Buidling a NAS (preferably low-power, mini ITX)

[Kdar]

I am not sure why... But at first, when I was looking at this drive for the first time, I got impression that is it regular 7200 drive (since same drive with 3TB is 7200RPM). RPM or warranty information are not clear presented on newegg or amazon. But then I started to look up more information on this and found that is it 5900RPM disk and that Seagate is trying to cover this information up.

Even on Amazon it has wrong information:

4TB storage capacity with SATA 6Gb/s NCQ Interface
Double your capacity and drive down costs with up to 1TB-per-disk hard drive technology
Seagate AcuTrac servo technology delivers dependable performance, even with hard drive track widths of only 75 nanometers
Free Seagate DiskWizard software allows you to install 3TB and 4TB hard drives in Windows, including XP, without UEFI BIOS
7200rpm Spindle Speed

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Deskto...ds=seagate+4tb

There is whole topic on this on Xbit forum. http://forum.xbitlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=20232

[CharlesA]

Ew. That sounds really shady.

I usually stick with WD or Hitachi drives, but I do have a few Seagate external drives. So far none have died.

[Grenage]

All of my storage drives are Seagate, mainly because of the price-point. If a drive dies, I don't really care about the drive itself - I can get a new drive with twice the capacity. The price difference is often not worth the warranty, especially when you factor postage. Over the course of 13 years, I'd say that at work I've seen roughly equal failure rates across the main suppliers. My Father had a WD external unit, and it died twice within two months; it's luck, especially when it comes to archive drives.

Lets face it, your average home NAS user is just looking to store terabytes of illicitly obtained movies, and doesn't give a toss about drive speed.

[CharlesA]

Lets face it, your average home NAS user is just looking to store terabytes of illicitly obtained movies, and doesn't give a toss about drive speed.

Pretty much, capacity > speed in those cases. I still like my 7200 drives, but I am still running a 4TB RAID5 array using 2TB drives. Thinking about throwing another drive at it because I've got like 300GB left and my Steam library keeps growing. >.>

[Grenage]

Thinking about throwing another drive at it because I've got like 300GB left and my Steam library keeps growing. >.>

Aye, Steam storage does have a habit of creeping up on one.

[codingman]

I prefer Seagate for low capacity, 250GB-500GB. WD for higher. As it is an NAS, I'd go for WD.

[CharlesA]

Aye, Steam storage does have a habit of creeping up on one.

Especially with those humble bundle sales... D'oh!

[Kdar]

Well.. sadly I had a bad luck trying to order ASUS C60M1-I from TigerDirect or MacMall (which listed them as available). All they did is made me order it and then in two days changed my order statues to back order... So I am kind of tired of wasting my time like this.

Does anyone know if this board is really discontinued by ASUS or why is it out of stock everywhere?

What can be miniITX alternative to this? (that can be use with that Seasonic 300W PSU) and something that also have 6 SATA posts (I guess now I would not really care if it is 6GBps or 3GBps.. however with C60M1-I it was nice to have a 6GBps SATA speed).

From those I listed before.. the ones with 6 SATA posts are just....

ZOTAC NM10-B-E-ION Intel Atom D510 (1.66GHz, dual-core) BGA559 Intel NM10 Mini DTX Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo
(with 6 x SATA @ 3.0Gb/s)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813500055
~$100
or
JetWay JNF99FL-525-LF Intel Atom D525 (with 6 x SATA @ 3.0Gb/s)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813153212
~$200

.... actually.. the $100 one is Mini DTX. I guess it's not compatible.

[CharlesA]

Are you wanting to stick with an ITX board or could you use a micro ATX one?

I'd probably go with the ZOTAC one, but please keep in mind that it will likely only be able to address 3.5GB of RAM, even with a 64-bit OS.

I ran into that problem when I tried using an atom box for my HTPC... after a lot of searching, it turned out to be a chipset limitation on the Atom.
http://www.zotacusa.com/forum/topic/...4gb-ram-issue/

[Kdar]

Well.. I already ordered everything.. except motherboard.. and I have LIAN LI PC-Q25B case, which only supports mini ITX... but that ZOTAC is also Mini DTX.. I am not sure what that means.. Can it fit in mini ITX case?

ah.. that really suck.. yes.. I guess it is the same for JetWay as well. I just saw it.... then I guess atom will be out of consideration.

Maybe I can just stick with Celeron (even if it only has 4 SATA ports).. and later expand it with IBM Serveraid M1015 Sas/sata Controller.... once I get to the limit with 4 drives.

or.. maybe I can get this (also only 4 SATA ports)
ASRock E350M1 AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core) AMD A50M Hudson M1 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157228