Build Your Own NAS (BYON)

~大.芒.果~

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actually i am now using dns320 with fun plug.
serve me well as it can download torrent (tranmission) and serve movies via dlna (twonky).

however, it does not support plex and i am looking at my next nas which can support torrent download and plex.

thinking of buying off the shelf or just buy a second hand mac mini. any thoughts?

synology is out as it does not support plex with transcoding or something like that.
just fyi, for plex, you need a processor more powerful than 1.6ghz if you're thinking of doing on the go transcoding at 480p, for 720p and 1080p even higher.

my hp microserver is 1.5ghz and is struggling with live transcoding, can only transcode beforehand to stream on mobile devices. didn't read the plex manual before making the purchase..

Is there anyone reading? keke
It's so quiet. :eek:

i'm reading it! have found it very interesting and was a project i wanted to embark on too, but it was going to be too expensive (casing itself is the worst, like u said on ur blog, i didn't know abt ur third party sources from china though :p), then i bought a microserver instead :o
 
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Tears4Fears

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~大.芒.果~;77647726 said:
i'm reading it! have found it very interesting and was a project i wanted to embark on too, but it was going to be too expensive (casing itself is the worst, like u said on ur blog, i didn't know abt ur third party sources from china though :p), then i bought a microserver instead :o

Doesn't a microserver consume much more power?
If you are living in those new flats with storeroom / bomb shelters, it will neat to shell the microserver in there.
 

coyote

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I am not sure what is the motivation of your project. From cost & power saving wise... you cannot beat the $109 DLink DNS 320L.

Other valid reasons includes 1) performance & 2) just to have some fun.

I got a DNS 320L & installed Twonky Pro & use it as a media server. It's so efficient I moved all the files from my Ubuntu server to it and comtemplating to get more of it. 320L + a 3TB HDD cost only S$109 + 168 = S$277!!! A price point you cannot beat.

If you are going to run any Windows on your BYON, then it's even less cost effective.
 
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Tears4Fears

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I am not sure what is the motivation of your project. From cost & power saving wise... you cannot beat the $109 DLink DNS 320L.

Other valid reasons includes 1) performance & 2) just to have some fun.

I got a DNS 320L & installed Twonky Pro & use it as a media server. It's so efficient I moved all the files from my Ubuntu server to it and comtemplating to get more of it. 320L + a 3TB HDD cost only S$109 + 168 = S$277!!! A price point you cannot beat.

If you are going to run any Windows on your BYON, then it's even less cost effective.

Dear reader, did you read BYON - Intro?

D-link performance sux to the core. :s8:
Furthermore you are not comparing apples to apples.
 
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~大.芒.果~

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Doesn't a microserver consume much more power?
If you are living in those new flats with storeroom / bomb shelters, it will neat to shell the microserver in there.

150W power supply...uses an amd n40l. its max tdp is 15W, so on idle its really quite friendly :p

set all the HDDs to idle after 5 mins of inactivity, so they'll spin down. so its really only the processor running most of the time.
 

Tears4Fears

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~大.芒.果~;77661200 said:
150W power supply...uses an amd n40l. its max tdp is 15W, so on idle its really quite friendly :p

set all the HDDs to idle after 5 mins of inactivity, so they'll spin down. so its really only the processor running most of the time.

15W? Quite incredible.
Is this the one?

HP ProLiant N40L MicroServer
 
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Tears4Fears

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~大.芒.果~;77661730 said:

I recalled lots of angmos from other countries using this fellow for Syno DSM.

Any chance you are able to measure the power drew using an energy monitor meter? Something like this: DX energy monitor

I pretty much liked the enclosure except for the back panel.

apc-review-hp-proliant-n40l-microserver-back.jpg


It would be excellent only if another motherboard can be fitted, which means you can recycle this enclosure on other purposes.
 
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~大.芒.果~

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i dun have a power monitor :( - wanted to buy one too.

i remember reading some angmoh saying he bought this for the enclosure :s22:...so i believe it can be replaced. most of the stuff can be taken out.
 

Tears4Fears

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~大.芒.果~;77680042 said:
i dun have a power monitor :( - wanted to buy one too.

i remember reading some angmoh saying he bought this for the enclosure :s22:...so i believe it can be replaced. most of the stuff can be taken out.

I doubt that other motherboards can be fitted into the nl40 enclosure. Refer to the picture one post before this, the holes for the inputs(keyboard, vga, etc) are fixed in position. Unless you are able to cut a hole at the back.
 

xkiller213

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how's the performance of the various OSes? would you test with other OS like Windows 7/8/server 2012/samba (any linux)?
 

Tears4Fears

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how's the performance of the various OSes? would you test with other OS like Windows 7/8/server 2012/samba (any linux)?

Test results will be posted v soon.
Currently, I have completed all my testings but I'm thinking to retest 2-3 of them.
I target to end this project including documentation by next weekend.
Apologies, I don't think I will test with windows OS, they are not power efficient.
UnRAID interests me a lot, but to pay USD$69 puts me off.
Is there a pirated version? :D
 

xkiller213

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huh? i thought windows is quite power efficient since they have drivers for all the intel power saving features? lol...

try the 3 disk version of unRAID first? it's free...

Unregistered unRAID Server is fully functional supporting up to 3 hard drives.
 

Tears4Fears

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huh? i thought windows is quite power efficient since they have drivers for all the intel power saving features? lol...

try the 3 disk version of unRAID first? it's free...

Maybe you are right. But what RAID do they have? The key factor of NAS is the RAID file system.

For unRAID, I intend to scale to 5-6 HDD. It's not free then :D
 

xkiller213

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unRAID have similar to raid5, which gives you 1 disk failure (despite having 6-7 disks) only with no data loss... also, another feature is that if you lose 2 disks, you only lose the data on those 2 disks, but not the entire array...

windows 8 have built in RAID5/1/0, linux has RAID 6/5/1/0...
 
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Tears4Fears

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xkiller213

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haha get a small ssd for OSes haha... i don't trust USB thumb drives, too many of them had died on me over the past few years for no good reason...
 
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