 stick anyway. FreeNAS boots, loads itself into RAM, then mostly runs from RAM unless you change the configuration (which must then be written back to the flash drive)

NOTE: Make sure you understand the concepts of zpool and vdevs. Read noobsauce80's guide (linked to in his signature) if you haven't already. Expansion isn't a matter of just throwing in more drives, and it's usually better to just build what you want up front.

 

[HeadCase]

A1: I don't know about that specific board and SATA port combinations, but basically as long as they're "real" SATA ports, you should be fine whichever ones you use.

A2: If you want to make an image of a HDD to another internal HDD, go ahead and mirror so it's done automatically without a separate backup step. But RAID isn't backup. You can lose both drives if a power supply goes flaky on you. You might want to back up stuff you really want periodically to other media (external drive, DVD, etc.)

A3: Yes.

NOTE: I believe USB3 support is disabled by default in FreeNAS, and a USB3 stick won't boot appreciably faster than a USB2 stick anyway. FreeNAS boots, loads itself into RAM, then mostly runs from RAM unless you change the configuration (which must then be written back to the flash drive)

NOTE: Make sure you understand the concepts of zpool and vdevs. Read noobsauce80's guide (linked to in his signature) if you haven't already. Expansion isn't a matter of just throwing in more drives, and it's usually better to just build what you want up front.

Thank you for your answer. Nice to know that USB3.0 won't give any advantage. I allready had read noodsauce80 guide (it was very good and cleared a lot of things for me). So I should just go for mirror raid. To keep my system simple I think that it's wise just to put one vdev (2 drives in mirror) to zpool and create another zpool for other 2 drives in different vdev.