February 22, 20224 yr Hi all, I took out my 10 year old PC and installed UNRAID on it over the weekend. This is my first ever NAS. The specs as follows: Intel i3-2100 + Biostar TZ68A+ board 2x4GB DDR2 RAM Ikonik EN2 case FSP Aurum 400w Gold PSU Storage: Two 1TB WD Red WD10EFRX drives - one set to Parity, and one to storage: These drives are around 7 or 8 years old I think - but were never heavily used. One Crucial M4 - 64GB SSD, around 7 or 8 years old as well. This holds, as cache, my appdata, domains and system folders. I've run and rerun SMART checks on all the disks and, besides many old-age errors and a handful of pre-fail errors, the values still look good and the disks pass FWIW. But since these drives are very old I've gone ahead and purchased a Toshiba S300 4TB to add as a new Parity. It should be delivered soon. I've setup Syncthing. It is a new discovery for me. I originally intended to try Nextcloud but simplified my requirements progressively until I ended up with this tool. I have connected folders with my main PC, laptop and phone. With Syncthing these other devices act as redundancies, so should the NAS fail I should not be overly concerned. I am considering what upgrades and in what order. 1. I may purchase another drive in the not too distant future, and reduce these WD drives to a second fiddle role in the array. 2. I suspect a new case and power supply unit may be necessary. Looking for small as small can be. Any suggestions would be welcome. 3. Should I continue with the Crucial M4 SSD or would it be necessary to upgrade this as well? 4. The motherboard is likely end of life, and though the processor may be alright I could not find any new LGA1155 motherboards as replacement (only refurbished). Any advice on a cheap overall replacement would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any comments.
February 22, 20224 yr You should be good to go. If your running just an array the requirements are quite low. If you want to run a pile of dockers I would look at a used I7 3770k (i believe this is the right gen for your board) off of ebay (around $100). If your looking to run VMs then you likely should upgrade the board and proccessor depending what you want to run. I run 20 dockers with no VMs with a Xeon E3 1275 V2 which is slower then an I7 3770k. If your happy with the size of your M4 I would just keep it. As long as your not running a GPU your power supply should be ok to start with. Edited February 22, 20224 yr by Gragorg
February 23, 20224 yr Author @Gragorg Thanks for your reply. I only have the one docker running right now. I have struggled a bit trying to find a better use case for this NAS beyond just keeping things in sync (as an always on low-power device) and acting as a backup. I did try installing a Windows VM but that failed due in part I think to old hardware (planned obsolescence), so I gave it up. Ubuntu runs alright but again, I lack a proper use case. Anyway, regarding hardware I am in two minds whether to invest in a more compact case, modern PSU, and motherboard with fresh capacitors. But perhaps I will leave it alone and see how long this old hardware will last.
February 23, 20224 yr 5 hours ago, Shahmatt said: more compact case This is a good idea for a Home Theater PC but I think most experienced NAS'ers would say the more hard drives you can get into a case the better it is for NAS use! Plus, I would also recommend drive cages with hot-plug bays when you get to more than three of four drives. (SATA connectors are notorious for their propensity to disconnect on an adjacent drive when you are replacing-- or adding --another drive!) Unfortunately, with the monstrous storage capacity available with recent HD's, most case designs are eliminating storage bays (which results in a small case) and the manufacturers are dropping those large cases from their product line.
February 24, 20224 yr Author 15 hours ago, Frank1940 said: This is a good idea for a Home Theater PC but I think most experienced NAS'ers would say the more hard drives you can get into a case the better it is for NAS use! Plus, I would also recommend drive cages with hot-plug bays when you get to more than three of four drives. (SATA connectors are notorious for their propensity to disconnect on an adjacent drive when you are replacing-- or adding --another drive!) Unfortunately, with the monstrous storage capacity available with recent HD's, most case designs are eliminating storage bays (which results in a small case) and the manufacturers are dropping those large cases from their product line. Thanks for the comment. I found the Jonsbo N1 which has a dedicated PCB for loading and unloading hard disks. A total capacity of only 5 drives though. It's a bit too expensive and I would also need an ITX board to make it happen. But something to keep an eye on I guess.
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