DIY NAS

I have four laptops at home running W2000, each with their own
collection of photos, mp3s, etc, and it seems sensible to me to put in
place some kind of central storage via the Buffalo router.
I'm knee deep in old computers - so the question is, is it worth
turning an old compy into a NAS box or is a dedicated NAS box a better
bet ( bearing in mind the compy is a free solution, and I'm a
cheapskate )?
Speed isn't an issue - though the option of being able to run twin
drives with one removeable seems like a good idea.

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Stephen Howard
(E-Mail Removed) says...
>
> I have four laptops at home running W2000, each with their own
> collection of photos, mp3s, etc, and it seems sensible to me to put in
> place some kind of central storage via the Buffalo router.
> I'm knee deep in old computers - so the question is, is it worth
> turning an old compy into a NAS box or is a dedicated NAS box a better
> bet ( bearing in mind the compy is a free solution, and I'm a
> cheapskate )?
> Speed isn't an issue - though the option of being able to run twin
> drives with one removeable seems like a good idea.
>
To some extent it depends on the likely usage pattern - a Linux box
running 24/7 is going to use more energy than a dedicated NAS box, but
if you won't be using it that often you can set it up to use wake-on-
LAN.

On 08/01/2008 in message <(E-Mail Removed)>
Stephen Howard wrote:

>I'm knee deep in old computers - so the question is, is it worth
>turning an old compy into a NAS box or is a dedicated NAS box a better
>bet ( bearing in mind the compy is a free solution, and I'm a
>cheapskate )?


If you've got the bits then why not. Have you discovered FreeNAS?

http://www.freenas.org/

--
Jeff Gaines Damerham Hampshire UK
Indecision is the key to flexibility

On 8 Jan 2008 12:49:00 GMT Jeff Gaines
from the village of (E-Mail Removed)
felt we might be interested in the following...



> If you've got the bits then why not. Have you discovered FreeNAS?
>
> http://www.freenas.org/

Can this just be 'installed' on a PC, and it works.... or is some sort
of configuration, akin to setting up an OS, required?


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so will not be seen. Please post replies to the group.
XPS M1710 / 2.16 GHz dual core / 2Gb DDR2 / nVidia GeForce 7950GTX

On 08/01/2008 in message <(E-Mail Removed)>
/Tx2 wrote:

>Can this just be 'installed' on a PC, and it works.... or is some sort
>of configuration, akin to setting up an OS, required?

It is an OS, a heavily pruned version of Linux. When I was playing with it
about a year ago I installed it on a memory stick and booted from that, it
must have been easy or I wouldn't have been able to do it :-)

--
Jeff Gaines Damerham Hampshire UK
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
(Ken Olson, president Digital Equipment, 1977)

/Tx2 wrote:
> On 8 Jan 2008 12:49:00 GMT Jeff Gaines
> from the village of (E-Mail Removed)
> felt we might be interested in the following...
>
>
>
>> If you've got the bits then why not. Have you discovered FreeNAS?
>>
>> http://www.freenas.org/
>
> Can this just be 'installed' on a PC, and it works.... or is some sort
> of configuration, akin to setting up an OS, required?
>
It's a complete OS, based on FreeBSD which is very much like Linux. It's
free and pretty straightforward to set up. You have nothing to lose by
trying it. I'm using it on an old PIII/500 machine with 128Mb memory and
a 160Gb disk. Works a treat and hasn't given me any problems at all.


--
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On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:19:17 +0000, Bernard Peek <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>/Tx2 wrote:
>> On 8 Jan 2008 12:49:00 GMT Jeff Gaines
>> from the village of (E-Mail Removed)
>> felt we might be interested in the following...
>>
>>
>>
>>> If you've got the bits then why not. Have you discovered FreeNAS?
>>>
>>> http://www.freenas.org/
>>
>> Can this just be 'installed' on a PC, and it works.... or is some sort
>> of configuration, akin to setting up an OS, required?
>>
>It's a complete OS, based on FreeBSD which is very much like Linux. It's
>free and pretty straightforward to set up. You have nothing to lose by
>trying it. I'm using it on an old PIII/500 machine with 128Mb memory and
>a 160Gb disk. Works a treat and hasn't given me any problems at all.


