NAS with parts lying around. Need advice.

[bkloos]

Hi All,

I am thinking about building up a NAS for media storage and consolidation of data which is currently spread over several laptops and desktops.

I have near 4tb of data and would like room to grow.

I have left over from other builds the following gear:

Gigabyte GA-Z87N-wifi mini-itx MOBO
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DD
Coolermaster Elite 120 Case

I'm leaning towards FreeNAS, thought would consider WS2008 if it made sense. I need RAID or ZFS protection as I want the data secure.

The elite 120 has 3 bays though I think I could fit in another HD is I don't use an optical drive, though correct me if I'm wrong.

Seems to me like a CPU and storage is all I need.

Would you guys proceed with the above or start new?
If using the above, what components (storage and CPU) would you recommend?

All advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Bryan

 

[Karsten75]

NAS systems typically have low memory requirements (rarely will you find one with more than 4GB of storage), good networking and many, many drive bay mounting points. With 4 bays (yes, you can buy a caddy for the optical drive bay) you'll hardly be in a good position to even run RAID5.