Some questions for a nas server build

[jin15]

Hi,

So planning to build a nas server to backup important files since my brothers laptop was stolen and he lost some data. I have build win and linux boxes but this will be first nas server so sorry for any stupidity. I have an old p4 which will be used will only need to get some new hdd. I have a few questions before proceeding.

For hdd what are the best bang for buck for server use?
green/eco drives (5400-5900rpm) or the normal 7200rpm? is there a noticeable difference?
is it better to get 2x1tb drives or 1x2tb drives

Also if say nas server dies is it possible to take hdd and access data by using external enclosure or would i need to get server running again to access the data.

Any suggestions for the os, i am looking up freenas, openfiler, whs both v1 and 2011. Any open source have something like the drive extender?

Thanks

[supaflyx3]

WD 2TB drives generally go for around $65-70 on sale so thats the best bang, for a nas eco drives will be fine, and if you want more storage space in the future go for a 2TB drive, if you want data redundicey the go for 2 1TB drives in RAID1. and if the server goes down and you need to access to drives, as long as they aren't in a RAID0 array they should be readable by othermeans.

[Arinoth]

For a NAS, there really isn't much difference as your limiting factor will actually be how fast your network is rather then how fast your hard drives are. Remember that a standard router is a 10/100 router, this means 100 megabits per second (or 12.5 MB/s) is the maximum transfer speed you can obtain over it. If you were to go/have a gigabit router (10/100/100) this means that 1000 megabits per second (or 125MB/s) is the maximum transfer speed.

Do you want data redundancy, if you do then you're more then likely going to want to look at RAID 1 as they are mirror copies of each other, the loss to that is the fact that you are essentially buying 2 hard drives for the physical storage space of one (as everything is copied onto the other hard drive). Personally I don't see much performance increase/difference on a NAS when you set your hard drives as RAID 0 due to my prior comment on network speeds.

Also, are you looking to completely build one from scratch yourself or to buy a NAS 'shell' and populate it with your hdds yourself?

[jin15]

the components i have are i915 mobo, 1gb ram, 2.8Ghz P4 and a 450or500w psu. I do not want to do a raid setup would much rather have something similar to how whs does it where you can specify certain folders to be duplicated.

For the OS i seem to like whs v1 but is there a way to organize where the data is stored. Ex i want docs on drive 1 and music/videos on drive 2 is this possible?

Any recommendations for the OS?