PCIE sata NAS controller card???

[gryffinwings]

I'm not really sure what I am looking for. I'm trying to build a home build NAS storage solution for myself for mostly photos and videos. So everything is stored in a central location. I am still in the process of learning what I need to do this, but there are so many ways I can go about this, I am not sure what I actually need for my needs.

First off, I am looking at taking the hardware in my old Acer X1420G-U5832, it's an AMD Athlon II X4 645 CPU based computer with 4 GB of ram. The problem with this computer is that it only has 2 SATA ports, so I would need to add a SATA PCIE x1 controller card of some sort into this build. But what should I get?

Also, I would need to figure out what RAID configuration I should use, I've seen RAID 5 thrown around a lot in regards to NAS setups. Keep in mind, I am trying to build this so I do not spend too much money on expensive hardware except the drives which I will likely use 4TB hard drives to keep cost down.

Thoughts and suggestions on a solution are appreciated as always.

 

[mxnerd]

Don't think the motherboard's nForce 430 chipset is supported by any NAS software. Might be wrong.

If nForce 430 can't be recognized by NAS software, then on-board SATA ports become useless.

Most NAS software should recognize Dell or LSI's controllers though.

Dell's H700 is the one to get if you want RAID 5 and above 2TB drive support. eBay got a lot of them. Get one with cable and battery bundled.

Forget about running RAID 5 on x1 PCIe slot.

This motherboard x16 slot can only offer 250MB per lane, so that's 4Gbps total. Dell H700 is x8, so cut in half and that's only 2Gbps.

So I don't think it's a good idea to use Athlon X4 645 based system at all, besides it's hot and very power hungry. Powering it up 24x7 and you will see your electric bill go up. It's really not a good idea to use the system as NAS.

Buy a Synology/QNAP/ASUSTOR NAS is easier.

 

[gryffinwings]

Don't think the motherboard's nForce 430 chipset is supported by any NAS software. Might be wrong.

If nForce 430 can't be recognized by NAS software, then on-board SATA ports become useless.

Most NAS software should recognize Dell or LSI's controllers though.

Dell's H700 is the one to get if you want RAID 5 and above 2TB drive support. eBay got a lot of them. Get one with cable and battery bundled.

Forget about running RAID 5 on x1 PCIe slot.

This motherboard x16 slot can only offer 250MB per lane, so that's 4Gbps total. Dell H700 is x8, so cut in half and that's only 2Gbps.

So I don't think it's a good idea to use Athlon X4 645 based system at all, besides it's hot and very power hungry. Powering it up 24x7 and you will see your electric bill go up. It's really not a good idea to use the system as NAS.

Buy a Synology/QNAP/ASUSTOR NAS is easier.

Dang, it's really starting to look like I need to just sell this thing and put the funds up for something else, considering it's not very useful and inefficient to boot... Anyways, aren't those solutions mentioned kind of expensive?

 

[mxnerd]

Asustor as1002t is around $150.

https://www.amazon.com/Asustor-AS1002T-Diskless-Dual-Core-Personal/dp/B07CJ1RBPP

https://www.amazon.com/ASUSTOR-AS1002T-2-Bay-Personal-Cloud/dp/B014YN6IK4

Fry's is $129 if you can get free shipping and tax free.

https://www.frys.com/product/9570732

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/asustor-as1002t-nas-review,1.html

Most home users don't need RAID 5.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What @mxnerd said. Get a purpose-built NAS toaster and fill it with drives.

That said, a NAS is just a computer with network file sharing enabled. If you really wanted to, you could hust drop a hard drive in your Acer as-is and throw it in a closet. If you set it up right, it'll work fine.

You don't need to use "NAS software" unless you like learning no things for no reason.

 

[mxnerd]

Also like what @dave_the_nerd said, you should be able to setup RAID 1 using your Acer system via BIOS setup.

nVidia should have a Windows (just don't know if it still works in modern Windows) software utility monitoring the RAID status.

