About a year ago, I published a series of blogs about building a DIY NAS (Network Attached Storage) which has been a pretty popular series of articles judging by the traffic it sees. Looking at my Google Analytics many of the search queries that drive traffic to my blogs seem to be from people who want to do something similar. Since my original articles are over a year old, I thought it would be a good subject for an additional article to write about building a NAS at the beginning of 2013.
So far, I couldn't be happier with my NAS. I use it primarily for the backups of all of our PCs. Additionally, I upgraded my computer at the end of 2012 and the NAS came in pretty handy there in holding backups and offloading nearly 2 terabytes worth media storage onto the NAS.
If a friend were building a NAS today, I would suggest very much that he go the same route that I went; to start with FreeNAS and then to either use spare PC parts lying around the house or to build a new PC using inexpensive, low-power parts and as many hard drives as he could afford. Assuming my friend didn't have a cache of spare PC parts like I seem to perpetually have, here's a summary of new parts that I'd suggest:
Motherboard & CPU
Motherboard wound up being the most difficult decision that I made last time, and this time was no different. The ideal motherboard is a unique creature something inexpensive, low-power, with gigabit Ethernet and as many SATA ports as possible. In my research, I found the ASUS C60M1-I AMD Fusion APU C-60 which features: a mini-ITX form factor, an integrated AMD dual core 1.0GHz processor, on board gigabit Ethernet and a whopping 6 SATA ports for a really reasonable price of $79.99.
Even if you have a ton of spare PC parts lying around, this may wind up being a better deal in the long run. The power-sipping features of the mini-ITX form factor mean your daily operational costs for running the NAS are going to be cheaper. In my original research, I determined that the amount of power the mini-ITX motherboard would save me over a traditional motherboard amounted to about $75.00 a year, which means combined the motherboard & CPU would nearly pay for itself in the first 12 months.
Running Total: $79.99
RAM
The hardware recommendations page for FreeNAS says that the 
best way to get the most out of your FreeNAS box is to give it as much RAM as you can. The motherboard I picked can support up to 8GB of RAM, so I went ahead and priced out the maximum amount of memory that the motherboard would support. A two piece set of the G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB DDR3 1066 F3-8500CL7D-8GBRL would wind up costing $51.95.
Update: It was pointed out to me in a Tweet that this motherboard will actually support up to 16 GB of RAM. For an additional $70 you can bring the system RAM up to 16GB. Seems like a very worthy upgrade to me. Thanks, @plgelinas!
Running Total: $131.94
Case
In my original build, the case is something I splurged on buying, a nice Lian-Li micro-ATX case. The case looks great in my office and I'm pretty happy with it. But this time around, I wanted to try and build an inexpensive NAS to show how much prices have fallen in the past year. Since I only bought four drives last year, I reduced the number of bays in my search criteria. The COOLER MASTER Elite 120 matches the criteria (mini-ITX, at least 4 drive bays, inexpensive) very well at $49.99. This case doesn't come with a power supply, so I tacked on an additional $33.86 for a 250W mini-ITX power supply.
Running Total: $215.79
Storage
FreeNAS Drive
In a typical FreeNAS installation, the OS & FreeNAS is installed and configured on a separate drive than the actual storage drives for the NAS. The suggested drive for attaching FreeNAS is actually a USB drive. In my build, I wound up buying a USB header that I plugged right into the motherboard and then zip tied the thumb drive inside the case somewhere inconspicuous. I recently bought another USB storage device for holding my music library in the car and at it's size it's entirely unnecessary to install this in the case. It can plug right into one of the USB ports on the back of the computer without getting in the way. The SanDisk Cruzer Fit - 8GB is more than adequately sized to hold what's needed for FreeNAS and it only costs $7.99.
Running Total: $223.78
NAS Drives
Here's the meat and potatoes of any NAS build. If I recall correctly, my drives accounted for around 66% of the cost of my entire build last time around. This time, that percentage went up, because I didn't splurge in some of the areas I splurged in for the last build. To reduce the impact of bad drives in particular batches, I wound up picking two of two different 3TB model drives:
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Update: robvdl brings up a good point about the Western Digital drives in his comment below. I was previously unaware and researched a bit and have discovered this is an issue with WD Green and WD Black drives. However, I've been using two WD Green 2.0 TB drives in my FreeNAS box and haven't had any issues so far in the year that I've been using it. The Western Digital Red 3.0 TB - WD30EFRX carries a heftier price tag of $156.86 (an additional $26.87 per drive). Based off of my research, I would recommend finding a different drive than the WD Green or WD Black drives despite the fact I've been using them now for over a year without any issues.
