NASLite Network Attached Storage

I thought it made sense for me to post my notes here when im researching my new NASLite+ USB NAS.

I currently run a number of 1TB Naslite boxes on old hardware but with the significant upgrades planned for V2 (namely RAID) i am planning to replace them with 1 new box.

The system will be geared to make use of a couple of TB of older IDE drives and probably about 3TB of new SATA drives. These will be configured RAID 5.

I will also include 4 smaller disks configured with as much resilainace as possible for absolutely critical data.

This is obviously no small system and virtually everything will require to be purchsed from the ground up.

As it stands heres my main areas of research (to be filled in as i ratify my choices)

Case

CM Stacker 820(RC-820)
http://www.coolermaster-europe.com/inde ... _class=779

Hard Drive Cooling/Caddies

Cooler Master 4-in-3 Device Module (STB-3T4-E1)
http://www.coolermaster-europe.com/index.php?LT=english&Language_s=2&url_place=product&p_serial=STB-3T4-E1&other_title=STB-3T4-E14-in-3%20Device%20Module

Motherboard

CPU

CPU Cooling

Memory

Power Supply

Network Card

SCSI Controller and CDROM

USB Pen Drive

IDE RAID Card

SATA Raid Card

The power supply on my NAS just died so I am also eagerly awaiting version 2 before I repair my 1.5 setup. It would be nice to get a list of hardware suggestions going as I will probably rebuild form the ground up. Example: Case suggestions, motherboards which boot from USB, power supply suggestions, Drive caddies, etc.
I have been using old equipment for my NAS so far and when looking around to rebuild was shocked by all the new hardware options out there.

agreed.... i will post what i decide here when i work it out. I will be looking at cheapest vs. best trade of for every component of the system.

Stay tuned

am beginning to think that the limitation in cases that will allow lots of drives to be placed in a sensible cool location may drive me another route.


It may be cheaper to actually look at multiple smaller 2TB boxes

Do not forget the power requirements for all the new HDDs.

You will probably need 2 beefy power-supplies for 8-10 HDDs, if that is what you are thinking of putting in that new shiny CM Stacker.

Vadim

actually i am looking at 2-3U rack cases with already fitted SATAII drive cages (12-16 of them) as a possibilty.

This is much more expensive but i cant see a way to get a large drive population into a normal Tower case neatly (i really dont want to use internal drive mounting points at all.

I am also looking at a second option to use huge 500-750GB drives instead of 250GB ones. Much more expensive per GB of storage if you look at teh drive alone but when you take into account RAID card prices and increase in case + power supply prices etc its not as uneconomcal as it first apears.