home nas building

[macforce]

hello all i have been researching all types of nas for my home network and have decided to try to build one myself. i do have an old 8 bay case that i would like to use and i can get the drives no problem but i am having trouble finding a mainboard/motherboard for this. i would like it to all be internal and use no other pc or pci cards or anything of that nature and still be able to access this through my network and use some type of RAID configuration preferably 1 or 5.... please help!!

one thing i did find and is PERFECT for my needs but a bit pricy is: VIA NAS 7800 which is a specialized segment board targeted at SME Network Attached Storage applications

p.s it would also be necessary for this to be both PC and MAC compatible

[Jay]

What OS are you using?

[macforce]

umm well for the nas box itself....im not sure possibly linux?? but on the network we have both mac and pc up and running so im not sure ...any ideas?

[synaesthesia]

Take a look at Freenas whatever you decide, it's a fantastic little bit of software that does everything you need as a NAS system - giving you full streaming capabilities, file sharing compatible with every system you can think of, upnp, fully configurable - and being linux based (BSD actually iirc? Minds gone blank) you can do whatever else the hell you want with it as a bonus
Used this in many a cheap NAS system, both with native hardware RAID setups and with the built in software raid (which is rather good itself - better than most onboard kit)

[Splash]

Openfiler is also worth a look-see.

[Steve B]

or if you're after other features, debian and mdadm.

[Funkstar]

Is your working now Steve?

[macforce]

thank you all....i did hear of freenas and i do like it very much ....but i still have one unanswered question.... what type of a motherboard can i use? because i really dont want to use a full cpu to run the nas.. unless there is a very small board that could fit into my box that i have already and that would be a "bare bones" board just to run the box??

[Splash]

Not sure of what you mean by "full CPU" - can you elaborate?

FreeNAS and Openfiler will run on pretty much any x86/x64 hardware though.

[macforce]

sure, by "full cpu" i was trying to get at: not just running a bare bones full computer with some sort of a pci card that connects to the nas box itself, because that is what i dont want. i just want the nas box to run by itself...i just need the motherboard for inside the nas box.

[Steve B]

Is your working now Steve?

Like a dream! It's been solid for ages now, I found out I was setting up mdadm the wrong way to begin with, which it didn't like!

It's filling up, and I've still not put those two extra drives in yet!

[Funkstar]

sure, by "full cpu" i was trying to get at: not just running a bare bones full computer with some sort of a pci card that connects to the nas box itself, because that is what i dont want. i just want the nas box to run by itself...i just need the motherboard for inside the nas box.

I think you have the wrong end of the stick here. Any regular basic system with drives connected is the NAS box.

Put it this way: I have two Thecus N5200s, they are basically PCs with a custom motherboard with a Celeron 1.2GHz processor, 512MB RAM, an 8 port SATA controller (5 connected and used) and a 128MB flash card used for booting, which is plugged directly into the onboard IDE socket.

The only thing it doesn't have is any other expansion slots and a graphics output, but it does have the contacts on the motherboard for a VGA socket. So it really is just a PC running a custom Linux setup and some RAID software.

[SiM]

It's filling up, and I've still not put those two extra drives in yet!

Those 2 will fill up in no time... You need more drives

[Steve B]

Those 2 will fill up in no time... You need more drives

I plan on getting more, but not at the moment
These ones are nowhere near full!

[macforce]

ok thank you funkstar......that IS what im trying to get at i just didnt want you to think that i was gonna simply get a pc and hook up a hard drive bay to it through some sort of pci slot..........do you have any suggestions for a motherboard like you described and a sata controller with 8 ports??

[Funkstar]

How about an Atom based board:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...ni-ITXSee-Info

And a SATA controller:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Highp...bod-Controller