Need help choosing the best setup for me

If you can find long enough SATA and RAID cables, why not just buy a cheaper microATX case? Or you can even make one yourself! The point is that you just have to create the space to seat your hard disks—without having to spend $900.

do microatx cases have enough bays for 8 to 10 drives? do i have to buy a certain type of motherboard. do i need expansion cards bc i dont know of a cheap motherboard that has 10 sata ports on it .... i could use some more info as this is my first time trying anything like this

haze420

I was at my vendor/It outlet yesterday asking about drives so I can fill a nas

and they indicated that they have not had problems with the 1TB WD
but have had a lot of returned 1.5TB WD

they did not comment on the other

I was in there asking there opinion in advance on the "black" WD 2TB

I was hopeful of putting 6 x 2 TB drives in a readynas pro pioneer ( I have not expertise in building a system but perhaps should look to finding someone who can)

Gaz

Don't use Port Multipliers in a RAID configuration.

Any WD Green drive will be excellent for a home RAID config, because the drives run cool, do not need cooling, will live longer due to less metal expansion/contraction because of temperature variation (the real cause of HDD deaths).

I would not choose 8-9W WD Black drives, since they will only be marginally faster in sequential transfers and use alot more energy and thus heat produced.

I prefer building a NAS myself, just a cheap and energy efficient AMD system, with 740/760/780G Micro-ATX motherboard with 6 onboard SATA. Just add a PCI-express add-on controller for more ports. And perhaps you also want a 2GB flash PATA SSD as a system drive, depending on the OS. This route is alot more fun than ready-made NAS systems which are extremely expensive, slow and non-flexible: you cannot change it to fit your individual needs.

What they said.......... Build your own

thanks for the input

first why shouldnt i use a port multiplier for my raid setup (I dont care about speed all that much bc its only going to be used to store all my music)


Now if I was going to decided to build a computer just for raid can i get some recommendations on what motherboard and expansion card to get.


about the wd green drives, i heard they werent good for raid configuration unless you do some kind of workaround on them.....is this true bc i could care less about power consumption just care about reliabilty