[ratzofftoya]

I bought a Gigabyte Z87 board, but buying today I'd go with Z97. Everyone has brands they like, I usually stick with Gigabyte and Asus. Make sure you get something with enough SATA ports and a good LAN chipset (i.e. Intel). For a home media server there isn't many other things to worry about mobo-wise, just need something stable that will accommodate your drives. Eventually you'll run out of SATA ports, so to plan long term you'll want to think about how you would add more drives, PCI-X SATA card, etc.

Hard drives, I like the WD Reds and Hitachi. It's a matter of when and not if they fail, try to mix up brands or batches of drives since drives from the same batch might all fail at the same time. Definitely get a SSD for the system drive, with enough space for everything you need. Plex can take up a lot of space, I went with a 120GB SSD. Intel, Samsung, or Crucial. Samsung EVO drives are great.

You'll want a case with good cooling and room to grow as well. I got an Antec with space for 6 drives, and a 5-in-3 cage that uses three 5.25" slots since I don't need those in the server, so 11 total. I've seen a lot of good reviews of the Fractal Design R4, that holds 8 drives, but only has two 5.25" slots. You can also go with an external eSATA box, Newegg has a few from Rosewill and Sans Digital. I have one of each of those attached to my old server and they work well and keep the drives cool. You're running 4 drives through one eSATA connection, but I have not noticed any issues with that.

Cool, that's all very helpful. So, here's what I'm thinking. Happy to hear everyone's comments!

Case: Thermaltake Urban S1 MicroATX
CPU: Core-i5 4430 (3.0 GHz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87M-D3H
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 2x8 GB
OS Drive: Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB
Storage: 2x4TB WD Red
PSU: Rosewill Capstone 450 W 80+ Gold
CPU Cooler (not sure if this is necessary, but I want the system quiet): Noctua DH-14
Optical (for Blu-Ray storage): LG 12x BD-ROM
CableCard Tuner: Ceton InfiniTV 6

[aaronb]

Looks good for the most part. You could save $30 and get the regular EVO drive vs the Pro. CPU cooler might not be necessary if you're not overclocking. The stock Intel cooler is fine, not great. I'd look around a bit for a deal on the WD drives, I got two of them for $150 each from BH Photo a couple months ago.

The case is fine, but I'd take the $30 savings from the SSD and get something with more room for drives, unless you're planning on getting external boxes for more drives eventually. That one has 5 slots, but also only two 5.25" slots so won't fit 4-in-3 or 5-in-3 cages.

If you have a Microcenter near you check out their CPU/mobo bundles, could potentially save a nice chunk of change.

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/i...ndles.aspx

[Dougie Fresh]

Windows 7 + FlexRAID makes for a nice home server solution. It doesn't require much to run it. The only question will be about on-the-fly transcoding with your Plex setup. Will you just be serving those NUCs or will you want to transcode to mobile devices? If you leave transcoding out of it, then a Celeron 18x0 will do just fine.

Thanks! Is there a reason to do Windows 7 + Flexraid rather than Windows 8 + the included storage pooling solution?

Just from reading the reviews on Windows Storage Spaces, it doesn't seem ready for primetime. That's enough for me not to risk my data and go with the devil I know vs. the devil I don't.

[ratzofftoya]

Looks good for the most part. You could save $30 and get the regular EVO drive vs the Pro. CPU cooler might not be necessary if you're not overclocking. The stock Intel cooler is fine, not great. I'd look around a bit for a deal on the WD drives, I got two of them for $150 each from BH Photo a couple months ago.

The case is fine, but I'd take the $30 savings from the SSD and get something with more room for drives, unless you're planning on getting external boxes for more drives eventually. That one has 5 slots, but also only two 5.25" slots so won't fit 4-in-3 or 5-in-3 cages.

If you have a Microcenter near you check out their CPU/mobo bundles, could potentially save a nice chunk of change.

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/i...ndles.aspx

That's a good point about Microcenter--I'll be on the lookout!

[rmilyard]

I am also in the process of building a new file server. I was going to use FreeNAS but looking at what options you guys think.

I have a Lenovo T130 with Xeon Quad core 3.4ghz CPU and 16gb of ECC ram. I am moving system into a bigger case and adding IBM M1015 SAS card flashed in IT mode to provide 8 SATA 3 ports. System has on board NIC and got PCI Intel 1gb dual NIC to add.

For drives I have (4) WD 3tb RED drives and (4) WD 2tb Greens. Also some other stuff might add for misc storage.

My plan was this with FreeNAS. Use the WD REDs in RAIDZ1 for all my Bluray and 3D Bluray .iso files. The WD 2tbs drives also in RAIDZ1 for my TV Shows and stuff from CouchPotato. I was going to run SABnzbd, Sickbeard and CouchPotato.

I have 4 clients. One Intel NUC with XBMC, Asus ChromeBox running Openelec XBMC, and 2 PCs with XBMC.

So what do you guys thinks? And would going Windows be a better solution?

[negge]

@rmilyard: everything beats Windows when it comes to acting as a storage server. I have no person experience with FreeNAS but I hear it's good.

[aaronb]

Windows works just fine for a storage server if you don't muck with it. Install only what you need and it will be stable and secure.

[rmilyard]

@rmilyard: everything beats Windows when it comes to acting as a storage server. I have no person experience with FreeNAS but I hear it's good.

I have been messing with FreeNAS, Seems good. Just big learning curve.

[CaptainPsycho]

I am also in the process of building a new file server. I was going to use FreeNAS but looking at what options you guys think.

For drives I have (4) WD 3tb RED drives and (4) WD 2tb Greens. Also some other stuff might add for misc storage.

My plan was this with FreeNAS. Use the WD REDs in RAIDZ1 for all my Bluray and 3D Bluray .iso files. The WD 2tbs drives also in RAIDZ1 for my TV Shows and stuff from CouchPotato. I was going to run SABnzbd, Sickbeard and CouchPotato.

So what do you guys thinks? And would going Windows be a better solution?

The biggest caveat with zfs is your upgrade path.

You have to change all drives of your pool against bigger ones. f.e. remove 4 3tb disks and add 4 5tb disks instead, or you have to add another pool to extend your current volume. Adding another pool would mean f.e. adding another 4 drives with desired size f.e. as raidz1 and add teh space to your current volume of WDREDs.

There is no reasonable way to add single drives to zfs and there is absolutely no way of removing drives.

So think about your future needs of storage.

[cstmstyle]

Win 8.1 plus Stablebit will suit your needs just fine

[JonSnow88]

I have server 2012 Essentials on an old Intel Q6600 with 8GB RAM and it serves my purposes.

What I use it for:
File server
PC client backup
My SQL
NFS Server for media
Plex
(no raid coz of the way the backups are setup, but I use a file syncing app to sync files to an E-HDD)
Many personal scripts

Storage Spaces is horrible in 2012, not sure about 2012 R2

[protocol77]

Windows works just fine for a storage server if you don't muck with it. Install only what you need and it will be stable and secure.

I agree Running Windows 7 Ultimate on my Home server for last 6 months (OS Drive died that's why only 6 months)

I only have what i use installed on it and it runs perfectly fine no issue whatsoever