Hi!
I just bought some hardware to build a first NAS. I plan on installing CentOS mainly because it's what we have at work and I would like to get better with it. Playing with it at home is a good way. I will probably install Plex media server on this box to share/stream my pictures, music and video files at home.
The motherboard I bought is an ASRock Q1900-ITX (quad core bay trail). It has 4 sata (2x sata2 and 2x sata3) and 1 have a PCI express 2.0 x1 slot. I could therefore add 2 other sata3 ports. My current case is a Fractal Node 304, so it's limited to 6 hard disk drives. I also currently have 4 Gb of RAM. I'm using a 120W picoPSU so it might also be a limiting factor down the road.
I bought 2x2Tb HDD for this right now. I currently have a 500 Gb data drive on my computer that is almost full. I figured that 2Tb should be alright for a couple of years. I also have a WD Scorpio Black 500 GB left from a previous notebook upgrade that I could use.
I don't have a raid controller and I don't plan on getting one. I would prefer to keep costs down to go with software raid and LVM, at least for the time being.
I was wondering if I should
1) Make a boot, swap and home partition all on the 2Tb drive. I would software raid the /home partition.
This way I would save 1 bay and it would be easier to later buy 2x2Tb or 2x4Tb or the like and increase the available space . I would not have to buy a sata x2 pci card for the next upgrade. I would be able to eventually upgrade even more if needed with this hardware.
2) Make a boot, swap, home partition on the 500 Gb WD Black (waste of space, but "free" HDD) and a /data partition on the 2x 2Tb.
When I need more data, I will need to buy a sata x2 card and I will increase the /data partition that way.
On the OS side, future upgrade could be to switch to a SSD or to buy a 2nd hard drive to raid the OS. I could also easily make a dual boot system with that setup, even though I don't plan on buying another Windows license.
What would you do ? Also, depending on solution, what partition would you create ? And which size?
Thanks a lot for your help!
I just bought some hardware to build a first NAS. I plan on installing CentOS mainly because it's what we have at work and I would like to get better with it. Playing with it at home is a good way. I will probably install Plex media server on this box to share/stream my pictures, music and video files at home.
The motherboard I bought is an ASRock Q1900-ITX (quad core bay trail). It has 4 sata (2x sata2 and 2x sata3) and 1 have a PCI express 2.0 x1 slot. I could therefore add 2 other sata3 ports. My current case is a Fractal Node 304, so it's limited to 6 hard disk drives. I also currently have 4 Gb of RAM. I'm using a 120W picoPSU so it might also be a limiting factor down the road.
I bought 2x2Tb HDD for this right now. I currently have a 500 Gb data drive on my computer that is almost full. I figured that 2Tb should be alright for a couple of years. I also have a WD Scorpio Black 500 GB left from a previous notebook upgrade that I could use.
I don't have a raid controller and I don't plan on getting one. I would prefer to keep costs down to go with software raid and LVM, at least for the time being.
I was wondering if I should
1) Make a boot, swap and home partition all on the 2Tb drive. I would software raid the /home partition.
This way I would save 1 bay and it would be easier to later buy 2x2Tb or 2x4Tb or the like and increase the available space . I would not have to buy a sata x2 pci card for the next upgrade. I would be able to eventually upgrade even more if needed with this hardware.
2) Make a boot, swap, home partition on the 500 Gb WD Black (waste of space, but "free" HDD) and a /data partition on the 2x 2Tb.
When I need more data, I will need to buy a sata x2 card and I will increase the /data partition that way.
On the OS side, future upgrade could be to switch to a SSD or to buy a 2nd hard drive to raid the OS. I could also easily make a dual boot system with that setup, even though I don't plan on buying another Windows license.
What would you do ? Also, depending on solution, what partition would you create ? And which size?
Thanks a lot for your help!
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