Looking for build a nas

[radar19]

I currently have about 7TB of storage attached to my main PC but its driving me mad as its kinda noisy which is a problem when I'm trying to sleep. I'm thinking of turning some old hardware into a NAS box but I'm have not a clue where to start.


The current hardware I have is:
4Gb of DDR3 RAM
Corsair 400W PSU
Case
An old 775 Celeron
Gigabyte EP43 motherboard
7Tb of drives varying in capacity



The NAS will have to be running a free OS which could be installed on a spare thumb drive. I need this server to do a number of things.

1. Provide storage across my Win7 desktop and 2 OSX machines.
2. Provide backup for my Win7 machine and a Timemachine feature for the OSX machines.
3. Allow me to transfer files from my desktop to my OSX machines for video editing.



I won't be needing to stream from this as the living room is not in my jurisdiction. 100mb is fine for me at the moment.


Would it be worth using the old 775 stuff or getting a new 1155 board and CPU with a SATA card or two?

 

[bremen1874]

A good place to start is with a HP Microserver. About £120 after cashback, and better suited to work as a NAS than most DIY options.

There's a rather substantial thread about it here. It has been going for just over two years so skip towards the end.

 

[trentlad]

Jeez OP, I must have asked this question so many times and have never had a response as good as that. Took you 20 minutes at 3:30am in the middle of the night. Haha!

Thank you for the lead Bremen, that is one excellent thread and exactly what I've been looking for.

 

[ASE001]

Have a play with NAS4FREE, it will run on your existing hardware and is available in 32 and 64 bit versions. There are loads of Youtude tuturials on how to set it up as a file server. It's free too!