# New box



## asx11 (Jul 27, 2009)

Hello,

I'm looking, seaching and scanning around for quite some time (many, many hours) but the information I found was very good but too complicated for me. Sorry!
I want to build a new box with FreeNAS on it for my home office to serve data (and some other things) for win, mac and linux, with a lot of help from my brother of course.
I read that FreeNAS was built on FreeBSD and that's the reason why I'm here. Please give me your support for the hardware.

The box should be so flexible to be an ordinary desktop, if it will be necessary.
O.k. for now it I need a box with max. 4 HDDs, RAID, FW800 and a DVD-Writer.
In the first step I want to make a RAID 1 Array with 2 HDDs (not to have to buy 4 HDDs at once).
In a second step I want to expand the storage with another RAID 1 Array and combine it with the first RAID 1 Array to RAID 1+0.

Please give me your feedback to the following hardware:

-GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-UD2H Mainboard
http://www.gigabyte.de/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=4384
 What do you say about the onBoard chipsets?

-INTEL Core2 Duo E7400 (BX80571E7400) CPU
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB9Y

-4BG RAM

-Firewire 800 Controller Card
http://www.rm-computertechnik.de/Shop/6678_Firewire_PCIe_Firewire_800_Einbaukarte.html

-RocketRAID 2210 RAID Controller Card
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr2210.htm#top

-DVD Writer
http://de.lge.com/products/model/detail/dvdbrennerintern_gh22np.jhtml#

-HDDs Samsung HD154UI Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen 1,5 TB

I want to install the system via CD on a USB-Stick.

Thank you very much for your advice.

Christof


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## SirDice (Jul 27, 2009)

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.2R/hardware.html


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## bluetick (Jul 27, 2009)

Be sure to double check the rocket-raid compat with the motheboards intel chipset. I had a problem not to long ago.


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## vermaden (Jul 27, 2009)

> -GIGABYTE GA-EG45M-UD2H Mainboard


Will do for everythin that you mentioned, but you will save some money (and power consumption) taking Q33 or G33 motherboard.


```
-INTEL Core2 Duo E7400 (BX80571E7400) CPU
```
If you need new one, get E5200, if not, save money on E6320/E6420/E6550.



> -4BG RAM


If you will use amd64 then ok, if not, then you may be limited to 3GB of that (you may also want to try PAE on 32bit).



> -Firewire 800 Controller Card


I have NONE experience with FW ...



> -DVD Writer


Will work without a problem



> -HDDs Samsung HD154UI Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen 1,5 TB


Better get WD GreenPower.


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## asx11 (Jul 27, 2009)

bluetick said:
			
		

> Be sure to double check the rocket-raid compat with the motheboards intel chipset. I had a problem not to long ago.



Hello bluetick,

thanks for your indication.
Please give me some further information about your compatibility problem between the rocket-raid and the motherboards intel chipset.
How did you solved it?

Thanks!


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## asx11 (Jul 27, 2009)

*Very good! Thank you!*



			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> Will do for everythin that you mentioned, but you will save some money (and power consumption) taking Q33 or G33 motherboard.
> 
> 
> ```
> ...



Hi vermaden,

this was a very helpful feedback, a great leap forward!
Thank you!

Has anybody out there some experience with FW 800 and an opinion to my suggestion?
http://www.rm-computertechnik.de/Shop/6678_Firewire_PCIe_Firewire_800_Einbaukarte.html
Thanks!


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## vermaden (Jul 28, 2009)

@asx11

You are welcome. 

I also forgot about Q35 which is more popular (and available) then Q33, I personally have Q35 motherboards and works like a charm with Intel GMA 3100.


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## aragon (Jul 28, 2009)

IMHO, forget rocketraid and FreeNAS.  Use standard FreeBSD 8.0 amd64, ZFS, and a mobo with enough SATA connectors for all your drives.  ZFS/raidz will probably be far more flexible and powerful than a hardware RAID setup.

Although if you have your mind set on hardware RAID, check out Areca's cards too.


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## desnudopenguino (Aug 13, 2009)

Just a heads up, if you're doing hardware RAID, you might want to get raid edition hard drives such as the Western Digital RE3's.  Using power-saving hard drives, like the caviar greens, will cause them to fall out of the array when they go into a power-saving modes sometimes, which will cause some ugly problems (at least in RAID-5 arrays).  I haven't experienced this, but heard a lot of bustle about it on the newegg site.


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