Overkill build but i need your help

[HighkVp]

So i decided to build a NAS to rip my movie collection and to tinker with some future projects when i have the time to learn about VM and AI 

I have a 9950x i got from a friend  and  64gb of ram i bought 2 years ago for 340 dollars can you believe it  i miss those times 

A used 5060ti 16gb found for cheap so i said to myself why not build a NAS it will be nice project during my free time.

So i bought ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming  motherboard  , i have an old m.2 500gb for the os another 2tb nvme ssd for apps or whatever  and i have two 4tb hdd laying around and i wanted something easy to use as the OS

My question is what is the best approach for this build should i go for the hexOS and if yes how should i configure the ssd's to avoid any issues and i'm planning to add more hdd in the future once i figure out how to use a NAS

Keep in mind I'm just a simple PC gamer never tired something like that, I'm a NAS and networking virgin.

Thank you in advance any advice will help.

[PsychoWards]

Hey,

that is a nice setup and will allow you to run a lot of stuff on your server 🙂

Some things to consider:

• You can only us the boot drive for the OS, 32GB are more then enough, 500GB are overkill, but you can still use it
• with 2 drives, Hexos will create a mirrored pool, which means you will have the capacity of 1 drive (4TBs in your case) and you can lose 1 drive. Additionally a mirrored Pool cannot be extended. If you want to have the possibility to extend the pool in the future, you need to have at least 3 drives now to create a RaidZ1. A RaidZ1 can be extended with additional drives in the future and you will have the capacity of your smallest drive * (the number of drives - 1)
• Your Motherboard has a Realtek NIC, which have a tendency to not work well or at all with Hexos. It's a new 5Gbps NIC which might work better, but keep this in mind if you face network issues.

Hexos is an awesome, easy to use OS and offers exactly what you need to get started. It offers both Plex and Jellyfin as 1 click install apps, so that you have the choice what you want to use. It also offers other popular apps as 1 click installs and more apps will be supported in the future.

[HighkVp]

19 hours ago, PsychoWards said:

Hey,

that is a nice setup and will allow you to run a lot of stuff on your server 🙂

Some things to consider:

• You can only us the boot drive for the OS, 32GB are more then enough, 500GB are overkill, but you can still use it
• with 2 drives, Hexos will create a mirrored pool, which means you will have the capacity of 1 drive (4TBs in your case) and you can lose 1 drive. Additionally a mirrored Pool cannot be extended. If you want to have the possibility to extend the pool in the future, you need to have at least 3 drives now to create a RaidZ1. A RaidZ1 can be extended with additional drives in the future and you will have the capacity of your smallest drive * (the number of drives - 1)
• Your Motherboard has a Realtek NIC, which have a tendency to not work well or at all with Hexos. It's a new 5Gbps NIC which might work better, but keep this in mind if you face network issues.

Hexos is an awesome, easy to use OS and offers exactly what you need to get started. It offers both Plex and Jellyfin as 1 click install apps, so that you have the choice what you want to use. It also offers other popular apps as 1 click installs and more apps will be supported in the future.

Thanks you sir... ok so if i went with a smaller drive for the OS i can use the nvme for cache, and i need a new nic and one more drive so i can expand in the future ... thank you for the comprehensive reply 

[PsychoWards]

Hey, 

Unfortunately Hexos does not offer the possibility to use any drive as a write cache, you can only use it as a read only cache drive, which only offers a benefit in particular use cases and streaming isn't one of them.

You can use your current 500GB drive for the OS it's just a lot of wasted space. But if that's what you have and don't want to spent ridiculous amount of money for a new lower size SSD, go with the 500GB one. 

You don't necessarily need a new NIC, it's just possible that your current will not work, but not a certainty. Some of the newer Realtek NICs work fine. Give it a go and only buy a new NIC if yours isn't working or causing issues.