hey guys iv been thinking about making a file server but i dont know much about them. i was hopeing to get some pointers and parts advice for a server on a budget.

Do you want to RAID or just a few individual drives?
Must it be portable to take to LANs?
How much space?
What budget?

A board with lots of sata ports and dual pci-e x16 (if you want to get a raid card later)
Any cpu, ram
Rest of your budget on 1.5tb drives

Do you want to RAID or just a few individual drives?
i would like to have it in raid

Must it be portable to take to LANs?
doesnt need to be to portable ill find a way to take it to lans if i need

How much space?
about 6-8tb i think

What budget?
thats the question im kind of looking for an idea of how much i have to spend for an ok one

Stuff you need to decide:

- Lots of smaller (1tb) disks or fewer larger (1.5tb-2tb) disks?
Smaller disks are cheaper but will make the rig heavier/noisier/etc and will complicate later upgrades (all disks must be same size for RAID)

- Windows Server or Linux?
Both work with Windows File Sharing or DC++ (though a bit buggy) or whatever; which you choose is a matter of preference and what you're more familiar with. Do not assume that once it's set up you can just leave it as it is; something WILL go wrong and you definitely want to be able to fix it yourself.

- Software or hardware RAID?
Software RAID (connecting the drives through a SATA card normally) is easy to set up under Windows (and not that bad under Linux) but sucks up CPU and is sometimes unreliable. Dedicated hardware RAID cards are quite expensive, and their quality varies depending on how much you spend.

- Which RAID mode?
There are several RAID modes which all give a different balance of speed and reliability. Generally for a setup like you're describing you'd use RAID-5 which gives good speeds and will allow recovery of your data if one drive fails.

If you're looking for a cheap (but still perfectly good) system, you can simply get any crappy old machine and throw a few SATA cards in it along with the drives and soft RAID it. SATA cards are cheap, crappy old computers are usually free and the cost of the drives is up to you.
(Actually, I plan on doing this myself soon)

When you say ok, do you mean constant gigabit speeds? or do you mean for just streaming files to people (such as audio/movies). If you are after a general fileserver then I would suggest a motherboard that has at least 6 sata ports that can do raid.

One thing to note is that windows currently can't boot off partitions/drives bigger than 1tb or so (it's 1 or 2tb I think) as windows needs to use the gpt format to store large partitions.

Cost wise. you are looking at ~180 for a good motherboard (maby 230ish). ~80 or 140 for a cpu (dual or quad). 20 or 40 for ram.case etc are ~80. and ~140 for 1.5tb hdd's x4 or 5 and a single os drive.

so 350 approx for base system and 140 per drive. 4 drives is ~6tb wich will cost you about 560. so all up approx 900. add another 100 for odds and ends you may need.

You can most likely do this alot cheaper if you look around your self for the right board and cpu etc. a file server that's dedicated for just that job dosn't really need to be more than a dual core with 2gb ram. (4gb is so cheap you may as well go for 2 sticks of 2gb ram).

Next is how do you configure your raid.. if you need help with that then ask.

Sorry to barge into the thread. Could you point me in the direction of a SATA card? An i7 boards sata plugs are in an awkward position and I want to add afew more drives.

Do the cards use Raid or just allow for extra drives?

Thanks!

are you able to get 6-8 port raid 5 cards for a normal pci/pci-e slots? or does it have to be pci-x?

http://www.iibuy.com.au/asrock-n7adsli-atx...atx-p-7333.html MOBO $105

http://www.scorptec.com.au/computer/35670-twin2x4096-6400c5c RAM $135

http://www.scorptec.com.au/computer/33246-bx80580q8400 CPU $255

http://www.scorptec.com.au/computer/21325-bp500 PSU $75

$570- not including drives

looking at 6 1.5TB drives in raid 5(or will software raid not be up to it?)

any problems/suggestion with that build?

like power issues, mobo load issues anything like that

If it's going to be purely a file server, you don't really need to spend money on a quad-core processor or 4gb of RAM. Get a much lower spec CPU (e5300 would do the job, and then some) and use the money you saved on more drives.

ok so low spec processor and 2gb of ram

the MOBO has changed to this: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/408 (already have this mobo)

and what do you think about the idea of using

Addonics ADSA4R5 SATA II RAID Controller
http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/127755/HARD_DI...ics/ADSA4R5.asp

and

Addonics 5-Port Hardware Port Multiplier
http://www.techbuy.com.au/product.asp?prod...AID_CONTROLLERS

together to be able to add drives in groups of 5(in raid5)

case will be custom built:P

why not just be cheap, buy a highpoint 2320 off ebay and 8x1tb drives and chuck it into any motherboard with a pci-e 4x slot free

if you could find a cheap Highpoint 2320 it would be good, will have to keep looking

will the set up with the raid card and port multipliers work?

this would be better because then drives could be set up in groups of 5 and only cost about $600 for every new bank of them.

is it a performance thing with the Highpoint 2320 vs raid and PMs or just price?

I think your all looking at this the complete wrong way.
For someone with little to no experience with setting up something like this you are much better off buying a NAS (Network-Attached Storage)
You can get them fairly cheap if you buy them without the HDD's preinstalled.
Some also come with preconfigured raid arrays.

Centrecom Prices
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/defaul...e=1&sort=3a

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