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Originally posted by ed
OK, now this building my own thing got me thinking which is always a bad thing. I've got an MSDN account which means I can get Server and Exchange which makes me want to start a a whole new project. The system specs for that software seems fairly low for a small amount of users and I still want the box to be small, quiet and use little power. Someone convince me that the thoughts in my head are bad :o

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Look at either the Synology or Qnap devices, proablly one with two drives and just compare specs.

The more Ram / CPU power the quicker transfers rates you'll see.
If you get either of the above, you WONT go wrong.

Small Net Builder is very useful for review and comparing networking equipment such as NAS's and routers.

OK, now this building my own thing got me thinking which is always a bad thing. I've got an MSDN account which means I can get Server and Exchange which makes me want to start a a whole new project. The system specs for that software seems fairly low for a small amount of users and I still want the box to be small, quiet and use little power. Someone convince me that the thoughts in my head are bad :o

Don't need anything powerful at all no.

I've got a 633mhz (I think) VIA eden fanless motherboard running from a 12v adapter with a wireless PCI adapter and at the moment a single hard drive.

Box is totally silent except for the hard drive spinning up (although case fans are recommended I haven't bothered). Probably wouldn't even run XP I doubt but in any case Ubuntu is fine. Its slow to boot, but shares media as fast as you will ever need.

Ubuntu is pretty good - the nearest you'll get to a totally plug and play system tbh.

Think mine cost me about £100 but you can double that with a couple of 1TB drives.
Only thing is that the mobo doesn't take SATA drives, so I'm stuck with either older IDE drives or using a PCI SATA card - problem being that the case is too small to take the card :lol:

Anything from Synology, QNap, Icybox(NAS4220 - a number of mods out for this, like a torrent client etc) and Drobo gets my thumbs up.
Although have used FreeNAS before on a mini-itx (VIA board), piece of piss to install and setup and seems to work well.

That sounds like a good route. The only expensive stuff then would be a pair of good HDD's and possibily a RAID controller.

I assume the computer parts don't need to be expecially powerful to do it that way?

I bought a mini-itx box off ebay a couple of months back. Has space inside for a couple of hard drives, so probably 2TB max storage capacity.

Running Ubuntu and provides internet sharing, storage and media sharing all in one (with a bit of tweaking).

Works a treat, and was a third of the cost of a dedicated NAS unit and does twice and much.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149510

Got that in me gmail this morn

How about something like this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176915

I'm wanting to get a dedicated box because of size, noise and power consumption. I did look down that route but it's not suitable for my little flat :(

Are you bothered about cost?

If so, just build a second hand PC box either with built in SATA RAID controller on the motherboard or buy a £20 RAID PCI card. Linux as OS (free), your very own cheap homemade NAS solution!

I'd quite like a NAS for backups and storage, I want it to have a RAID controller and I think I'd quite like something in the region of 1TB storage capacity.

There are quite a few 'home' ones available now, any recommendations?