Building a NAS System - Part 2 - The Parts

Part 2 of my videos series on How to Build a NAS. In this video I'm describing the parts I've chosen.

Grand total was around 300 EUR.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• freenas
• NAS
• building

[heckard]

It's a Foxconn TW80. You can find it on Foxconn's website. I got mine off ebay. It's a great case, simply made but the exterior design is beautiful.

[CubeLuda]

Hi, was you able to set up freenas on your system? Do you have it up and running right now? If so, I have a few simple questions.

1) If I had movies rips stored on the hard drives, can I watch them through the NAS PC? Without having to copy them to the original PC?

2) Do the hard drives have to be formated before useing nas? I have like.. four 80GB hard drives that I used as externals full of all my files. Can I just plug and play them into the nas PC, would I have to do anything else?

thnx!

[heckard]

The NAS has been working fine for months now.

1) Since the NAS is connected to your home network, you always have access to its files thanks to the CIFS protocol. So you don't have to copy them. All my files are centralized in a single place and thanks to the RAID 5 filesystem, they're safe.

2) The hard drives have to be formatted, yes. The RAID 5 has to be initialized in order to be used, so you can't just plug your hard drives in the NAS.

Hope that helps ;)

[CubeLuda]

Hi, thanks for the replies, just to respond:

1) That means I can stream movies through from the NAS server, through the modem, to the PC right? How fast would it stream? Like, what would be needed to stream... o lets say a 1GB movie file? 10mbps? Also, would I loose quility in the image/sound?

2) I take it raid 5 is where it reads all HDD's as one, correct? If so, what if I didn't want raid 5, and I just wanted them to be all single HDD's, would I still need to format them?

Thanks!

[heckard]

1) Yes. Actually I'm streaming movies straight to my Xbox thanks to XBMC. It can even stream 720p videos on my PC. If you need to transfert a lot of files, I recommend you get a gigabit switch, since most modem are not gigabit. It will reduce transfers time.

2) Raid 5 also allows you to replace a faulty disk without loosing any data. It's a great security. And you will still need to format the drives, no matter which configuration you choose.

[ypoora1]

Iwantthatcase :O

[bigjake52]

Also I want to stay away from free bsd becase I have seen nothing but problems with it when I tryed it on another system of mine,

[bigjake52]

What was the system you put on this computer, I plan on makeing my own server but I want something that is going to work with my computers I was thinking windows home server (Hey I am a pirate)

I would like to do a raid, but what is the raid where it has a backup on one drive and spans the files out on the other drives, (I never understood raid)

also is there any tower that takes 6 hard drives?

[Antzvideoz]

Don't get me wrong building a NAS is fun but if your looking for a cheaper solution which is a lot easier to afford and run your better off buying a network server which you can connect your usb devices to. It's basically a NAS which is smaller, cheaper and a lot cheaper to run..

[CubeLuda]

Hey, thanks.

1) Well, I own a 100MBPS connection, plus my internet connection is only 10mbps so that leaves a good 90mb's free to use. Again, is 90mbs enough to stream a movie without any problems?

2) Hmm, that means I would have to get a bunch of new hard drives, even if I wanted to use them seperatly, so I can transfer them back and forth. O well.

I'll have to dump a 160GB hard drive, and transfer back and forth... wait for the format, then transfer back. Seems the only way to go

thanks!