SFF Media Server

SFF Scrub

Average Stuffer
Original poster
Aug 7, 2017
56
16
How would you guys go about making a SFF media server? Build a <2L computer and have some external drivebays? I dont have the money to store 30TB of NVME or SSD, so that's out of the question.
 

zovc

King of Cable Management
Jan 5, 2017
852
603
Well, M.2 Drives are definitely the smallest form factor of drives we have, besides like the super tiny USB drives. If you're interested in something quirky, multiple M.2 drives, multiple USB drives with some sort of controller/hub, or multiple SD cards with some sort of controller/hub would have a uniquely small footprint for sure. Probably not ideal value in any of those cases.

Practically, 3.5" HDDs probably have the best value. The issue is that space-efficient storage solutions for them have their own premiums. You're going to pay a lot to build your own system to manage the drives and get a case, and in a lot of cases, you'll end up paying extra if you want hot-swap bays whether it's adding them through 5.25" bays or buying a case with several hot-swap bays built in. Four 2.5" drives can hot-swap in one 5.25" bay which is pretty neat, but 2.5" drives in general are worse value than 3.5" drives.

Ultimately, on the general consumer end, it's best value to purchase a consumer-oriented NAS that can accommodate as many drives as you need or would feasibly want to expand to. I don't like the "one-size fits all" feel of that solution, so I never researched this option, but I do recognize and respect that it's generally the right choice.

If you need ~30TB, 8TB external drives can be had for I think ~$150. In most cases, these are just fancy plasticky enclosures for proper 3.5" drives. They're normally slow, and cracking the enclosure open to salvage the actual hard drive usually voids the warranty... but as long as you're doing some sort of redundancy and can accept a failed drive as a possibility, it's pretty compelling cost-to-capacity. There's a lot of reasons external drives have lower cost, but from what I can tell it has to do with weaker warranties and assumptions built around more "general public" users just not being compelled to put in effort to troubleshoot or seek support on problematic products.

So, that said, you'd be looking at about $600 for the base amount of storage you'd need (with 2TB extra), probably something like $200-300 for an enclosure, and it would probably be a good idea to get one or two extra drives for some fault-tolerance. Most of the consumer NAS solutions have pretty friendly interfaces, low power consumption (~25W TDP), and support RAID 5 and 6-type solutions.
 
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Testwerke

Trash Compacter
Oct 18, 2017
44
51
My SFF NAS fits in a Lian Li Q25B case (20.4 liters). Has an ITX coffee lake board, i3-8100 cpu, a Corsair SFF power supply, and 5x 8TB drives in the hotswap bays.

Could it be smaller? Sure, but 3.5” drives are still the best bang for buck when it comes to mass storage.
 
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Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,827
4,902
I'd look at something like these, depending on storage requirements, to be used with something like FreeNAS or NAS4Free:

2,5" storage (14L):

Case: Silverstone CS01-HS (link) - supports up to six 2,5" drives
Motherboard: ASRock H270M-ITX/ac (6x SATA, socket 1151)
Cooler: Scythe Big Shuriken 2 rev. B
Drives: 6x Toshiba MQ03ABB300 (3TB) - total Raw capacity at 18TB

3,5" storage (22L):

Case: Silverstone DS-380 (link) - supports up to eight 3,5" drives
Motherboard: ASRock Rack C236 WSI (8x SATA, socket 1151)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65
Drives: 8x Seagate Barracuda 3,5" (4TB) - total Raw capacity at 32TB

Common components:

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 or Core i3-8100
RAM: 1x 8GB DDR4-2400 or better
Power Supply: Corsair SF450

If you want 30TB of storage in a compact as possible system without breaking the bank, you're looking at three or four 3,5" 10TB drives (four if you want your data to survive a single disk failure) or ten or twelve 2,5" 3TB drives. The problem with the ten or twelve drive 2,5" solution is you'd need an extra SATA controller (HBA) and be creative with case options. For the three or four disk 3,5" solution there are plenty of cases to find that support it.
 
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smitty2k1

King of Cable Management
Dec 3, 2016
967
492
Wow, hadn't seen that CS01-HS before. Love that thing! I think 2.5" drives are up to 5TB now, right?

I myself have a Fractal Node 304 with six 3.5" HDDs. I use a mITX Xeon-D motherboard. The Node 304 is pretty big because it is the shoebox/cube design but it is still very reasonably sized for what it supports.
 

chx

Master of Cramming
May 18, 2016
547
281
Hrm, 14L can house eight 3.5" drives. http://www.u-nas.com/product/nsc800.html

There are 4 bay and 6 bay variants.

Pay attention to https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/seasonic-ssp-300sub-300w-flex-atx-modular-psu.3308/ as well. Flex/1U can be quiet :) One drive is perhaps 22W peak and 10W typical so a 300W will always be at 50% or much, much less typically which a forgiving PSU (read the thread) will handle fanless.

If you pick the 8 bay, you could use 8 * 6TB drives and RAID Z3 for a very neat 30TB.

Also https://www.tindie.com/products/patshead/psu-bracket-for-u-nas-nsc-800-nas-server-chassis/

Purchase http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/home.php?cat=249

More traditional layout: http://www.norcotek.com/product/itx-s8/ still only 18L for 8 3.5" bays.
 
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Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,827
4,902
Not much of an issue that I know of ever to be proven right. Enterprise storage also regularly uses vertical drive placements and that's where performance would be more than just handy.