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Any recommendations for a ~$100 motherboard for a home NAS storage/server? Would like it reliable, low-power, fanless, something a dummy can set up, manage, and have some kind of RAID software/hardware support, ..and of course compatibility with FreeNAS. Any suggestions welcome.

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4 Answers

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You can buy an Intel SS4200-E prebuilt for $149 and be done with it. But... many low-power NAS lack in two fundamental respects:

  1. ECC
  2. scrubbing
  3. speed

The problem with lack of ECC and scrubbing is that you will throw some files there, don't look at them for a year and when you try to read it back - it is corrupted and there is no way to reconstruct it.

I'm using my NAS (a real Linux server) to store my raw photos, and even at the 35-40 MB/s afforded by the gigabit network it still feels slow.

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The FreeNAS wiki suggests these hardware devices:

  • Philips Streamium SL400i
  • Netgear MP101
  • Kodak EX1011 WiFi Digital Picture Frame
  • Linksys WMLS11B
  • Freecom MusicPal

You generally want to avoid a regular PC motherboard, as the power consumption and footprint will be much higher than that of an appliance.

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I was interested and curious about the list you quoted from the FreeNAS wiki, so I looked it up (<a href="freenas.org/freenas_users_hardware#hardware"; title="updated link">updated link</a>), and it appears as though those devices are merely compatible with or can connect to a FreeNAS box. I belive the original question was for motherboards that actually run FreeNAS. (I too am in search of a small/low-power solution.) (this is intended to be a comment on brianegge's question, but I lack the reputation points to do so.) – AnthonyV Mar 15 '11 at 2:12
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Links in this answer and @AnthonyV's comment are both dead. Closest link I could find is: doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Requirements – JYelton Jun 24 '11 at 16:48
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A really good article from zdnet:

Build the $340 NAS for half the price but double the speed
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=829

He recommends a G33 motherboard with ICH9R RAID controller
GIGABYTE GA-G33M-DS2R LGA 775 Intel G33 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128053&Tpk=G33M-DS2R

Power consumption is about 42 watts at idle, and 9 additional watts for each drive. Performance apparently compares favorably with that of professional NAS devices (about twice the performance), while costing much less.

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Any old thing will work, I have a Old Gateway E-1400 with a 100GB HD, 256 of ram and a 700mhz processor running it, and it runs with no problem. If anything, more ram would help. I also have used a dell opti-plex small form factor (the gateway is also a small form factor) picked up both used for under $50 each, and added bigger hard drives.

I would defiantly suggest a small form factor or other low power business class machine.

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