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A NAS server for my home

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40hz:
MaximumPC published a step-by-step article about a year ago you might find helpful if you do go the DIY route and opt for FreeNAS.

Back in the day, the average nerd household had one or two computers, a printer, and a game console. If you were lucky, you had an Internet connection on one of those computers—forget about the printer; forget about the console. And forget about home networking. But now, the average geek household has a multitude of machines: desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones, and networked game consoles—not to mention terabytes of ripped movies, music, and photos. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a central location where all of those files lived that was accessible to all your computing devices? A place where you could back up all of your computers, host your media files for streaming to your console or other computers, and use as a file share for your whole network? Yes. Yes, it would.

A few months ago, we showed you how to set up a Windows Home Server to enable such a scenario. But a Windows Home Server license costs 100 bucks, and doesn’t necessarily play well with non-Windows machines. FreeNAS, on the other hand, is a free, open-source FreeBSD derivative, and though it can be a little more complex under the hood, it’s as powerful as Windows Home Server and runs well on salvaged hardware. And FreeNAS plays well with Windows, Apple, and *nix systems.

 We’ll show you what hardware you’ll need for a FreeNAS server, how to install and configure your server, and then help you choose between FreeNAS and WHS. 
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Link to full article here. Printer friendly version here.


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You might also want to take a look at Lime Tech's website.

Lime Tech is the developer behind the unRAID Server. Their website is a trove of good info because they freely share specific details (i.e. mobo choice,  power supply, etc.) of their server products. Since they use off-the-shelf components, you could either duplicate their setups, or use them as the basis for further research for your own build.

Check out the spec for their RB-1200 Server which can accommodate up to 12 2TB-SATA/SATAII drives for a total of 22TB of usable storage in a standard midtower case. Scary!

 :)

CleverCat:
dluby - if I was your wife  ;) I wouldn't need convincing! I love organization.... :Thmbsup:

johnk:
I had a quick look at NASLite2 when I was wondering what to play with for my own NAS, (which will hopefully work out to be a silent sub-60W w/ 4TB unit), but it didn't seem to support DLNA which a large number of media players support
-4wd (December 07, 2010, 04:43 PM)
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NASLite-M2 is the dedicated media streaming version of NASLite, covering UPNP, DAAP etc. Quote from NASLite-M2 product page: "UPNP streaming is enhanced by profiles targeting DLNA, XBOX, PS3 and Generic media clients directly".

phitsc:
I have the Synology DS207+ as well and am also very happy with it. It works very well, is reliable, comfortable to set up and use. The company left a very good impression as well. They are providing regular SW updates, also for older models. And they seem to really care about reliability. If they release SW that still has a problem they usually fix it very quickly. There are only two problems I have with it: although I think it has the feature to shut down on a schedule, it can't restart on a schedule any more. The newer models do that though. The other is that I'd like to have a better network backup solution. And I mean backup from the NAS to some other server. Although it can do that and does it well, I'd like to have something more Time-machine-like.

I have the D-Link DNS-321 as well, but was very disappointed about the reliability and frequency of SW updates. I'm using it as a backup server now (i.e. I backup from the Synology to the D-Link). I can well imagine though that it is reliable now, as the product is already quite long into the market and I'd expect the initial problems to be fixed.

I was concerned with wasting power too, and I set it up to shut down overnight.
-Perry Mowbray (December 07, 2010, 06:42 AM)
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Perry, how do you restart it?

Perry Mowbray:
I was concerned with wasting power too, and I set it up to shut down overnight.
-Perry Mowbray (December 07, 2010, 06:42 AM)
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Perry, how do you restart it?
-phitsc (December 08, 2010, 04:44 AM)
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It's got this nifty little thing at the front that glows blue when you click it on which I do when I boot my computer  ;) ... I was thinking of leaving it on all the time but in the end I didn't use it's webserver, so don't need it on all the time.

I probably wouldn't use the scheduled restart, as I'm just using to store files mainly. Actually, when my wife boots the computer she never starts the NAS (is this evidence that there IS a thing between wives and NAS's  :-\)

Though I did wonder about setting up the media streaming (as we get content free internet radio which is better quality than over the air). Have you looked into that?

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