DIY NAS

[cruiseoveride]

Ive got an old AMD K6-2 somewhere in the basement, I was thinking of buying a sata-2 card ($30) and turning it into a NAS, since these 500GB WD Caviar ($130) disks are soo cheap, i could get a 2TB NAS for about $600.00 .

But I wanted to know is, How much horse power is actually needed to fully utilise a 100mbit transfer rate? I see these little NAS boxes for $70 which look like USB HDD enclosures but they have ethernet on them, they look like they have SoC's, so i'm guessing my 233Mhz K6-2 will be almost over kill?

 

[apt403]

Instead of 4x 500gb disks, what about getting 8x 320gb disks? They're about $70 each, so ~$560 for 2560gb of space. More storage, less cash.

 

[speedbump1963]

what software would you use for a DIY NAS. And what hardware would you use.I ws checking prics on D-Link NAS and hard drives and wouldnt a NAS Pre-built be a better alternative compared to PC. I am really curious for an answer on this because I am going to go NAS but Which one is the better solution.

 

[will_chellam]

The main advantage to a prebuilt NAS is the web-interface and ease of setup, and supposed reliability, the downside is cost....

If you build a NAS from a PC then you do get a lot of added flexibility - you can turn it into a print server, ftp server, media streamer all quite easily, plus if some new-fangled protocol or use develops in the future you have an easy way to upgrade....

The downside is that it takes a little extra dedication to set up and a bit of knowledge...


theres some ready-built nas versions of linux out there, plus, windows home server if you fancy that