Building NAS Server

[BababooeyHTJ]

I've been thinking of building an Atom based NAS Server for a while now. I have a 1tb Spinpoint that I can use for the HDD and I think that it would be perfect. Here is a quick parts list. Any comments or sugestions would be greatly appreciated, Thanks. I've never built or even used one of these but it would be cool.

Atom 330 board
Ram
Case

The option to add a second drive in a Mini-itx case would be nice but no deal breaker. I'm thinking about using FreeNAS for an OS or a bare bones Gentoo install, not sure yet. Like I said I've never even used an NAS before so suggestions would be cool.

 

[angelkiller]

Hardware looks fine.

I will first admit that FreeNAS is pretty easy to setup. This article details setting up FreeNAS on an Atom box. However, I've read that it doesn't give the best performance. This article details installing Ubuntu Server on the same Atom box. Ubuntu Server is able to offer more performance than FreeNAS could. But remember they're on a Gigabit network, and if you plan on using the integrated 10/100 network controller, this is a moot point.

And of course there are other options as well. I just named the two that I would use.

 

[Tau]

IMO i would put it in a bigger case for when you want to add more storage... as honestly 1TB is nothing.

 

[Geofrancis]

i have just built a atom 330 itx nas with 5Tb

its a modified morex 669 case chopped down to fit a 5 bay sata hotswap case. i got the idea from here http://www.mashie.org/casemods/udat3.html

stay away from the samsung drives for a nas they aint the quietest and cant be set at sata 150 so wont work with most sata cards. i didnt find that oout untill i bought 2 of them! get the western digital or seagate.

 

[angelkiller]

^^ That's a pretty nice setup! 5TB

Can you tell me more about that? ie Do you have a gigabit Lan card? What software does it run? How do you access/use it? Performance?

Thanks. I'm really curious.

 

[Geofrancis]

it has onboard gigabit ethernet and a pci raid card on a pci riser turned 90 degrees over the motherboard for the sata raid . it runs windows xp media center and all it has plugged into it is a monitor, remote and sound. i control it over the network with tight vnc a remote desktop program. the only problem is you cant use partitions over 2 tb with 32bit windows so its getting converted over to server 2003 x64 once i get the raid setup

 

[alucasa]

Here is mine.

Currently, at 3.5TB space, expandable to 4TB by replacing two non-1TB drives with 1TB drives.

 

[Geofrancis]

thats the case i would have liked but its very expensive here at £200 compared to the morex 669 + hdd cage £50

 

[alucasa]

200 in Europe ?! Are you serious ?

 

[Geofrancis]

yup http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11999

 

[alucasa]

200 euro (or 194 to be exact) is over 300 CAD, and that doesn't include shipping. VAT is killing the deal, I see.

 

[Geofrancis]

no i mean uk pounds UK£ 194 = 343.187861 Canadian dollars + shipping

how much did u pay for it?

 

[alucasa]

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=33078&vpn=ES34069-BK-120&manufacture=CHENBRO

244 CAD, plus tax (7%), plus ground shipping. My total was about 270CAD all included.