Setting up a home made NAS for laymen

[Cerbus]

Hi, I have absolutlety no experience with Nas and I'd like to set one up using consumer parts and free / open source software.
It doesn't need to be :awesome: but connectivity to Linux/Max/Pc/Mobile devices is a must, and it would need to be easy enough that someone like me could manage it. Anyone care to help?

There will only be two 2.5" sata bays for this project so its not going to be very fast, and some indication of the processor usage and cpu required for running a NAS like this would be useful.
I've had a look around and there are so many options I have no idea where to start, so some finger pointing would be appreciated.

[EntroX]

freenas is your friend really, uses ZFS is open source and is all managed via a fairly neat web interface.

i run a couple of file servers at work using it and it works like a charm.

http://www.freenas.org/

[Jason Marshall]

I use freenas for my homemade NAS (my old tower with a raid card, fancy network card and ALL THE HARDRIVES).

[Lana Torrin]

Currently using Debian + samba + mrtg (for monitoring). Not for the faint hearted but gives you exactly the result you are after and is flexible so you can change your mind at any time (also running mail and web servers off mine for example).

Other than that, freenas really is quite good from what I have seen.

[Waagaa]

Using Ubuntu 12 Server, works wonders.

[Cosmin]

Use Raspberry Pi and setup a mini-NAS?

[Jason Marshall]

Use Raspberry Pi and setup a mini-NAS?

I think you just enjoy saying Raspberry Pi.



Raspberry Pi.



Raspberry.

  Spoiler:

Pi

[elmicker]

Use Raspberry Pi and setup a mini-NAS?

doesnt have the bandwidth or horsepower to do it, really. it's good as a smart client, but as a server it really falls down. You've only got 100Mbit ethernet, and that ethernet shares its bandwidth with the USB2 ports. You'd have it reading data off the attached drives and then pushing the data down the network pipe over the same bus. Might work for one device at a time for files and shit, but if you're at a point where you're actually building a dedicated NAS you're probably well past that point.

[Tailn]

Was thinking about this my self the other week, from a hardware perspective the only real option I could identify was the newer Atom's or Turion's, using pc grade gear you may as well be running a full-blown file server rather than a NAS based on the electricity usage you will be dealing with.

To be honest the HP microservers with the £100 off deals are very very nice (sort of kills the complete home build but.)

[Fuggin]

FreeNAS and find a older unused pc, stuff it with hdds.


- shitposting from Blablablabatalk.

[Liare]

running a small NAS based on assorted USB HDD's on a rasberry Pi crew checking in.

[Hel OWeen]

To be honest the HP microservers with the £100 off deals are very very nice (sort of kills the complete home build but.)

This. If you like to twiddle around with tech stuff, by all means build your own NAS. But looking at what's readily available for not too much money, I'm not sure it's worth the hassle if you simply want to "have it work".

I'm using a Buffalo LinkStation (http://www.buffalo-technology.com/en...ion-trade.html) myself, but Synology or QNap (I'm sure there are more) provide similar devices. Not too expensive and the Buffalo and Synology (at work) systems I had to deal with were easy to set up and use.

There's one pitfall you need to check when comparing products: some already include HDs, others not, so you would need to buy the HDs yourself.