April 4, 201214 yr Build was in 9/2011, so prices will reflect those at the time. All was purchased through newegg.com, I included all the newegg part numbers. I added three more 2TB hard drives from Western Digital usb external drives that I ripped apart to pull out the bare drives. I also had a 1TB seagate that I'm using as a cache drive. One drive for parity, which leaves me with a 12TB server. Looking over the hardware I bought below, I feel that some of it needs a little explanation. Antec has always made great cases, but this one happened to be especially good for my purposes. The server sits on the floor in a common room near the wireless router. It's plugged in via gigabit ethernet to the router. I put paper over the hole in the side access panel as I didn't opt for an additional fan on the side. This server isn't going to be doing anything too intensive. The large 120mm fan on the top blows out, leaving only the front panel for IN. The front panel on this Antec case has this terrific metal screen, over the top of a finer plastic mesh. The filth of my house piles up right on the outside front of the screen. Easy to clean, and see when I walk by. I just dust-bust it from time to time - easy peasy. The 8GB Corsair flash drive is what holds the operating system, unRaid on it. The Startech $4 usb adapter is so I can plug the regular usb flash drive into a pin-style riser on the motherboard and keep that little flash drive safe inside the case. You can see the piece of string I used to tie it up in there. You can also see cut up Post-it notes on the drives. A while back I did have a drive die, and had a tricky time identifying which drive was which. I eventually pulled the drives out, read off the serial numbers, and just wrote the numbers on the back of the drives so I can see them next time I do hardware work. Gigabit router, read that the e2000 is a good one to use with ddwrt. Having gigabit ethernet connection to my server from my own computer means the bottleneck is the SAS hard drives and unRaid. I get about 40 MB/s from the array, and 80 MB/s to (remember I'm using a cache drive, or this would certainly be much slower). The MCE remote along with Plex media server has been utterly sweet. My girl loves her iPad. My roommates have busted computers. All of them (iPad, Mac, sucky laptops etc.) can install the Plex client software. The Plex server, running on the unRaid box, encodes the shows they want at a quality suitable to their laptop/pad and wifi bandwidth, and plays like a charm. iPads do not play nice with Windows networks or Blu-Ray mkv rips! Before I installed Plex, I was the only client of my server. The server runs at about 90 watts 24/7, after a little simple math, here in the Bay Area, I pay a $14/month to leave turned on all the time. 1x Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Item #: N82E16811129042 $58.45 1x Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W Continuous Power ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply Item #: N82E16817371029 $44.99 1x COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage Item #: N82E16817993002 $24.93 1x Open Box: ASUS M4A78LT-M LE AM3 AMD 780L Micro ATX AMD Motherboard Item #: N82E16813131619R $57.99 AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX Item #: N82E16819103888 $42.99 1x Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR1066D3K2/2GR Item #: N82E16820134793 $16.99 4x HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Item #: N82E16822145475 $319.96 ($79.99 ea) 1xCORSAIR Flash Voyager 8GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model CMFVY3-8GB Item #: N82E16820233174 $15.99 1x StarTech USBMBADAPT 6in USB 2.0 Cable - USB A Female to USB Motherboard 4 Pin Header F/F Item #: N82E16812200294 $3.99 1x SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 Low Profile SAS RAID Controller Item #: N82E16816101358 $109.99 2x 3ware CBL-SFF8087OCF-05M 1 Unit of .5M Multi-lane Internal (SFF-8087) Serial ATA Breakout Cable Item #: N82E16816116097 $39.98 ($19.99 ea) 1x AVS Gear HA-IR01SV Infrared Certified MCE VISTA Remote Control Item #: N82E16880121001 $21.20 1x Linksys E2000 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4/5GHz Selectable Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Router up to 300Mbps Item #: N82E16833124386 $69.99 subtotal $807 For the future, I'm going to look into hacking up the Antec case a little more and jamming more of those 3.5in drive cages in there. Today's hard drive prices at newegg 1TB WD $90, $0.087/GB 2TB Hitachi $120, $0.059/GB 2.5TB WD $160, $0.063/GB 3TB Seagate $200, $0.065/GB 4TB Hitachi $350, $0.085/GB 1TB = 1024GB Final recommendations. Storage is cheap, and getting cheaper. For those of people who like collecting media, storing pictures, network attached storage (NAS) is the only way to fly. Our daily computers get screwed up from use. I have to reinstall my own computer about once a year just because of all the junk I put on it. I used to work in computers, and I can tell you without a doubt that keeping all your important stuff on at least an external usb hard drive would eliminate many problems. unRaid is a tough operating system to start with if you're not technically inclined. Out of the box it works, but to make it sing, you need to get your hands dirty (like using linux command line, forum searching/posting/reading). The advantage to RAID is that you can loose a hard drive, and not loose any data. The advantage to unRaid is that you can add/remove hard drives of different sizes to grow your whole capacity. No other NAS does that. I think. To someone not as computer savvy as myself, but still wants NAS (security, storage) hit up the Greenleaf Technology dudes. See if they'll sell you a support package where they remotely install and fix stuff on your server. They are cool, and while it doesn't mention it on their website, they might do it. If that's too much, go with the Drobo. That's also a "cute" option that will work best right out of the box. It's not up-gradable over time like these unRaid options are, but that should be OK. Some other websites I've found inspirational and fun to look at: http://www.silverstonetek.com/ http://www.greenleaf-technology.com/index.php http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Plugins http://www.drobo.com/ http://www.freenas.org/ http://www.lime-technology.com/ http://www.plexapp.com/
April 4, 201214 yr Great UCD post! Thanks for sharing your kit! To someone not as computer savvy as myself, but still wants NAS (security, storage) hit up the Greenleaf Technology dudes. See if they'll sell you a support package where they remotely install and fix stuff on your server. They are cool, and while it doesn't mention it on their website, they might do it. http://www.greenleaf-technology.com/index.php Funny you should bring this up, we are currently working on offering this very service to our customers and the unRAID community at large! Keep your eyes peeled, we should be rolling out remote support services open to the public within a month!
April 5, 201214 yr Author 1TB = 2048GB Perhaps you mean 1TB = 1024GB? You are absolutely right. Thank you for catching that. I honestly appreciate the feedback. I really do!. In fact the active users on this forum was one of the considerations that got me to go with unRaid for my NAS. I'm serious. BUT, I just have to share this cartoon... http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=121511
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