Today i’m going over building a stand alone NAS server computer system build for home or small business data storage. It will be running FreeNAS for an operating system but you could easily run NAS4FREE, Linix distro or Microsoft Windows Server 2012.Windows server will set you back a few dollars more then the other free OS’s. FreeNAS is very easy to install and setup is fairly easy as well. There is very good documention on the FreeNAS website. Choosing a NAS setup like this gives you complete flexibility to access you files from any computer system, iOS, Android tablet or phone in you house. There are many useful plugins to include Plex media server allowing all your networked devices to stream media to them. I currently use Google Chromecasts which works great but I will be switching soon to a Roku 2 or Amazon Fire TV because you can’t use Amazon Video on the Chromecast. With FREENAS you will also be able to setup your own personnel cloud storage on it so that it can be accessed while your on the go with a plugin called Owncloud. It’s a much better option than paying a monthly fee for cloud storage.
CASE
Starting with the case first I choose the SilverStone DS380B. The design is sleek and compact. It has 8 Hot Swapable 3.5in SATA drive bays in the front located behind a case door and 4 2.5in drive bays in the back of the case. The 2.5in bays can only be accessed by removing the side panel. It has 2 120mm filtered intake fans that are mounted next to 3.5in drive bays to keep you hard drives cool. 1 120mm exhaust fan on the back to remove the hot air from the case.
MOTHERBOARD / CPU
For the motherboard I choose the ASRock Intel Avoton C2750. It is a m-itx board with an Intel Avonton (Atom) octacore processor running at 2.4Ghz. This processor is a lot more powerful then the old Atom cpus with 8 cores. The processor should be able to handle most things that a home user will throw at it. Low power consumption of only 20 watts Thermal Design Power (TDP) and passively cooled cpu makes it perfect for a NAS build. It has enough SATA ports to hook up drives in all 12 bays without the need to add an extra storage controller. The board supports up to 64GB of DDR3 full size 240pin dimm slots at 1600/1333 with ECC RAM with 4 slots. Dual Intel i210 Gigabit LAN ports ethernet ports are integrated onboard and can be setup in teaming mode/link aggregation. There is a 3rd LAN port for dedicated IPMI which allows you to access the bios with another computer. This setup can be used on one of your other LAN ports so you can access it on your netwok.
RAM
The RAM I choose is Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3 ECC PC3-12800 UDIMM running at 1600. Do not be cheap, get ECC RAM and the recommended amount of RAM. FREENAS calls for 8GB minimum. For every TB of storage an additional GB of RAM is recommended. The more RAM you can afford buy it, FREENAS needs it.
HARD DRIVES
The bread and butter of this NAS build is the 6 WD Red 3TB NAS Hard Disk Drive. I picked this disk because it is the cheapest per TB at $35. This will offer 18Tb total raw storage but I will be running in a RAIDZ2 (Like RAID 6) with 12TB total usable storage. In this configuration two drives can fail and you will still have all you data. If a third drive fails you will lose everything so make sure if a drive fails it gets replaced immediately so your system can start rebuilding the new drive, which takes sometime. There are other configurations like RAID 1+0 or RAIDZ1. These drives come with a 3 year warranty and are made for 24/7 powered on operation in a NAS system.
POWER SUPPLY
Power Supply is a SilverStone SX600-G. I did a lot of reading and I noticed some people were having problems with the SilverStone ST45SF-G 450W
USB FLASH DRIVE
You will need a flash drive like the SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB to load FreeNAS on. It is a small low profile usb flash drive. Unlike a windows computers, FreeNAS is made to be run from a flash drive. Once the OS is boots from it, it runs from the RAM. 8GB drive is the recommend size for it but you can you a 4GB drive.
BUILD PARTS SUMMARY AND PRICING
| 2016 NAS Build | ||
|---|---|---|
| Case | SilverStone DS380B | $149.99 |
| Motherboard / CPU | ASRock Intel Avoton C2750 | $415.48 |
| RAM | Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3 ECC PC3-12800 UDIMM | $209.20 |
| Hard Drives | WD Red 3TB NAS Hard Disk Drive | $106.22ea x 6 |
| Power Supply | SilverStone SX600-G | $129.99 |
| USB Flash Drive | SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB | 6.92 |
| Total Cost | 2016 NAS Build | $1548.90 |
The total cost of this system is high at $1548.90. That is a lot of cash but if you are like me your storage is very important. Over the years i have lost many important files due to things like Hard drive failure, catastrophic system failure taking out the drive with it. Mine has all my vital media like pictures, music, movies and other important documents.
Remember thought this you should still have an additional back up to you data on another system and RAIDz is not full proof. Ideally you’ll want to have another file storage backup in another location for the best protection of your data but this is not always an option. Currently my NAS storage server backs up my main desktops hard drives so I have 2 separate copies of my files. In addition to that I use Google drive to back up another copy of my pictures and a few other important files.
Feel free to comment at the end of this post and let me know what you think of the 2016 NAS Build for Home or Small Business system. If you have recommendations for my 2017 NAS build let me know what you would like to see.
Recommended/Optional Components and Accessories
I would also recommend getting a UPS battery back up. If your system has a sudden loss of power it could lose data due to not being shut down correctly. Currently I am running three APC ES650 on my NAS, Pfsense system(router)/cable modem and my desktop gaming computer.
Here are some options for some different size hard drives and other parts to save some money or increase the storage capacity.
Hard Drive Options
1TB WD | 2TB WD | 3 TB WD |
| 4TB - RAIDZ2 | 8TB - RAIDZ2 | 12TB - RAIDZ2 |
4TB WD | 5TB WD | 6TB WD |
| 16TB - RAIDZ2 | 20TB - RAIDZ2 | 24TB - RAIDZ2 |
Motherboard / CPU
The ASRock Rack C2550D4I board is almost identical Mini ITX motherboard except it has a Intel Avoton C2550 Quad Core Processor instead of octacore of the ASRock Intel Avoton C2750. So you lose 4 computing cores but still have all the same features and save about a $100.