Portrait of the Sleep Deprived aka. locus blog

Making use your old Hardware – NAS Server

2 issues have been keeping me busy lately. First, making use of all that old computer hardware that is stored in a dark closet in my home's basement and secondly, accessing my media library (music, videos, pictures and various files) without having to turn on my 800 watt desktop computer.

Free NAS server is the solution to the above issues. But first things first. What is a NAS?

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is according to wikipedia a "file-level computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous network clients". In simple words, its a dedicated computer that serves the role of a storage farm within a local area network. Instead of storing files into local terminals, a low-power, low noise, old hardware-based computer does the job. NAS technology has been a common practice among medium and large scale enterprises since the 1970s. Nevertheless, mainly due to the freenas community, building a home NAS system has never been easier.

FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org) is a lightweight, Linux based operating system that manages hard disks over an ethernet interface. Because of its small size (32 MB) it can be installed on an old hard drive, a flash usb drive or even run from a live cd. To run FreeNAS, you will need, at a minimum, the following:

Motherboard with x86 processor
128 MB RAM
32 MB free disk space
Network card
BIOS that supports bootable CD-ROMs
Another workstation with a modern web browser and access to the network FreeNAS is on.

For the initial installation, you will need to have access to the above system requirements plus the following:
Monitor (for text mode console)
Keyboard
CD-ROM drive
Another workstation with Internet access, CD burner, and CD burner software that can burn an ISO

After the installation procedure (which looks like this)...

...the NAS server is accessible via a web based gui that looks like this:

and this:

For my FreeNAS implementation i used the following hardware components:
An AMD Athlon XP 1.8ghz CPU installed on a AsRock motherboard which is equipped with 512mb of RAM. To minimize power consumption, no vga (the onboard vga was used) or dvd drive is installed.
To test the system i used an 80GB Western Digital Sata Hard Disk. Most probably a 1TB hard disk will be installed the coming days.

FreeNAS OS is installed on a low power CF card which is connected to an IDE port like this. Power consumption is minimal. Moreover CF cards have no mechanical parts and produce no noise.

FreeNAS comes with more than 10 services including FTP server, webserver, Software RAID, SMB, SSH. For my needs, i enabled the SMB server so that hard disks are accessible from all windows running machines. I also enabled the built-in torrent client. I will now have the luxury of sleeping in complete silence since the bedroom PC which was used to download files will be switched off. Finally, with the addition of a iTunes Server i can now stream my Music Library from every computer in the house. The next step is to explore the dyndns.org service which will enable me to access my files from everywhere in the world.

There are many retail NAS like systems available like the Netgear SC101 (http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/NetworkStorage/SC101.aspx), or the Raidsonic NAS-4210 (http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/external_cases.php?we_objectID=5052) at various prices. Cheaper ones offer limited customisation options whereas the more expensive require a considerable amount of money which can be overwhelming for a home user.

Building a FreeNAS based network storage can be cheap since already available obsolete hardware is used. FreeNAS can cover virtually every need of an enthusiast home user. It can even satisfy the needs of small enterprises. All it takes is some old hardware, basic computer knowledge and 3-4 hours of work.

happy Building!! We are waiting to hear about your NAS success stories!