You then create network share to share the files, run it 24x7 then it becomes NAS.

The only issue is your utility bill, however.

https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/cpus/amd-athlon-ii-x4-645-review/7/

Another problem is the system probably does not support large disk.

 

[gryffinwings]

Well, in my research, I have figured out a way to build a NAS that will not require me to buy any additional hardware and will be much lower energy cost, I'm looking at building a smaller NAS with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B that I already have and I have a couple of 2 TB external hard drives that I can connect to it. The Raspberry Pi 3 should also keep the energy cost way down.

I know I will have to get something bigger later if I need more space to work with, but this is a reasonable start for my needs I think.

Can't argue with free.

Here's the youtube video I referenced.

 

[gryffinwings]

I have successfully created my own NAS using a Raspberry Pi and using the Raspbian Stretch Lite distro, not as hard as I thought, now I have a 2 TB storage to work with. I can also play videos this way, transfer speeds speed to be limited to 9 MB/s which I find plenty fast enough for now until I can afford to make the jump to something a bit bigger and faster.

 

[Charlie22911]

I own 9 SBCs (3x ASUS Tinkerboards, 4 RPi 3B, 2 RPi 3B+), and I’ve found that they just aren’t stable or performant enough for a 24/7 NAS box IMO.
Grab Ubuntu server and install it on your Phenom box along with Webmin (and Netdata if you like stats) and configure Samba. It will be leagues ahead of your RPi setup. It will draw more power, but with some underclocking it will be worth the extra performance IMO.

 

[gryffinwings]

I own 9 SBCs (3x ASUS Tinkerboards, 4 RPi 3B, 2 RPi 3B+), and I’ve found that they just aren’t stable or performant enough for a 24/7 NAS box IMO.
Grab Ubuntu server and install it on your Phenom box along with Webmin (and Netdata if you like stats) and configure Samba. It will be leagues ahead of your RPi setup. It will draw more power, but with some underclocking it will be worth the extra performance IMO.

What problems were you experiencing, for my uses I'm not experiencing any issues:

So far, my transfer speeds aren't bad, 10.4 MB/sec. Sure it isn't the fastest thing in the world, but that doesn't bother me too much, I'm sure if I upgraded to the new Raspberry Pi 3+ my speeds should double even if the Gigabit Ethernet is running over shared bus with USB 2.0.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Buy a Synology/QNAP/ASUSTOR NAS is easier.

This. 100%.

 

[PingSpike]

The purpose built NAS products are good products and easy to use. I never felt they were very cheap or affordable though. I prefer to roll my own machine but my NAS machine performs other duties as well.

Most people buy old enterprise HBA cards used off ebay, hack their bios into IT mode. I don't really like that strategy myself, seemed like a big pain and all of the boards seemed to have weird caveats about compatibility, often just because they were old tech. Many of them seemed to suck power too. But there really aren't any affordable new cards with lots of ports. My way around this was I just buy multiple cheap Asmedia 2 port SATA PCI-e 1x cards and install them in all the 1x slots. If I wanted a massive amount of disks I think I'd just buy one of those mining boards with 5-6 1x slots. The cards cost like $12 and are available everywhere.

 

[gryffinwings]

Thanks all, currently I'm looking at using a solution by Odroid, the Odroid HC2, should be good enough for my purposes. It's gigabit and not exceedingly expensive.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks all, currently I'm looking at using a solution by Odroid, the Odroid HC2, should be good enough for my purposes. It's gigabit and not exceedingly expensive.

Oh my sweet summer child, no.

That's completely DIY on the config side, only supports a single drive, and doesn't even come with an enclosure. Even the cheapest off-brand NAS on Newegg is going to be quicker/easier to set up.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165642

And it's not even all that bad.

If money is that dear, save yourself a "learning experience" and buy a used Synology DS214-SE on eBay. They're often <$100.

