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Hi Guys,
I'm currently looking at building a new PC, and want to re-use my current machine as a NAS on my home network. Its a decent spec (AMD Athlon x2 4400, 2gb DDR2, Gb LAN), and should do the job, but I've never used a consumer-grade NAS before, and never touched Linux.
Firstly, are any of the Linux distros specifically for use on a NAS available as a live CD? I want to check I can get drivers for all of my hardware (the important bits at least) before I even start.
Googled "setting up a PC for NAS with linux" and found an article on the PC world website that looks promising from my intital scan read of it..
http://www.pcworld.com/article/24197...ge_system.html
it talks about something called FreeNAS
Granted its not linux from what i can tell but it looks like it could be along the lines of what your looking for..
FreeNAS looks like a definite option. From what I can see, its built on FreeBSD rather than linux and can be installed on a pen drive (or a spare SanDisk Extreme III CF card...). Seems to support everything I need it to, as long as I can get drivers for this PC. I am downloading Linux and FreeBSD Live CDs so I'll try each of those and hopefully I'll have a better idea where I stand with drivers.
+1 for FreeNAS. It's what I use.
Well, ive dragged a really old PC back from the dead and its installing FreeNAS as we speak so I can mess around with it before I build the new PC. Depending on how well it works on this machine I may just use it instead of the one I planned to use due to it having twice as many dimm slots and sata ports...
Aye, there's quite a few to choose from. FreeNAS is the most popular, Turney Linux (fileserver), might also be worth a look. CryptoNAS is another (with an orientation to encrypting files you won't be surprised to hear!).
Cheers for the input everyone :)
I've managed to get FreeNAS up and running and share working on our all windows network. Ballache to set up, but now it is it seems to work well. Tested it out with dads Atom powered PC in the living room and video and audio performance seem up to the job so I think this will do for me.
Freenas running ZFS is going to be pretty performant - especially as you can use SSDs for caching etc.
Install debian and start learning. Instead of getting just as NAS, you get a NAS and experience.
Actually I'd disagree with this on a number of levels. If you want a NAS setup, you want something which is going to be very stable and you can't tinker too much with (and screw things up), that's precisely why I went with FreeNAS instead of a Linux distro or FreeBSD.
I'd also not recommend Debian as a newbie distro. Something like Mint or even Ubuntu (as a Debian derrivative) is far more newbie friendly if you want to learn Linux. A Redhat derrivative like Fedora or Centos is more useful if you want to use it in a commerical environment, as I'm still to see any large Debian derrived installs in the wild (larger than a 100-200 servers).
I have very similar hardware to you powering my NAS which I use for backups. I have an Athlon X2 4200 and 1GB of RAM.
I used to use FreeNAS, but as of version 8.x (current), the hardware specs went through the roof, and useful features got culled (some of been added back since), but it seems to be a project aimed more at high-end professional applications.
I now use the continuation project of FreeNAS 7.x, which is called NAS4Free. It has all the options you'd ever want and hardware support is excellent. You can get an iso which you can burn and use as a Live CD to try, you can then install from that CD if you want to.
Through the roof? I'd hazard a guess that you X2 4200+ is more powerful than my microserver and that hardly ever leaves idle. It does need RAM, but I think that's a function of ZFS rather than FreeNAS per se?Quote:
Originally Posted by barry2811
Got to agree with b0rdom on this one. The machine I have it on at the moment is running a Sempron 3300 CPU with 4gb DDR2, and although it is using a lot of memory, CPU usage is pretty low, even on an under-powered thing like this.
The issue with the newbie setups (freenas etc) is when they go wrong. At least if you knew how it was setup you may be able to save your data.Quote:
Originally Posted by b0redom
Dont be scared. Debian + samba is within anyone's grasp.
TBH, you should be backing up anyway so that data isn't an issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by abaxas