Hello, everyone. This is my first post on the forum (if you don't count comments on the News section), so be nice to me. 
I need to put together some network storage with redundancy built into it, but I don't need redundancy for all of it. I need 2+ TB with redundancy for my music recording projects that I can't afford to lose, but I'll also need 2+ TB that I don't need redundancy for my movies and music. I don't want to re-rip them all, but they wouldn't be gone forever if a drive failed. I'd very much like to have network access for these files, so any computer on the network could stream the movies and music. I don't need super fast transfer speeds, but 5 MB/s sucks when transferring a 25 GB recording session from the recording computer to the network storage, and I want it to be able to keep up when streaming a moving in 1080p. And to make all of this a challenge, I'm on a budget.
It looks like the NAS boxes are expensive, extremely expensive if they have more than 2 bays. I don't think I could have the redundancy and also the amount of storage I need on one of those, could I?
Fortunately, I have access to old machines from my work place. We're talking Pentium 4 processors, .5 - 1 GB of RAM, etc. I could potentially build a file server out of one of these, but I wouldn't know where to begin in terms of OS, RAID cards on such an old machine, etc.
There's a small chance I could have our company's oldest server in 6 months time, a dual-proc Xeon Nocona machine, 2 GB of RAM total. But I would imagine for files, this would be sufficient. And maybe a RAID setup could be easier with that motherboard. However, the OS is 32-bit, and I have files larger than 4 GB. I'd need an OS of some type, and I have no experience outside of Windows and a few Mac frustrations.
I also just heard about DAS, which would be a RAID box without RAM or a processor or an Ethernet port. If I understand it correctly, they connect to a PCI card (provided) and can function on a bare-bones machine. But I don't know if I should try to find a model that can have RAID 1 simultaneous to a drive without RAID, or if I should assemble RAID 5 for all the data and buy more drives, or any other possibilities.
Or is there a fifth option I'm overlooking?
Thanks!
Luke
I need to put together some network storage with redundancy built into it, but I don't need redundancy for all of it. I need 2+ TB with redundancy for my music recording projects that I can't afford to lose, but I'll also need 2+ TB that I don't need redundancy for my movies and music. I don't want to re-rip them all, but they wouldn't be gone forever if a drive failed. I'd very much like to have network access for these files, so any computer on the network could stream the movies and music. I don't need super fast transfer speeds, but 5 MB/s sucks when transferring a 25 GB recording session from the recording computer to the network storage, and I want it to be able to keep up when streaming a moving in 1080p. And to make all of this a challenge, I'm on a budget.
It looks like the NAS boxes are expensive, extremely expensive if they have more than 2 bays. I don't think I could have the redundancy and also the amount of storage I need on one of those, could I?
Fortunately, I have access to old machines from my work place. We're talking Pentium 4 processors, .5 - 1 GB of RAM, etc. I could potentially build a file server out of one of these, but I wouldn't know where to begin in terms of OS, RAID cards on such an old machine, etc.
There's a small chance I could have our company's oldest server in 6 months time, a dual-proc Xeon Nocona machine, 2 GB of RAM total. But I would imagine for files, this would be sufficient. And maybe a RAID setup could be easier with that motherboard. However, the OS is 32-bit, and I have files larger than 4 GB. I'd need an OS of some type, and I have no experience outside of Windows and a few Mac frustrations.
I also just heard about DAS, which would be a RAID box without RAM or a processor or an Ethernet port. If I understand it correctly, they connect to a PCI card (provided) and can function on a bare-bones machine. But I don't know if I should try to find a model that can have RAID 1 simultaneous to a drive without RAID, or if I should assemble RAID 5 for all the data and buy more drives, or any other possibilities.
Or is there a fifth option I'm overlooking?
Thanks!
Luke
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