Altogether, these four drives account for an additional $539.96. Each drive is in the ballpark of the prices that I spent last year, but comes with the added 1TB of additional space on each drive, for a total of 4 additional TBs. That's a pretty significant boost in storage compared to the NAS I built at the beginning of 2012.
Final Price: $763.74
Conclusion
In 2012, I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $850-$900 for my FreeNAS machine. It wound up containing a total of 8TB of storage space. By juggling around the prices a little bit this year I was able to price out a fairly equivalent machine with an additional 50% of usable storage space for the NAS. Dropping this machine down to an 8TB FreeNAS would've brought the price down between $20-$30 per drive down to a very reasonable price range of $650 to $685. Because of FreeNAS and falling hardware prices, it's getting quite affordable to build a very functional NAS for your home storage needs.
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Have you considered ECC RAM? When I was looking at building my first ZFS box, ECC RAM was mentioned as highly desirable. That's because ZFS makes such heavy use of RAM when composing HDD writes.
I did not consider ECC RAM, but that makes sense. I'm not sure if there are many Mini-ITX (or other low power) motherboards that also support ECC RAM since it's most often found in server-class computers. But, if such a motherboard existed, I'd sure be interested in hearing about it!
The M/B I recently bought was $180. The RAM, $145. That's a +$195 or so over your cost. Details of what I bought here in my blog post.
A server-class Micro-ATX motherboard, very interesting! I think ECC would be a very worthy benefit, probably worthy of the premium in price. Among the other nicer features that this motherboard would have that my cheaper board is missing.
One thing to consider though, is that you'd wind up losing out on some of the low-power features of my build. Low-power was definitely one of my must haves but if that's not an important factor then I think that this is very much worth the premium.
Out of curiosity, have you ever hooked your new machine up to a kill-a-watt or something similar? I'd be interested to find out how much power it draws and compare it against the data I pulled from my current NAS. Maybe the difference in power consumption isn't that startling between the two motherboards.
You should never put a western digital green in a raid configuration, a friend of mine actually did this a number of years ago and the drives didn't even last a year.
The western digital green parks it's heads all the time, and when put into a raid configuration this wears the drive out very quickly, as the heads park all the time the drives goes through it's maximum amount of starts/stops in under a year.
For cheap RAID drives, the WD RED is a much better choice, although they are fairly new drives still.
Thanks robvdl, I was previously unaware with the issue(s) the WD Green (and also apparently WD Black) drives have in RAID configurations. Which is interesting, because I personally have two WD Green 2.0 TB drives in my FreeNAS box that I built in the beginning of 2012 without any issues.
Since I'm making recommendations hardware-wise to other people, my recommendation would be to avoid WD Green or WD Black drives. However, based off of the fact I haven't had any issues in the year I've been using my two WD Green drives I don't have any plans to replace them and would potentially consider them in the future. I'd just be more diligent in my research and try to make sure that the RAID controller was robust enough to handle how the WD Green drives behave.
Actually, if you do even more homework you will find that with wdidle.exe the intellipark technology can be changed(or even disabled). I know several people(including myself) that have had WD Green drives for more than 2 years and they make excellent low power options for servers. Some people have had more than 20 Green drives with zero issues. It's all about doing your research and knowing what to do with the Green drives. If you search the FreeNAS forums this has been explained plenty of times. :)
WD Green drives aren't a good option any more than any other non-enterprise drive.
Exactly, that's what I was attempting to allude to when I said I wasn't having any issues with WD Green drives in my pre-existing FreeNAS box. Thank you for explaining that there's more details out there in the FreeNAS forums, I'd like to read over that and understand Intellipark's impact better.
Mostly, the target of this blog is for where I was at about a year ago. I'd never messed with FreeNAS, I was a (at best) a novice with any kind of non-Windows operating system but I wanted some advice on both hardware and software that I could use to build my own NAS. I wanted to encourage people who are in the same situation I was in to grab FreeNAS, some hardware and start tinkering. For those people, I'd suggest staying away from the WD Green drives.
But if you're a tinkerer and you don't mind doing the additional research to manage this feature of the WD Green drives, it's an excellent way to save some money.
Brian
Thanks for putting this together. I am a fairly capable puter nerd but lack the depth of knowledge required to decide on the hardware. You made it very easy to shop for the components and get a product much more expandable that the off the shelf models. I am so very close to completing my exact build less a few hdd's. How the heck does the PS fit in the case? Any help would be awesome! thanks!!