 

[Charlie22911]

Oh my sweet summer child, no.

That's completely DIY on the config side, only supports a single drive, and doesn't even come with an enclosure. Even the cheapest off-brand NAS on Newegg is going to be quicker/easier to set up.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165642

And it's not even all that bad.

If money is that dear, save yourself a "learning experience" and buy a used Synology DS214-SE on eBay. They're often <$100.

This. So much this.

 

[gryffinwings]

Thanks all, I've considered a lot about what you've mentioned. What I plan on doing right now, is I will continue operating my Raspberry Pi NAS that I have set up, it's just too convenient to not have. But I have found my other 2 TB external hard drive. I will take all the files off it and consolidate the files on the RPi NAS and back up the important files that I do not want to lose, I am tempted to buy another external drive for backup purposes as I do not have a viable off-site storage solution, maybe this is something I would leave in my car or something, I'll have to think about it.

On the idea of buying a dedicated NAS, I'm not sure I want to do that after all, I've been thinking about buying a decommissioned server, I'd be thinking maybe a Dell R510, those don't seem too expensive. I want to learn how to do certain things, it'll also be an upgrade for my home storage and I would like to possibly run VMs and get pfSense for firewall duties. Mind you, these are just some ideas I have and I want to do some tinkering on the network side of computers as I've been getting very interested in that kind of thing.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks all, I've considered a lot about what you've mentioned. What I plan on doing right now, is I will continue operating my Raspberry Pi NAS that I have set up, it's just too convenient to not have. But I have found my other 2 TB external hard drive. I will take all the files off it and consolidate the files on the RPi NAS and back up the important files that I do not want to lose, I am tempted to buy another external drive for backup purposes as I do not have a viable off-site storage solution, maybe this is something I would leave in my car or something, I'll have to think about it.

On the idea of buying a dedicated NAS, I'm not sure I want to do that after all, I've been thinking about buying a decommissioned server, I'd be thinking maybe a Dell R510, those don't seem too expensive. I want to learn how to do certain things, it'll also be an upgrade for my home storage and I would like to possibly run VMs and get pfSense for firewall duties. Mind you, these are just some ideas I have and I want to do some tinkering on the network side of computers as I've been getting very interested in that kind of thing.

Used servers are great for learning; a NAS appliance "just works."

Depending who else is in the house and what they might want to use the NAS for, you might want to get/do both. Wife Approval Factor. (e.g., it started as me dicking around, but if the PLEX server goes down now, I'm in trouble.)

 

[gryffinwings]

Used servers are great for learning; a NAS appliance "just works."

Depending who else is in the house and what they might want to use the NAS for, you might want to get/do both. Wife Approval Factor. (e.g., it started as me dicking around, but if the PLEX server goes down now, I'm in trouble.)

My dicking around first involved installing a Linksys EA6900 AC1900 wireless router that I had been sitting on forever, she noticed the immediate improvement in wifi connectivity. So lots of approval on that front, not so much for the cable management on the walls, what can I say, I need to route cable through the attic sometime, which will end up being CAT 6 for some future proofing.

Other than that, I haven't gotten my wife to use the movies on the RPi NAS yet as she is focused on other things.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Used servers are great for learning; a NAS appliance "just works."

Depending who else is in the house and what they might want to use the NAS for, you might want to get/do both. Wife Approval Factor. (e.g., it started as me dicking around, but if the PLEX server goes down now, I'm in trouble.)

As always, Dave, spot-on, spot-on.

 

[gryffinwings]

As always, Dave, spot-on, spot-on.

Indeed, he made some very valid points that I hadn't thought about, I was thinking oOOooo, tech, computers, and stuff. Now I have a more practical line of thought on what is more appropriate to handle all my data at the moment and it doesn't cost me anything except time as it is time-consuming moving 100s of GBs of files around from drive to drive. I'm also looking at scanning and saving my important documents so they are easier to find on my computer and they aren't just paper copies.