Thanks for the suggestions guys - FreeNas looks very interesting
indeed. I've downloaded the iso, I'll have a fiddle with it and see
what happens!

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk

Stephen Howard wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:19:17 +0000, Bernard Peek <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> /Tx2 wrote:
>>> On 8 Jan 2008 12:49:00 GMT Jeff Gaines
>>> from the village of (E-Mail Removed)
>>> felt we might be interested in the following...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> If you've got the bits then why not. Have you discovered FreeNAS?
>>>>
>>>> http://www.freenas.org/
>>> Can this just be 'installed' on a PC, and it works.... or is some sort
>>> of configuration, akin to setting up an OS, required?
>>>
>> It's a complete OS, based on FreeBSD which is very much like Linux. It's
>> free and pretty straightforward to set up. You have nothing to lose by
>> trying it. I'm using it on an old PIII/500 machine with 128Mb memory and
>> a 160Gb disk. Works a treat and hasn't given me any problems at all.
>
>
> Thanks for the suggestions guys - FreeNas looks very interesting
> indeed. I've downloaded the iso, I'll have a fiddle with it and see
> what happens!

I should add that although FreeNAS is based on a Linux-like OS you don't
need any knowledge of Linux to use it. Installation and configuration is
menu-driven. Being based on FreeBSD is an advantage, BSD based systems
are often chosen for high-security and high reliability applications.

Please let us know how you get on with it.

--
(E-Mail Removed)

On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:31:15 +0000, Bernard Peek <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:
<snip>
>I should add that although FreeNAS is based on a Linux-like OS you don't
>need any knowledge of Linux to use it. Installation and configuration is
>menu-driven. Being based on FreeBSD is an advantage, BSD based systems
>are often chosen for high-security and high reliability applications.
>
>Please let us know how you get on with it.


So far not so good!

Managed to avoid carefully reading the manual and installed Freenas to
a drive containing 160gb of data ( with a couple of small free
partitions at the start ) on the basis that it would take the first
two partitions for itself and leave the rest.
Bit of a mistake - it completely wiped the drive.
No big deal, one nifty freeware ntfs recovery tool later and things
were back as before.

Tried to install it to a couple of usb flash drives, and although
apparently successful neither would boot on two different machines (
both usb boot capable ) - and as I can't yet see that it can be
installed to a drive containing ntfs or fat partitions ( data ) it
would mean either using a ufs partition on a large disk or using a
small drive to boot up with - neither of which is a practical
solution.

But, if I can find a usb stick/machine that boots, or figure out how
to slap an ntfs partition on the same drive, I think it shows great
promise.

Regards,



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{who is at}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk

Stephen Howard wrote:

> Managed to avoid carefully reading the manual and installed Freenas to
> a drive containing 160gb of data ( with a couple of small free
> partitions at the start ) on the basis that it would take the first
> two partitions for itself and leave the rest.
> Bit of a mistake - it completely wiped the drive.
> No big deal, one nifty freeware ntfs recovery tool later and things
> were back as before.

I believe there are several warnings about that. But I rarely read
manuals either.

>
> Tried to install it to a couple of usb flash drives, and although
> apparently successful neither would boot on two different machines (
> both usb boot capable ) - and as I can't yet see that it can be
> installed to a drive containing ntfs or fat partitions ( data ) it
> would mean either using a ufs partition on a large disk or using a
> small drive to boot up with - neither of which is a practical
> solution.
>
> But, if I can find a usb stick/machine that boots, or figure out how
> to slap an ntfs partition on the same drive, I think it shows great
> promise.
>

If you have space on another disk you could copy the data off, install
FreeNas then copy the data back. I'm not sure whether it would be
possible to install FreeNas and then repartition the disk to add an NTFS
partition. I'm not sure why you want one though.

You can install a more general-purpose Linux distro, those will usually
be capable of repartitioning a disk with existing data. The advice I've
picked up from elsewhere is that the best option is to use the gParted
system to repartition the disk then install Linux on the unpartitioned
space. Ubuntu, or any of the other generalist distros, can be used to
build a NAS system but they require a fair amount of work to configure.

There is an article in the latest Linux Format on how to recycle an old
PC. You might like to take a look at that.

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