I'm no stranger to what happens when you hang around the forums and the "ideas" start trickling in, and the $$ starts trickling out.
With that said, before I dive into all that STH has to offer, I want to get my bearings straight since there's a lot I don't understand about this side of the tech. I'm pretty comfortable with hardware and my google-fu, spent lots of time building rigs and over clocking/benchmarking back when I had time.
Now, my question or rather my situation that I'd like y'alls input on - I have an older gaming desktop (3570k, ASUS M-IV-Gz, 970 SLI, etc) but I currently have it in storage since I keep moving and don't currently have space to setup a desktop.
I will be getting a basic used ThinkPad, but I'd like to get access to my files from the desktop and centralize them so once I do get the desktop back up and running I can easily share between the two. As a sweet bonus, accessing these files from the WAN would be awesome as well. I'm just talking about photos, documents, files/programs, backups primarily. Not really streaming media. I'd migrate the ~1.5 TB on the desktop to this centralized location and build from there. I use Windows 7.
So, what I'm looking for:
Here's what I see as my options:
This is a huge mind dump, and I hope I laid it out clearly enough to get some feedback from the community. Ultimately it comes down to, epeen vs common sense and budget. Thanks in advance.
With that said, before I dive into all that STH has to offer, I want to get my bearings straight since there's a lot I don't understand about this side of the tech. I'm pretty comfortable with hardware and my google-fu, spent lots of time building rigs and over clocking/benchmarking back when I had time.
Now, my question or rather my situation that I'd like y'alls input on - I have an older gaming desktop (3570k, ASUS M-IV-Gz, 970 SLI, etc) but I currently have it in storage since I keep moving and don't currently have space to setup a desktop.
I will be getting a basic used ThinkPad, but I'd like to get access to my files from the desktop and centralize them so once I do get the desktop back up and running I can easily share between the two. As a sweet bonus, accessing these files from the WAN would be awesome as well. I'm just talking about photos, documents, files/programs, backups primarily. Not really streaming media. I'd migrate the ~1.5 TB on the desktop to this centralized location and build from there. I use Windows 7.
So, what I'm looking for:
- A mounted drive that's common between my desktop and laptop that I can use for general storage
- Possibility of securely accessing this data from outside my LAN
Here's what I see as my options:
- The most exciting one, but also most excessive - SilverStone CS280 case where I'd build an mITX rig around (8) 2.5" drives
- This opens a whole can of worms - I'd likely go used on the hardware for budget
- I'd likely go SATA III 2.5" drives, unless I can get SAS 6gbps 10k/15k drives for cheap
- Would onboard controller suffice or at that point am I really looking at needed a dedicated controller card?
- At that point, will an Embedded solution be satisfactory - or do I need to go beefier on CPU power?
- I could probably get away with 2TB total storage, so for budget if I got (8) 500 GB drives in a Raid 10 i could probably make that work. Although the more the better
- I picture setting up FreeNAS + ownCloud on this, which should hit both my criteria points above
- This opens a whole can of worms - I'd likely go used on the hardware for budget
- The most budget friendly and maybe easiest one, but doesn't give me access outside my LAN
- I already have a 4TB Red in my desktop, just get a second 4TB Red, Raid 1 them for redundancy, setup my desktop in the corner/closet headless and share the drive in Windows with the Laptop. I have a hodgepodge of other 1TB and 2TB drives, nothing else matching really. And a Samsung 850 1TB OS drive
- Or, do I get a prebuild Western Digital diskless NAS like the EX4100 and populate it with a mix of drives I already have and purchase some more matching ones?
This is a huge mind dump, and I hope I laid it out clearly enough to get some feedback from the community. Ultimately it comes down to, epeen vs common sense and budget. Thanks in advance.