Another NAS advice thread...

[watercooled]

I'm after a single/dual bay NAS (won't be using RAID), preferably with replaceable HDD(s) so I can upgrade without bodging or having to buy another one. I can't see myself using it for media streaming or anything - just for file serving so the Iocell Netdisk looked ideal until I found out it's hard to find + very expensive in UK. Then I looked at Synology's offerings, namely the DS109/DS209 but they seem very expensive as I won't be using most of the features then there's the new DS110j/DS210j which look good but lots of consumer reviews are reporting terrible throughput. So what I'm after is a basic NAS on a budget, doesn't need lots of bells+whistles and would like decent throughput.
Any thoughts?
Thanks for looking.

[peterb]

Build your own?

[pardal51]

Build your own?

That's what I did and setup Openfiler.

[watercooled]

I was just thinking that TBH. How does this sound - Intel D510MO motherboard, random case, <400w ATX PSU, Samsung F2 HDDs, Openfiler or FreeNAS as OS possibly running on flash drive/CF drive and 1GB DDR2 RAM. Have I missed anything?

Edit:

That's what I did and setup Openfiler.

Snap!

Oh I like the new (I've only just noticed it at least) acronym decoder which pops up when you mouse over them now.

[pardal51]

I was just thinking that TBH. How does this sound - Intel D510MO motherboard, random case, <400w ATX PSU, Samsung F2 HDDs, Openfiler or FreeNAS as OS possibly running on flash drive/CF drive and 1GB DDR2 RAM. Have I missed anything?

Edit:

Snap!

Oh I like the new (I've only just noticed it at least) acronym decoder which pops up when you mouse over them now.

Water,
More than enough. I didn't have a spare/old machine and in my job we only have SFF desktops. I needed a tower so I could fit 4 HDDs. I ended up buying a ML115 G5 for £202 delivered (because it is silent). Using Openfiler on USB stick slot inside case.

[peterb]

Hmmm - I'd be thinking more Mini ITX board with embedded graphics and Lan - and a 1.5 to 1.8GHz processor which would be more than enough. Add a 1 100W or 150W pico PSU, couple of 1.5 or twoTB drives in RAID1 and a case that could house both drives in removeable caddies. If there isn't space for a CD/DVD wr drive, then a USB pluggable one to load the OS (or a remporary lashup with a SATA/IDE drive to install the OS before installing everything in the case.

I wouldn't bother with SSD - not much point.

Once it's built, stick it in a cupboard connected to your lan and forget about it, apart from reading the status messages it will e mail to you from time to time.

[jim]

ReadyNAS Duo - recommended them on here before, very stable and very easy to use.

Backup software appalling however - just don't bother installing it on any clients and it won't cause you headaches!

[peterb]

I was thinking a more 'mainstream distro. Personally I'd use Fedora because it is what I'm familiar with (and used before) but Ubuntu would probably work just as well. Set up Samba (and Postfix to e-mail log reports) and its done - with the facility to SSH in for remote admin; or add Webmin for browser based admin if you prefer. Later add Apache, PHP and MySql for a CS web server if you want. Add Dovecot (and maybe fetchmail if you have remote/ISP based mailboxes and you have an IMAP and/or POP mail server.

Job done.

[Funkstar]

Sheevaplug + hard drive in a USB or eSATA case

Done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug

http://www.newit.co.uk/


Ooh, just spotted their GuruPlug that's on the way. Now that looks interesting. Dual gigabit ethernet awesome.

[watercooled]

Yeah that GuruPlug looks very interesting, was considering getting that for a router platform but I wanted to run m0n0wall or pfSense which are both x86 only.

Edit: The CTERA Cloudplug is based on the SheevaPlug platform and it's been reviewed by SNB, performance looks pretty good! http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/n...owall=&start=3

[peterb]

I haven't really looked at the Sheeva plug before (they appeared for a long time to be vaporware) but they do look interesting - the Linksys NSLU2's (much) bigger brother!

Personally I think I'd prefer for a NAS that was all in one box - but that certainly has possibilities at pretty low cost. I might get one of the multiboot systems to see if I can get Fedora to boot off an SD card.

[Funkstar]

A lot of poeple have been talking about running Squeezebox Server on these for a low powered always on music server. The general consensus is they are much more powerful and flexible than a regular NAS box of the same (or higher) price.

Shame about m0n0wall and pfSense being x86 only, the GuruPlug would be an awesome firewall/router/mailserver/etc.

[peterb]

A lot of poeple have been talking about running Squeezebox Server on these for a low powered always on music server. The general consensus is they are much more powerful and flexible than a regular NAS box of the same (or higher) price.

Shame about m0n0wall and pfSense being x86 only, the GuruPlug would be an awesome firewall/router/mailserver/etc.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't run postfix (or similar) on it as a mailserver. In fact any of the higher level applications should as the kernel and supporting apps are compiled for the ARM processor. Pity the guruplug doesn't have 2 eSATA ports - allow RAID 1 then!

I wonder if pfSense could (or will be) recompiled to run on it - again it would seem to be the Kernel of the embedded system that would need to be re-compiled.

Just spent a little time looking at UBIFS and so on - that was an interesting read too!

I feel a project looming!

[watercooled]

You can get eSATA RAID enclosures but they'd probably be as expensive as a full NAS. I wonder if you could use a SATA port multiplier with it though?

[Lee H]

Hmmm - I'd be thinking more Mini ITX board with embedded graphics and Lan - and a 1.5 to 1.8GHz processor which would be more than enough. Add a 1 100W or 150W pico PSU, couple of 1.5 or twoTB drives in RAID1 and a case that could house both drives in removeable caddies. If there isn't space for a CD/DVD wr drive, then a USB pluggable one to load the OS (or a remporary lashup with a SATA/IDE drive to install the OS before installing everything in the case.

I'm thinking the same but the stumbling point on this at the moment is finding an ITX chassis which has the ability to take 6 or more hard-drives. Ideally, one with 10 bays would be ideal for my intended usage

[watercooled]

Nicked from another thread, this case holds 6 3.5" drives but it's a bit expensive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/206093