Help Building Home Media NAS

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KingT

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Mar 4, 2010
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Firstly, thanks for taking a minute out of your life to read this and help me out. Hello all, Im planning on building an home NAS using as many of my desltop components as possible. I have a HUGE movie collection stored in VOB format ( I know...I know, I've been in that conversation 1000x) totaling over 11Tb that I'd prefer to keep as long as possible. At the moment I'm running 6 2Tb drives with titles spread all over the place making it troublesome to find a particular movie in alphabetical order.
My goal is to have all of these movies in a centralized location, with a raid array thats not terribly dependant on speed, in a single volume. As my collection grows I'd prefer the ability to add drives to this volume without the need to recreate the entire array. My current desktop specs are posted below. Thanks again for your help.


Memory: 24gb
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145345

Video Cards:
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908
GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA Series GV-R685OC-1GD Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125353

OS Drive:
OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423

Power Supply:
Antec TruePower New TP-750 Blue 750W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC "compatible with Core i7/Core i5" Power Supply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371022

Tower:
Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129043

CPU:
i7 930 @ 2.80GHz
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler Compatible with Intel 1366/1155/775 and AMD FM1/FM2/AM3 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065




Motherboard Specs
Learn more about the GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R



Model
BrandGIGABYTEModelGA-X58A-UD3R

Supported CPU
CPU Socket TypeLGA 1366CPU TypeCore i7 (LGA1366)FSBQPI 6.4GT/S

Chipsets
North BridgeIntel X58South BridgeIntel ICH10R

Memory
Number of Memory Slots6×240pinMemory StandardDDR3 2200/1333/1066/800Maximum Memory Supported24GBChannel SupportedTriple Channel

Expansion Slots
PCI Express 2.0 x162 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1/PCIEX16_2) (Note 1)
2 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1/PCIEX8_2) (Note 2)

(Note 1) For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots.

(Note 2) The PCIEX8_1 and PCIEX8_2 slots share bandwidth with the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots espectively. When PCIEX8_1 is populated with an expansion card, the PCIEX16_1 slot will operate at up to x8 mode; when PCIEX8_2 is populated with an expansion card, the PC IEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.PCI Express x12PCI Slots1

Storage Devices
PATA1 x ATA133 2 Dev. MaxSATA 3Gb/s8SATA 6Gb/s2 x SATA 6Gb/sSATA RAIDSATA 3Gb/s: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
SATA 6Gb/s: RAID 0, and RAID 1

Onboard Video
Onboard Video ChipsetNone

Onboard Audio
Audio ChipsetRealtek ALC889Audio Channels8 Channels

Onboard LAN
LAN ChipsetRealtek 8111EMax LAN Speed10/100/1000Mbps

Rear Panel Ports
PS/22USB 1.1/2.04 x USB 2.0USB 3.02 x USB 3.0IEEE 13942 x IEEE 1394aeSATA2 x eSATA/USB Combo connectorsS/PDIF Out1 x Optical, 1 x CoaxialAudio Ports6 Ports

Internal I/O Connectors
Onboard USB4 x USB 2.0Onboard 13941 x 1394a

Physical Spec
Form FactorATXDimensions12.0" x 9.6"Power Pin24 Pin

Features
FeaturesSupport for 2-Way, 3-Way ATI CrossFireX / NVIDIA SLI technology

Supports newest NEC SuperSpeed USB 3.0 with superfast transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps

3X USB power delivery for greater compatibility and extra power for USB devices

Provides newest Marvell SE9128 high speed SATA3 storage interface with superfast 6Gbps link speed

Unique hardware control IC to provide more precision voltage control

Meet European Union EuP(Energy-using Products) requirement
 
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poweruser_24

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Feb 24, 2012
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You'd be better off looking at a prebuilt NAS device.
There are several issues.

1. Online expansion is not supported by motherboards, i.e. adding of new drives without destroying the existing array
2. Motherboard arrays tend not to be able to run across all ports. Generally only the 6GB/s ports or the 3GB/s ports, or if you have a third party controller to add additional SATA/PATA ports, then you cannot go across the Intel/third party ports. This leaves you using an add in card like the LSI MegaRaid (or Highpoint seem to be another reasonable brand). - Your motherboard may support using the 6x Intel 3GB/s ports for a raid array, so you could probably do it (you dont get online expansion though)
3. You need extra HDD's as you cannot use the ones you have to build a raid if you want to keep the data on them.
4a. Your PC is tied up with the NAS (may or may not be an issue for you) so if you blow the OS, you blow the NAS at the same time (you don't lose the data unless you do something really wrong, you just no longer have access to it).
4b. Similar to above, a freeze/bluescreen on your PC for whatever reason may cause your array to degrade and rebuild (and sometimes you lose it altogether).
5. You may get heat issues with the double duty of the PC/NAS.
6. You will need a UEFI bios to support large drives (3TB +), which you MB doesn't seem to have.
7. For large partitions > 2.2TB you need to format as with a GPT rather than MBR, and you cannot use as a boot device (not that you would with your SSD).
8. Upgrading your PC becomes annoying.


But in the end, up to you.
To use your PC as a NAS, you will probably need some new HDD's. Check you power usage, although it should be ok, but you will probably needs extra fans for cooling.


For a dedicated NAS device, there are plenty out there. QNAP TS869L, is an 8 bay box. Although with recent 4 TB disks you could get away with a 4 bay unit for a 12TB raid 5, or a 6 bay for a 16TB raid 5+hotspare or raid 6 or 20TB raid 5.
Synology do a nice one too DS1812+.

In both cases a NAS is not a backup unit, i.e. raid arrays can fail, so if you really want to keep your movie collection you still need a decent backup (i.e. a second copy of all data that has been tested).
 
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