NAS Media server build?

[bldgengineer]

I'd like to build an linux based server that would serve my 3 htpcs(1 living room and 2 bedrooms) along with 2 laptops and my autocad/cs5 workstation.

all htpcs and laptops are win7 home based and the workstation is win7 professional.

It should be able to stream HD movies to the htpcs as well as store items from the web as I download them from my laptop or workstation. My girlfriend uses the workstation for her photography and I use it for my cad drawings and such. The external hdds are getting a bit ridiculous and we'd like some easy redundancy for our work. I'd also like to have the ability to remotely connect to it if need be. I'd like to just build it and throw it in a closet in the house.

What would you guys recommend? I kind of have an idea what I need but would like to hear from the more experienced. Like:

Micro atx case
micro atx mobo
atom or i3 processor?
4 or 8gb of ram?
4) hdds 2 or 3 tb?
1) OS hdd. how large?
PSU size?
raid card or onboard raid sufficient?
OS - ubuntu server? freenas? other?

 

[SUroot]

Free NAS
Any old 2nd hand, 4 bay desktop.
4 of the biggest drives you can afford

CPU and RAM don't matter so much. My purpose bought off-the-shelf NAS has 256 RAM and a 500mhz CPU so don't feel the need to overspend

 

[mrspeedmaster]

Free NAS
Any old 2nd hand, 4 bay desktop.
4 of the biggest drives you can afford

CPU and RAM don't matter so much. My purpose bought off-the-shelf NAS has 256 RAM and a 500mhz CPU so don't feel the need to overspend

Not true. FreeNAS requires at least 8GB of RAM if you intend to run a RAID-Z setup with ZFS redundancy.

I have a 20TB setup with a few FreeNAS boxes. The more RAM the better.

You can run with as low as 512MB ram which I've done with old netbooks but you wont run ZFS.

 

[SUroot]

Sorry, I will rephrase.

I know that CPU and RAM are pretty much inconsequential for:

RAID-0
RAID-1
RAID-2
RAID-3
RAID-4
RAID-5
RAID-6
RAID-7

I cannot comment on "RAID-Z". I do not need to use it as I am a home user (at home).

 

[mrspeedmaster]

Sorry, I will rephrase.
I cannot comment on "RAID-Z". I do not need to use it as I am a home user (at home).

The whole point of running FreeNAS is to run RAIDZ and ZFS.

Otherwise, just run any linux distro or NAS distros like openfiler,mediavault, un-raid or even Microsoft WHS server.

 

[SUroot]

not the whole point. i will want to run it on my nas appliance to bring functionality the oem didnt add. its light and fit for purpose

 

[Speed Daemon]

FWIW I think that the term "NAS" is often misunderstood and over-used. Strictly speaking, NAS means that its sole function is to provide a mountable network filesystem like CIFS or NFS. The more functions you add, the more it becomes a general-purpose server.

The UNIX

 

[SUroot]

The functionality I am referring to is expandable RAID volume