NAS server with 6 x 3TB disks, small case, quiet and low power consumtion

After a numbers of disk crashes, and loss of files, I decided to buy a NAS-server. After a quick search I found that a prebuilt 6 disk solution was rather expensive. I would like to build my own, and it has to be quiet and power cheap. This is what i Ordered:

Disks: 6 stk. WD30EFRX - Western Digital 3 TB Red 3,5" 6 Gb/s costing NOK: 1 095 each

Power: 1 stk. BN104 - be quiet! Pure Power BQT L7 350W PSU/nätagg BN104 costing NOK: 356

Motherboard: 1 stk. C60M1-I - ASUS C60M1-I costing NOK: 553

Memory: 2 stk. KVR1333D3N9/4G - 4Gb 1333Mhz DDR3 NON-ECC CL9 DIMM costing: 149

Case: 1 stk. PC-Q08B - LIAN LI Lian LI PC-Q08B Mini Tower - Black costing: 681


Total NOK: 8 848  including delivery, thats about 1 580 USD.

All the items where found at deal.no in Norway.

In addition i used 6 SATA data cables and had to bought one Y-cable: 1 x female IDE power to 2 x male SATA power cable costing NOK: 150 or 27 USD

After building the server I installed FreeNAS on a 4GB USB-stick, plugged it in and powered on the system. I configured it with Raid5, that tolerate 1 defect disk.


The FreeNAS was easy to configure, but I have to tweek users and groups a little to get access to my CIFS (Windows shared folders).


The system is small, really quiet and produce allmost no heat. The space available is aprox 13, 6 TB.