SnapperTalk

Have an old desktop machine around that’s not being using any more? Why not turn it into a full-featured Network Attached Storage (NAS) RAID server?

What you need

Desktop machine: Could be Mac or PC and doesn’t have to be a recent model. Even a very old machine is likely capable of running as a NAS server as most file-sharing tasks do not require a powerful processor.

RAID card: You could just have drives attached to the internal IDE bus, but really you’re best off buying a hardware RAID card to plug into the machines PCI slot. Get a SATA card if you can, and make sure it runs the right level of RAID for your requirements. Check it has the right drivers/compatibility with your chosen operating system and hardware.

Ethernet card: The machine probably already has an ethernet card, but you may as well install a Gigabit ethernet card if it doesn’t already have one to gain maximum performance.

Hard drives: Depending on the amount of space inside the desktop, you can add any number of drives internally to create the RAID system. Make sure the power supply is adequate for that number of drives and that there is sufficient ventilation/cooling so that the drives don’t overheat. Plan to have a small-capacity (e.g. the original) hard-drive for the operating system.

Operating System: If it’s a Mac then you probably want to be running the latest version of MacOSX, which has some great built-in file-sharing capability that is very easy to setup via the “Sharing” preference pane. If it’s a PC then you have the choice of installing a variant of Windows or Linux.

Specialised NAS Operating systems

NASLite+ is an incredibly lean, low-cost, specially designed Network Attached Storage (NAS) Server Operating System that can instantly transform even an old and low-powered PC computer into a dedicated SMB/CIFS, NFS, FTP and HTTP file server. The whole OS can be booted off of a cd-rom or even USB Flash Drive, so you can run it without doing any complex operating system installation.

FreeNAS is a similar concept to Naslite+, the main differences being it is free, open-source, and based on the robust UNIX-based operating system FreeBSD 6. It can also be booted off of a USB disk.

Next page: 7. What hardware to choose
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