NAS solutions....

[shaank]

First up - hi all - I'm a noob to this forum though have used overclockers to purchase my kit for years.

Anyways, I could use your collective wisdom on a NAS solution if I may.

currently all media files (movie, photos, music) reside on a number of external hard drives, totalling approx 4gig. This will expand over time obviously.

What is the way forward for this??? NAS, more external hdd's, build a 'file server' etc....

any advice appreciated.

 

[1337z0r]

You have two or really three options, buy a dedicated NAS which I think can be pricey for what they offer. IF you have an old machine you could install FreeNAS or Openfiler to setup a NAS server, these are opensource solutions which can be downloaded for free.

I don't know much about FreeNAS but I've been playing with openfiler and the software raid function is quite handy and should be fine if your not after raw performance which is not really needed when running a home file server.

Plenty of guides on the net too setting these up, check them out. Any old computer can run these two various packages. Find a second hand Pentium 3 machine or 4 as they're quite cheap and they should run either FreeNAS or Openfiler fine .

 

[memyselfandi]

You may want to take a look at this thread from the Hard Drive section of the forum.

Dedicated NASes tend to be expensive and more limited expandability than a "server" PC. The cheaper end of the NAS spectrum also have pretty poor performance. But they also tend to be smaller, quieter and use a lot less power than a full PC does.

A "server" PC will probably be more expandable and customisable, but will probably be bigger, louder and use quite a bit more power. It will probably have a higer throughput to the network but you will also have to spend the time (and possibly money if you don't go for a free OS) to configure it properly for optimum performance.

Personally I would say if you just want basic filesharing, media streaming and maybe bittorrent downloads then get a NAS as they should do these things out of the box ... if you want to run more exotic network service then consider building a server. If you go for the NAS route then make sure you check that the disks you want to use are compatible with the NAS you are going to purchase.

Me, I run both ... a QNAP 209 II with 500GB of mirrored storage and a E2180 based linux server with 1TB of mirrored storage.