Want to setup a NAS

**Drac** · 9th February 12, 08:51 AM

Good day all,

I have a HTPC at home right now that needs replacing. The MB and one HDD are going. Have already replaced one of the two HDDs. I originally got Seagates Barracudas and they were trash. Have upgraded WD Caviar Blacks.

Now that I am looking at upgrading the case (for better heat control) I am concidering going with a HTPC case -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811204039

Something I think will look nice in the living room and limit the "airplane landing lights" look the current one has. Not that I don't like all the lights but sometimes it is a bit of a distraction. The above case is nice but does not have the capabilities of doing RAID 5 I want to setup to keep the data safe so I thought about setting up an NAS but that is uncharted territory for me.

So anyone done this? Any recommondations?

Thanks,
Jim

**Joshua** · 9th February 12, 08:57 AM

Why wouldn't that case do raid 5? There are literally dozens of adapters that will fit 2, 2.5" "Laptop" drives into a single 3.5 "desktop" drive bay. Just add a SATA card that can support enough drives AND does raid5 and you'd be set.

**seanachie** · 9th February 12, 08:58 AM

I did not have time to go through all the specs, but depending on your situation you might want to know whether in the event of failure you can hot swap the drives. I have had one case where that was an issue.

**Drac** · 9th February 12, 09:09 AM

Part is the heat build up. The current one has all the lights because of the fans I have running in it. I also want to do 5-7 drives. I currently have 1.5T of data and I want enough room for expansion as more media is digital. I am also going to use the server as a back for the other machines in the house which would include (right now) the HTPC, home, 2 laptops and posibly a niece who is coming down here for college. I figure we will have one tower in her guest room and she will probably have a laptop.

Also since I will be doing ripping (from old disks in my collection) and video work I will need to have room for a huge video card. That will also add some major heat. When ripping I use to watch the heat fly up. Same with the CPU & GPU usage. The current system has 8 fans. On the server I would like to go to water cooling to cut down on noise but also to improve cooling. Also looks really cool. The case is very low profile so anything outside the H70 probably wouldn't fit.

On the case for hotswap I am drooling over -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-YT11-133-188

Jim

**Joshua** · 9th February 12, 09:24 AM

Well my advice is probably not what you want to hear, but...

If you want a NAS, build a NAS.

If you want an HTPC, build an HTPC.

You can make an HTPC with plenty of storage, but if you want that kind of redundancy you'll need fans, swap bays, etc... and it won't be running an OS that is friendly to being a NAS. So you won't have a quiet machine (using 850w+ PSU's will be absolutely required to run a bunch of disks AND a capable graphics card, fans), you won't have the best OS for a NAS (Windows really does suck in this regard, it's just not made for it), and if you did run a Windows OS that is made for it (Like Windows Home Server), you wouldn't be able to use it as an HTPC, it would lack all the kick butt home media stuff.

If you build a NAS, I would do some reading over on Freenas.org about a stand-alone NAS machine, one that you could run a cable to, and shove in a closet somewhere. The benefit of going with freenas is the storage is very scalable... and the platform is very robust as well.

**pascs** · 9th February 12, 09:55 AM

I agree with Joshua, it seems like you are trying to combine too much into one system.

A beautiful simple HTPC case to have in your living room and a separate computer running somewhere else in your house would be much better.

We run several computers in our house including my gaming computer, NAS, HTPC and a few laptops for my wife and kids. In that way I can pick the best products for each particular requirement and environment.

Water cooling is great but it does require regular maintenance and if there was to be that dreaded leak then you could end up losing everything - I only use water cooling on my fun projects and not on anything I class as important. It is very reliable but then I never know what my kids might get up to

**piperdbh** · 9th February 12, 10:04 AM

I'm glad y'all know what you're talking about.

**MadMouser** · 9th February 12, 10:20 AM

My NAS is separate from my HTPC, and in a different room to keep noise down. The HTPC is in a small case with very few lights to distract. It's a pretty minimal build, done that way on purpose. A Sandy Bridge G840, Radeon discrete GPU, 4 gig ram, Win 7 + XBMC. The NAS is a CentOS box with 8 2tb drives in a software RAID-6, XFS. I've got 11tb usable storage, about 50% full now. All DVDs are full disc ISOs. BluRays are MKVs of the main movie track only. Everything streams just fine over gig-e.

**Drac** · 9th February 12, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by Joshua

Well my advice is probably not what you want to hear, but...

If you want a NAS, build a NAS.

If you want an HTPC, build an HTPC.

You can make an HTPC with plenty of storage, but if you want that kind of redundancy you'll need fans, swap bays, etc... and it won't be running an OS that is friendly to being a NAS. So you won't have a quiet machine (using 850w+ PSU's will be absolutely required to run a bunch of disks AND a capable graphics card, fans), you won't have the best OS for a NAS (Windows really does suck in this regard, it's just not made for it), and if you did run a Windows OS that is made for it (Like Windows Home Server), you wouldn't be able to use it as an HTPC, it would lack all the kick butt home media stuff.

If you build a NAS, I would do some reading over on Freenas.org about a stand-alone NAS machine, one that you could run a cable to, and shove in a closet somewhere. The benefit of going with freenas is the storage is very scalable... and the platform is very robust as well.

That is what I want to do. I want to have an HTPC for the living room and to store the data on the NAS.

Jim

**Drac** · 9th February 12, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by MadMouser

My NAS is separate from my HTPC, and in a different room to keep noise down. The HTPC is in a small case with very few lights to distract. It's a pretty minimal build, done that way on purpose. A Sandy Bridge G840, Radeon discrete GPU, 4 gig ram, Win 7 + XBMC. The NAS is a CentOS box with 8 2tb drives in a software RAID-6, XFS. I've got 11tb usable storage, about 50% full now. All DVDs are full disc ISOs. BluRays are MKVs of the main movie track only. Everything streams just fine over gig-e.

That is sort of what I'm looking to do. The first case is what I want in the living room using the TV as the monitor. The second case would be the NAS.

But NAS is something new to me. I have book coming in but I have found they rarely cover the little issues that can happen.

Jim