My FreeNAS box is just a bit different than this one. I wrote this article in the hopes of helping people build their own FreeNAS boxes in the year of 2013, but I haven't actually used these parts myself.
I wouldn't be shocked (but I would be _REALLY_ disappointed) to find out if the power supply doesn't quite fit in the case. My research suggested that they should work together just fine.
The Amazon comments seem to suggest that the small case makes assembling the computer a little bit tricky. If at all possible, I would suggest removing anything from the case. If all else fails, I'd say return the power supply and search for a different Mini ITX power supply, if you find one that works better let me know and I'll update the blog. In case you're wondering, a standard ATX power supply should also fit in the case too.
I have been known in the past to get creative when building computers, I've mounted "standard" power supplies into non-standard cases using a variety of things like zip ties and double-stick tape. But, I'm not sure I'd suggest those solutions for this kind of machine.
There is one problem with your setup though.. well, two actually ;-)
a) The board (C60M1-I) is hard to obtain.. have a problem with it that needs RMA with Asus? Kiss your board goodbye for good, since there are no replacements available. Which brings me right to
b) The board, except for its obvious great technical values, is a piece of shit. In fact it's the first board that didn't survive a SUCCESSFUL BIOS update (according to the Asus-BIOS-internal update tool). The other thing is, the PSU connector is WAY too tight. If you have to unplug the board, be >VERYVERY
I had two of these fuckers and both were ruined, one for the bios, the other for the hairline fracture reason. I have been building PCs and updating MBs and several other firmwares since 1992 and NEVER had a single one give out on me. But this board is done so badly, physically as well as virtually (ie. the supplied bios coming with it), that two gave out on me within hours of me getting them. Thankfully I at least got the money I paid for one of the two back (was too lazy to go through the whole ordeal AGAIN for the second board that basically killed itself). ;-)
Now I'm with a NAS minus a mainboard. The Asus E45M1-I looks like the logical choice in an ITX box, but honestly I'm somewhat weary, having gotten to know the "quality" products Asus pumps out these days. That and you can't get the board anyhow.
Anyone got any suggestions for a similar mainboard (many SATA, best passively cooled CPU, at least one GBIT Ethernet port, mini itx layout), please let me know. If not, maybe I have at least saved one person the troubles I had with that product (C60M1-I).
Peace out,
HiSPeed
Ugh! What a fiasco it seems you are having. Personally, I've had wonderful experiences with their products in the past but it sounds like you've had the opposite experience. I'm currently using an ASUS E35M1-I Fusion in the machine that I had built the year before.
Naturally, I'd expect you to avoid another ASUS motherboard like the plague. I poked around Newegg.com this afternoon a little bit and didn't find many boards to my liking, but that's part of the reason I wrote these articles in the first place -- I couldn't find many recommendations for low-power, small-form factor motherboards designed for use in some sort of NAS. I found a couple intriguing options, but they weren't passively cooled and that's an important feature I think for a FreeNAS box.
In all of Newegg's offerings, the only boards I was interested in were either Out of Stock, had a cooling fan, didn't have very many SATA ports, or were just too expensive.
Without doing much research, I would encourage you to find a highly reviewed board with at least 4 SATA ports. If you want more than 4 drives down the road, then you could research a nice FreeBSD-compatible SATA Controller card to add additional drives to your machine.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience and I wish I had another product I could recommend in it's place. Please follow back up with what you wind up doing, I'd be interested to see how you solve this problem!
Is the suggested power supply sufficient to power 4 drives, the motherboard, the RAM? Just curious.
Based on some pretty basic research, the motherboard should use between 23 watts (idle) and 39 watts (100% CPU). The Seagate drives use 8 watts each (average), and the WD drives 6.2 watts each. All together, that should be anywhere between 50-70 watts. I'm sure the usage climbs a bit for the drives when they're under load, but I'd think that a 250 watt power supply should be capable.
Ah I see, the wattage should suffice then. But it should be worth noting that the case suggested, the Cooler Master Elite 120, accepts an ATX power supply. I don't think the mini ITX power supply suggested will fit in it. I am looking at the Antec Earthwatts 380d instead.
Yeah, it'll fit a standard ATX power supply as well. That's one of the reasons I liked the case. For this build, I picked a mini-ITX power supply for the additional electrical savings, the Antec Earthwatts 380d looks like a good choice too.
I was just wondering if this motherboard was powerful enough to stream videos across a network. I plan on using a very similar setup to this and store all my media on this server then stream it across my network to an appletv. Has anyone tried something like this yet?
