Home NAS - Large

[spudnik]

This topic has been hashed over before, but it seems like most people are headed in a little different direction.

I want to build a home NAS using RAID 5. Capacity will be something in the 20TB range. I have some time, because HD prices won't be coming down again for a while.

The idea is to put all the home movies, family photos and PC backups onto a single home server.

Prefer not to use Drobo, Synology or the like. I don't need or want all the extra features.

Current plan is to use:

Lian-Li PC-P50
Atom or i3 Mobo
Lots of RAM
SATA Drives
Probably an Adaptec Controller
FreeNAS

My questions:

1. Max build out on this would be 8 drives. Any reason to use CSE-M35T-1B 5-in-3 drive cages? Or can I just use hot swap trays in the 5.25" bays provided in the lian li enclosure?

2. I understand RAID can be power hungry. Any thoughts on power savings when idle (95% of the time).

3. I understand that RAID is not a backup solution. That said, barring fire, famine and flood, is this redundant enough with a high end power supply and UPS?

4. I have read about people using MD5 checksums in a database and running cron jobs to verify that files are not being silently corrupted. Is this necessary or desirable with my proposed build?

5. What is ZFS? Do I need / want it?


Any help is appreciated. I've built dozens of PC's, but this project has many new elements to it. Your expertise is appreciated.

 

[mbreslin1954]

I can't help with most of your questions, but I would advise going with the I3 instead of the Atom. My old server running Windows Server 2008 R2 had a dual-core, hyper-threaded Atom, and the file transfer speeds on my Gbit network was typically between 35 and 45 Mbps using a 1 TB drive in the server. My current setup uses an i5-2400 CPU in the server with a 2 TB Samsung drive and I now get between 93 and 110 Mbps transfers over the network, anywhere from 80 - 93% of the network bandwidth.

 

[FireWire2]

If you don't need all the feature that Linux/FreeNAS offer then use WHS.

With WHS (not 2011 Version) with Drive extended and PM ware you can have as many drive as you ever want

If you ever want to expand the volume just simple plug a new drive... the drive extended will add the new drive to the volume

Note: this volume does offer the redundancy