External Hard Drive Doohickey

[pauld]

I never read the damn smallprint.

Me neither. Damn, I've got about 6 weeks to find some free cloud storage for about 30+Gb of stuff.

[Barry Scott]

I've wanted to build my own NAS for a while as I have 3 USB backups on my desk which is annoying and don't want to buy a Synology or the like.

What software do you use Sam? FreeNAS? And do you run the OS from USB or one of the drives as I'm sure I recall it being preferential to run it off  USB?

This is going to become a project of mine so any tips appreciated.

And I lost 250gb some years back when consolidating hard drive backups so have always been super proofed since.

I use CrashPlan by Code 42, which is great and live syncs my files online and to external sources. I also  hourly mirror the whole drive (incrementally) using Time Machine, which is priceless (I lost an SSD some time back) and love Dropbox for files I use between computers.

[Samdy Gray]

Currently using the original FreeNAS which has now forked as Nas4free. I have one small HDD for the OS currently because the old motherboard doesn't boot from USB.

I'll be upgrading to the newest version of FreeNAS which natively supports jails and plugins. Whilst plugins are possible on Nas4free they require a bit of tinkering. I plan on using Plex Media Server, hence getting a new mobo and CPU which can handle transcoding, so that I can do away with my old HTPC and replace it with a Roku.

I'll be running it off a 16GB USB drive which leaves me with 4 SATA ports on the motherboard for data drives.

[slinky]

I'm currently running a similar setup to the one Samdy has although for my storage server I'm using unRAID.  The Plex Media Server plugin works great on unRaid and will happily stream to the HTPC in the front room, Apple TV in the kitchen and the wifes iPad.  Love the central database Plex uses which keeps track of what you have watched and the progress, e.g. stop a film in the front room go up to bed and resume from the same place on the iPad.  The HTPC is set to send a WOL (wake on LAN) command when it is turned on and I also have an app on the phone and iPad to wake the storage server when I need to.  As I'm conscious about how much power I use the server goes to sleep when not in use and when it is on only the drives that are being used spin up.

Current spec of my storage server is AMD A6 cpu with 8 GB RAM.  It boots from USB and has a 3TB parity drive, 4 x 3TB data drives and a 250GB cache drive.  This gives 12 TB storage in total.  The cache drive has the plugins installed on for speed.

The thing I like about unRaid is that you can mix and match drives the only rule is that you parity drive must be equal to or greater in size than your lagest data drive.  I started out with my first server with 2 drives and just added drives that I got from PC's that were being thrown away at work.  If a drive should fail it is just a case of replacing it and the data will be restored from the parity drive.

[Samdy Gray]

Sounds like a nice setup. Is that one of the low power versions of the A6? It probably wouldn't take all that much power to keep it on constantly rather than use WoL.

[Batch]

I like Plex too, and the fact I can get a client box for £10 (NowTV).

I am having a few issues with Plex and the youtube channel since they udated the NowTv firmware though

[slinky]

Sounds like a nice setup. Is that one of the low power versions of the A6? It probably wouldn't take all that much power to keep it on constantly rather than use WoL.

It is a low powered version, but I'm tight so any savings are a bonus. Also keeps the noise down. WOL works perfectly and for backups etc I execute a script before they run to wake the server up.

[chunky monkey]

Recently got an Intel NUC, core i5, 128gb ssd, 8gb ram. Installed Openelec XBMC and hey presto no need to download or store anything, all TV needs sorted. Have also chucked on a 320gb portable HDD just in case

[Samdy Gray]

It is a low powered version, but I'm tight so any savings are a bonus. Also keeps the noise down.

That's where a fanless SoC board comes good. My new board should draw somewhere around 10-15w idle which is just £1-£2 per month to run 24/7.

Add in a picoPSU and it should be as damn as near silent, bar the chassis fan.