I would worry that the board lacks the horsepower, both in the CPU (dual core 1GHz) and GPU to be able to decode videos at 1080p. I would suggest something along the lines of the GIGABYTE GA-E350N for that, or possibly something even beefier.
It's a little more powerful (dual core 1.6GHz) and the GPU is better. On the other hand, it's not passively cooled and lacks two of the SATA ports. But a SATA controller card could be added in via the PCI slot if you ever hooked up more than 4 drives.
Hi Brian.
First off, thank you for sharing your build. Secondly, I have a question about the PSU. Your selected mITX PSU has only a single SATA power connector. How did you go about connecting four SATA drives? If you used a few Molex-to-SATA adaptors, how well does this work with SATA III devices?
Thanks,
Don
Unfortunately, I did not actually build this particular machine. I built this FreeNAS box a year earlier than writing this article. In that machine, I decided to go with an ATX power supply because I had a nice not being used. However, I had regretted missing out on the power savings of a Mini-ITX power supply, which is what I'd try and do if I were rebuilding it completely from scratch.
However, in the event of not having SATA enough power connectors right off the power supply, I probably would've resorted to either the adapters you're referring to or a a few of SATA Power Y Splitter Cable Adapters.
That cost adds up quickly though, if it would cost $20 to buy the splitters and adapters, I probably would either look to find a better mini-ITX power supply. Or move up to an honest-to-God ATX power supply.
Hi, very useful article! Thanks! I'm new to building NAS drives, so it has been valuable.
I have a couple of questions though.
That motherboard is near impossible to find in the UK, not sure if it has been discontinued. But I agree, it looked perfect for a NAS drive.
I am looking at the other one you mentioned, the Gigabyte GA-E350N AMD. What is the max mem on this?
I'm torn between using FreeNAS and OpenMediaVault. For FreeNAS you seem to need a lot of memory for it. What are the advantages over OpenMediaVault? Is RAID-Z worth it? Does it allow you to add more drives without having to rebuild the raid?
Many thanks!
Thanks, I'm glad you're finding it useful! Unfortunately that motherboard seems to be a bit over-the-hill and at this point and I'd be surprised if it's even being made any longer. A few people have mentioned that it's becoming difficult to find, which is really unfortunate.
According to Gigabyte, the GA-E350N supports up to 16GB of RAM, these days, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it unofficially supports more or that a future BIOS update would allow it to support more. But, I didn't see anything to that effect when I researched that board previously.
I'm not at all familiar with the OpenMediaVault and it's features, but I did notice right off the bat that ZFS isn't among it's available features. From what I know about ZFS (which I admit isn't very much at all), it seems like the ideal foundation for the primary function of a NAS.
That being said, OpenMediaVault seems to have a fine feature set with lots of intriguing options. There's no shortage of wonderful, open source NAS packages available these days. Ultimately, my suggestion would be to tinker with and experiment with one or two of them and decide which one you liked best.
Does ZFS allow you to add further drives later on without having to rebuild the raid and lose everything?
What are the Plugins like with FreeNas? Are they plentiful and easy to install?
I only considered OMV because of the less steep memory requirements. But I will give both of them a try on a virtual machine to get a feeling.
Though looking at OMV I'd need a HDD for the OS to run off as they do not recommend a USB Flash Drive.
Thanks again!
In any kind of disk array, adding or upgrading drives is going to require some rebuilding time and increased exposure to disaster during the rebuild. The short answer to your question is unfortunately no, it's not possible to just drop in a new drive and add it to your existing array. The preferred "easy" way of upgrading the storage is to upgrade the drives one by one. Other options exist, but they require planning ahead of time before you create the array. My knowledge of ZFS is incredibly basic, I would recommend downloading the presentation in this thread from the FreeNAS forums to introduce you to ZFS.
FreeNAS does have a Plugins framework and on their page they Plugins Forum. I've not yet played around with any of the plugins, but they look to be pretty easy to install.
The fact that FreeNAS ran off of a USB drive was a feature that I really liked. Mostly, because they're inexpensive and instead I wound up using the money budgeted for a HDD to store the OS to buy additional space to use in my NAS instead. FreeNAS suggests about 1GB per TB of storage at the minimum. Furthermore, adding new RAM to a machine is a pretty easy upgrade and the price of RAM is constantly coming down.
I don't want to sound like an advocate for FreeNAS, when building my own NAS I only considered a couple of other options in my research; Drobo & NAS4Free. It just worked out that FreeNAS was the best choice for what I was wanting to do. Based on what you've said, it sounds like you're on a good path to make a good decision whichever direction you choose to go!