26Sep First attempt at a DIY FreeNas network storage solution.
After reading everyone’s input (thanks) and doing a few days of eye bleeding research, I’ve decided to give Mike’s Freenas suggestion a try. Since Freenas is linux based, I had to spend some time lurking around forums trying to decide what component options people have had the best luck with. Then I had to figure out which motherboard has a NIC and SATA controller that is on the supported parts list. After all of the research here are the components I’ve decided to try.
- ECS H61H2-M2 Mother board
- Intel Core i3-2100 3.1GHz processor
- G.SKILL Ripjaws 2 x 2GB ram
- Rosewill R101-P-BK MicroATX Tower
- Diablotek 380-Watt Micro ATX power supply
I say “try” because the Atheros AR8151 LAN Chip says it’s supported by FreeBSD (linux build Freenas is based on), but I didn’t find anything on the Freenas page that would confirm the info. All together the parts list without hard drives came to $233, which is ruffly a 3rd the price of the 4 bay Synology NAS I was considering. The specs for this DIY NAS also seem to be much better then Synology’s 2.13GHz Atom processor and 1GB of ram, plus i’ll have the option to upgrade to 8 or 16GB of ram and add another 4 port SATA controller to one of the PCIe slots in the future if everything works out.
I have four 300gb SATA drives laying around, so I’ve held off on ordering drives until I’ve done some speed tests with with this setup. I’m 80% confident that I’ve made the right choice, but if all else fails I’ll have a pretty good list of parts to build a nice XBMC box for the living room. I’m going to try and start documenting the build in about 3 weeks once I’ve finished all of those flash battery tests, but first it’s off to Atlanta for some more paying work.
September 26th, 2012 at 9:40 pm
I have used freenas before and it was SLOW! The fastest solution I have tried is the apple AirPort Extreme with a USB drive plugged into it. It seems to work best with a Mac (I know you’re on PC). Gotta say that the performance is awesome though. I have also previously tried a wester digital networked drive which was terribly slow.
September 26th, 2012 at 10:09 pm
I’ll test and post results, but from what I’ve read most people were only limited by the speed of the drives used. With the proper switch and Cat6 I should be able to get close to the max transfer rates for gigabit ethernet.
September 27th, 2012 at 2:09 am
It was a few years ago and through a cheap router, not a switch. If its rock solid and fast, I’ll copy you and set one up too.
September 26th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
I think it has mostly to do with what disk configuration you are running (RAID, JBOD, etc). I settled on a Windows Home Server build, not to different from yours; parts coming in at about the same price. An Intel NIC is a must though, something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033
A gigabit switch, Intel NIC and Cat5e or 6 is all you need, and an operating system that supports the speeds. Ideally, one would run a ZFS solution, but FreeNAS can certainly work, just make absolutely sure that in any case, you are not using the NAS within your workflow. There is nothing keeping you from running something like SyncToy or Super File System Synchronizer to sync export and scratch disks to your NAS for near realtime backup, or simply to a second hard drive.
It just really depends on workflow and where a NAS fits into that. I simply use mine for archived assets, finished projects and server functionality for remote access. Maybe do a walk through some time, of your typical workflow for a project, beginning to end. I know Chase Jarvis has a cool video of his workflow that might be inspiring to you: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2010/06/workflow-and-backup-for-photo-video/
September 27th, 2012 at 5:55 am
I actually have a few HP NC380T 2 PORT PCI-e GIGABIT SERVER NICs laying around that are on the supported list. If I have any problems with the on board nic I’ll just drop one of those in. The card supports lacp, so if I’m able to saturate a single cat6, I could always upgrade to a nicer switch.
My data workflow right now is pretty simple. I have 2 portable drives on set with a briefcase folder setup and a third that clones the drive overnight. One drive is left with someone in charge and the other two come home with me. One drive is then dropped into a fire safe with a project label, the other is copied over to a raid drive. Data is checksummed then deleted off the portable and camera media. After that edits are done on a raid0 or ssd drive with a 5 min save setting in pp and the edit file gets cloned to the raid ever 10 min.
Once I finish the nas I’ll add a work flow video to my to do list.
September 27th, 2012 at 9:15 am
It would be great to see a video of your workflow. I’m currently switching over to a laptop workflow from my desktop workflow. I’m curious what you are using for doing your checksums? If I had any important projects, I would have done more research in this area.
September 27th, 2012 at 6:39 pm
I use TeraCopy. If you set it up correctly it’ll copy files faster then windows file manage, give you a checksum of the files before and after transfer, give you pause/resume on file transfers, and record data transfer speeds from drive to drive. It’s a very handy tool for $20. I started using it after I copied a bunch of files from a disk to my raid1 drive, tried to open them and found that 3 video files wouldn’t play back. For some reason windows didn’t copy the files correctly and I had no idea until I need them. Luckily I hadn’t wiped the hard drive yet so I was able to recover them, but it could have cost me a re-shoot.
Now if I copy or move data of any value I always run it through a checksum to verify everything copied over correctly. It’s very good peace of mind.
September 27th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
The freeNAS system is so easy to set up with left over parts from old builds its worth testing and I think more people could benifit if there was more user friendly info available. Looks similar to a set up I’m building for a client. I’m glad to see you putting some good research into the freeNAS system and I look forward to your results. I’m a photographer first and just started putting effort into my video offerings so I’d be very interested in a video on your workflow. I haven’t been able to set up a real good workflow for my video work.
I’m glad my suggestion could be of help to you.
September 30th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
FreeBSD is not a Linux build. Both are Unix-like operating systems, but FreeBSD != Linux.