Building a NAS
 

The goal:

I'm willing to build something to store data on once place. Easy accessible. Now all the data is spread over multiple disks in multiple pc's.

The needs:
- (trans)portable. Something that fits in backpack.
- 1.5 to 2 Tb is more then enough.
- accessible and readable for multiple OS (OSX; Linux and Windows)
- Silent

Extra info:
- There won't be any life crucial info stored. So there won't be a need of super duper redundancy. If it's lost, it's redownloadable.
- Multimedia functions, such as mediacenter like solutions would be nice, but also not the main goal.



Solutions:
1. A real home solution NAS. conceptronic with two 1 TB disks. Total price is about 310 euro.
++ cheap
++ plug and play
-- slow
-- limited in options

2. A small pc, with 2 disks. That would cost:
- 50 Small case
- 85 Dual core atom based mobo
- 20 2 gig DDR2
- 160 the two 1 Tb disks
Total: 315
++ Also cheap
++ Faster
++ I can add easy wifi
++ can also suit other purposes
-- bigger
-- more configuration work
This can even be cheaper, when using single core atom and/or less memory.


Another option is to make it more performant. Then I would choose:
- 50 Small case
- 135Fast G45 based board
- 70 Intel E5200 Dual Core (But this one I already have)
- 20 2 gig DDR2
- 160 the two 1 Tb disks
-- Total Price: 435
++ Very fast
++ I can add easy wifi
++ Lost of extra's possible, also use it as a PC / movie computer / ...
-- more expensive
-- a bit more power hungry (the 5200 idle is very economic)


At first I would just install a Simple Windows XP, and an FTP server.

What do you think ?

Conceptronic has you beat in size and portability and weight; a PC will be 2-3x bigger/heavier

yes, but from what I've seen, it's utterly slow :(

C'mon 3 Mb per sec....

uPNP was indexing all the files during that test... I've edited those results in the original thread;)

current results are:

single session FTP 3-4mb/s, up to 10 current session speed goes up to 18-22mb/s

single session SAMBA (windows share): 12-13mb/s
multiple sessions average speed remains pretty much the same

these are READ speeds

copying TO the RAID0 array is for both FTP/SAMBA 15mb/s+
granted that it's not 30-40mb/s as I see between two workstations on Gigabit, but for the price & portability, it's really sufficiently fast:)

when not using any raid. Is the performance better ?

I've read that JBOD vs RAID 0/1 the CPU load is lower, but performance remains the same. Writing speed is higher to the NAS single session wise; very weird. I send an email to Conceptronic to ask what's up.

also FTP server has only very basic user access rights, not enough to satisfy my needs;)

Keep me updated :)

I didn't follow the advise here....

Got me a shuttle K45 barebone with a E2220 from intel. Together about 160 euro.
As harddisks I have 2 Samsung Spinpoints 1 TB 32 Mb cache.
Using a cross UTP cable, to anther PC (Samsung 750 gig) I get copy speeds of +/- 50 Mb / sec (with small files) and it goes up to 60 / 65 when copying big files. Eat that NAS of JMke ;)

It's bigger, but still transportable. It's faster. And price is about the same.

you did follow your advice;)

you build one;)

but I don't agree on transportability

Shuttle: 280 (l) x 190(b) x 170(h) mm = 9044 cm³
NAS: 194 (l) x 102(b) x 137(h) mm = 2711 cm³

your Shuttle is 233% bigger. I can almost put the Conceptronic in pocket of my coat ;)

Have to admit though that performance kicks ***! what OS are you running on it?

price wise you have mobo/case/cpu/ram/optical drive which will put in near/over €200 mark without HDDs, right? not too bad for €50 more. How many HDDs can you fit max?

what's the power usage of the thing btw?

here with 2xHDDs: 22W idle, 26W load


hot running potato too it seems http://www.thetechlounge.com/article...ebones-System/

where did you buy it ?