I want to build a low power relatively cheep NAS that can hold at least two drives. I want to go the DIY route since I'm blind and would rather do everything from the command-line instead of relying on a third party GUI that may or may not be accessible. What would good hardware be for this? All the single board computers I've found appear to have either one or no SATA ports. I'd prefer a pre-built system that only requires hard drives but can build a computer from scratch if required.
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How low-power is "low power"? What is the price level of "relatively cheap"? Besides two SATA ports, a network port, and support for an appropriate operating system, do you have any requirements?– MarkJun 27, 2016 at 22:59
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35 watts or less, and under $350.– JaredJun 28, 2016 at 0:16
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2.5 or 3.5 inch drives?– Journeyman GeekJun 28, 2016 at 6:23
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3.5 inch drives unless you can get 3tb versions of 2.5 now.– JaredJun 28, 2016 at 10:57
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Have you seen this one? 6 SATA ports, on eBay for $44.95 with 2GB RAM: hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/7624/… - and I assume a NAS is important enough that by low-power you aren't going to try to run it on 2 9V battereies, right?– SDsolarJul 10, 2017 at 23:59
1 Answer
I don't have the reputation to make this a comment, but I can find at least one 2.5 inch 3TB (and 4TB) HDD: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000LM016/dp/B01CHYIEXG . For your computer, I would recommend a motherboard with an embedded processor, such as the Celeron J-1900 which has a thermal design power of only 10 watts. You could save money on your power supply by getting a thin-mini ITX form-factor motherboard, in which an external power supply like ones seen in laptops plugs into the IO shield and is distributed through the motherboard. These usually have PCI-E slots into which you can plug a cheap RAID card.