setting up a NAS???

[Dark Atheist]

after reading my ISP's TOC and AUP - it seems they don't like it if you run a web server or email sever and seeing as they are soon to introduce upload capping (they have already done this on downloads), it looks like i will not be able to run the box as i wanted so was thinking of using it as a storage box for my films music pictures etc. (saves me having to convert when i could just dump the dvd as iso's on it )

Main question is what OS would people recommend? Would you go down the windows route to make it easier to network? atm it has freebsd 7.0 x64 on there and thanks to many people here its running sweet, and i know i could do all what i want using samba, question is, is BSD over kill for a storage task, seeing as im not allowed to run a ftp or webserver i could use the other (and slower) drive i had for that into the zfs system X helped me setup, taking me over the TB range, so space, for the moment is not an issue.

Under windows this might pose a problem as i believe the software raid it uses is not advisable (least under XP/Vista) so i would need to look at a server system, and they aren't cheap, the board does have on-board raid (and yes im aware that's more likely fake raid that hardware raid).

Should i just leave BSD on there and rearrange the drives or wipe the lot ?

 

[LordOfLA]

FreeNAS

Just setting up a freenas box myself

 

[indyjones]

You could give windows home server a go, mostly very nice (and its basically server 2003 for cheap with connector software and a few other bits) watch the corruption bug though it is very unlikely to hit you but its best (until its fixed shortly) to use your onboard raid rather than windows drive extender, as with that disabled the bug goes away. We got served is a fairly good site and shows some of WHS potential through addons, if you have anymore questions about whs though please ask away been with it since the beta (I also looked at freeNas, and unRAID Server )

 

[Dark Atheist]

with free corrupted files ;p

FreeNAS

Just setting up a freenas box myself

looks good but 6.2-prerelease ??

 

[LordOfLA]

what about it?

 

[Dark Atheist]

bit old isnt it? also raid would be no good to me as i would want to use all 3 drives in there and only 2 of them are the same size

 

[LordOfLA]

got a usb key greater than 64mb? You can install it there and uses all 3 disks.

 

[Dark Atheist]

got a system disc of 80gb in there - i just cant be bothered with all the messing about at the moment, getting fed up of trying different OS'es i just want to install one and be done with it.

I thought with geom or raid all the drives had to be the same size? and yes i do have a usb key but that has stuff on there, plus its not the best model in the world

 

[the_tazinator]

The NAS boxes that I have set up have been running Ubuntu server (6.06.2 LTS) with samba server and administered using webmin. I tried FreeNAS but it lacked a lot of the customization that I can do with a full linux os installed, such as using the machine for more than just a NAS.

 

[LordOfLA]

if it's a nas box it should do only nas, other wise its a server

 

[kcnychief]

I like QNAP devices, they have a 4-bay drive that you can setup as JBOD so you don't need to use RAID:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822107012

http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=86

I have the One Bay Drive, aside from annoying methods of setting system permissions it works well and it's fast as hell.

 

[X-Istence]

Yeah, and not everyone has $599 lying around

 

[Dark Atheist]

well i have decided to leave it as FreeBSD 7.0 X64 with the zfs zpool X help me set-up, just have to wipe the other 200GB HDD and add it to the tank as im guessing i cant add it with a ufs file system on it