What linux flavour am i looking at for setting up a NAS?

[LeperousDust]

As per title, i'm very new to linux, but i'm willing to put my back into any research and learning i need to do.

On monday i should have approx 1.6TB of hard drives arriving, 4*400gb seagate. I have a spare zombie PC set up in the loft out the way with a network card etc waiting to use these. I was planning on putting windows server2003 on it and RAID5ing them with that, or even just plain XP pro.

But i've read the arrays i make with windows have to stay, and the FS isn't "growable". Meaning if i buy more drives later down the line or i want to upgrade to RAID6 then i'm stuck, righty? This is where linux pops in, most (all?) OS's have a growable FS?

What flavour am i looking at getting for doing this? I would like to be able to log on to the NAS box remotely and manage it if i need to, and thats just about it. All it needs to do is store and be available as a network drive. I have a separate sever set to one side which will be the brains behind a network when i get everything up and running. But for this i just want it to be seen as a network drive, and anything saved to it is as if i was saving to a hard drive on my pc.

Reading around Slackware, or FreeBSD seem to be pretty good for doing this, or maybe even redhat, but being totally honest i havent the faintest. The closest ive been to linux is running clarckconnect, smoothwall, and IPcop on another PC, and i found some of that somewhat confusing! Thats only a general GUI setup!

The computer to use these drives will either be:
P4C800-e Deluxe (its sound broke so its useless for anything else)
2.8G P4C
512 DDR400

or

A7N8X (or something close to that)
XP2500 (or some old duron i have laying around)
and 512 DDR400

Am i looking at any problems facing either of these, not ability wise i know they are moooore than enough, but drivers? I haven't the foggiest how i install drivers or anything in linux i feel like a fish on dry land!

Thanks for any help given

 

[LeperousDust]

Excellent post dude, thanks very much . Bascically it shouldn't matter too much what i use as long as i set up LVM, software raid and samba righty? So ubuntu is probably a much better route (read:easier ).

Right i feel really stupid for asking this now, as i said i'm so new its unbelievable, if i could use windows now i would, buy i digress. You mention kernal and distros, sorry whats the difference. I do just get the distro right and install, bang thats on, yeah? Or am i too used to windows?

Are there any good tutorial sites that i can read, that will talk me throuhg this stuff, i've googled but i'm not entriely sure what to google for, and its all bring back ambiguous stuff that doesnt help!

//Edit: Did i mention i feel absolutely useless!

 

[LeperousDust]

Guys your all excellent!

Hard drives arrived this morning, very pleased. I'm gonna get to work downloading what i need (whatever is free for now ) seeing what i can get done linux wise. Then actually start using it as a server when its proved its worth.

if you are concerned about your data then i suggest hardware raid with a 3ware card ( http://www.3ware.com/ ) and also LVM, any distro is possible of this, but as already said check out debian and distros based on debian ( ubuntu ) and also centos ( http://www.centos.org/ )

Cheers
deano

I'm not particulary worried about the data, if i lost it, well i wouldn't go completely mad, would be more worried about the fact its 1.6 friggin TB's! Hardware i've looked at, but its expensive, although easier to setup in most cases (few key presses on boot). I haven't yet found one thats expandable. Also if my hardware raid card goes t*** up then i have to find an identical one to resurect my data. Where as atm i have a few controller cards plugged into PCI slots and i'm just plugging as many HDD's in ass possible on their own channels and using software raid (as the computer wont be doing anything else, and is more than powerful enough for the XOR calcs).

I actually sound like i might know what i'm doing there, shame its not true! .

Thanks again everyone, i'll report back no doubt asking for further help after i've got the build up and running today/tomorrow.

Your a right friendly bunch round here

 

[LeperousDust]

Right guys i'm back, i must confess i just havent had to get this up and running yet. But everything everyone has contributed has been excellent, that freenas thing looks just what i need to. Although i feels too easy p).

I've got the PC all up and running, checked all the drives work gave them a work out (all in a nice comfortable, and safe windows environment). I'll have a look at all this stuff tomorrow since i've got the day off work (it's a pretty rare event! ).

I'll be putting whatever i install on a separate HDD, its an old 40gig, and if i can find another 40gig drive i'll mirror the OS HDD, total security then, i'm hoping i'll be able to set up a mirrored OS HDD after the initial install?

Anyways i'm gonna get to bed now, get some rest and start on this tomorrow.

Last things i need now to complete this are some fan cooled hard drive caddies.

Cheers
Alex

 

[LeperousDust]

So does that mirror a disk or set up a mirror array. Meaning if i copy to disk a, will be disk b still be a mirror or a backup or what disk a used to be. Hope that makes sense !