Things to consider when building a file server? [closed]

Solution 1:

For home? I'd do the following:

• Don't worry much about drive speeds. Anything you get will be fast enough for home use
• Get a gigabit NIC and gigabit switch. You will notice this speed increase and it is rather inexpensive to add
• Use openfiler for your OS. You'll enjoy having the flexibility to do RAID, iSCSI, in addition to standard CIFS sharing to Windows.
• I prefer Seagate drives. They are generally quiet. The drives are going to be noisy no matter which way you cut it once you start to put a few of them in the system. I used a mid to full sized tower case with a couple big fans that were also very quiet. There's noise, but cooling isn't much of an issue, even with 5 or 6 drives inside. Just put it in a closet or basement or somewhere you're not going to be bothered by it.
• Consider using a motherboard based on the Atom processor if you're concerned about noise and using a hardware RAID card. The 220 can run with just a heatsink and will be dead quiet. Otherwise, go with something more powerful and sofware RAID.

Solution 2:

One side note to offer...have you looked at the FreeNAS project? It was made for projects just like the one you're suggesting (instead of OpenFiler). Take a look at both and see what you think.

I agree with Kevin's other suggestions though. I wouldn't worry about the RAID hardware (swap trays) unless you're really needing those features for some reason; for a home server, you shouldn't be worried about losing money or productivity due to downtime.

You might want to invest in some external drive(s) to use as a backup scheme, though. RAID is not a backup...