Creating A Network Storage Solution

Post by **Hippy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 9:59 am

I was wondering what the possibilities are of using 4 or so of my old 20 gig hard drives to run a raid setup (on an old raid motherboard) and have it simply used for a network storage solution, no real OS, unless perhaps it's something like windows 98 or something small.

What options are there? is this a Linux job?
How many drives can you have on a single raid card (2 ide connectors)? i presume it's 4 drives?

Post by **Trig** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:03 am

I'm wanting a NAS box of some type, need to get some of my drives out of my main machine, something simple with NTFS and that supports SATA will do me

Post by **Hippy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:21 am

Yeah, same here, although would be nice if all the seperate drives could be used as one.

Good point about NTFS though, how small can you get a win2k install to be?

Post by **Trig** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:15 pm

Hmmm yeah using all the drives as one would be useful tbh
Mmmmm got me thinkin now, always dangerous...

Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:15 pm

I've been looking at this and am thinking about just buying a couple of secondhand servers with pretty low spec and several SCSI hard drives.

Then stick it out in the garage or the loft or somewhere like that.

Post by **Hippy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:23 pm

Aye, will need to at least be capable of operating a NIC or preferably a wireless card and raid drivers, probably a firewall too.

Any advances on Win2k?
Would ideally want to run some kind of DOS to keep space and security issues to a minimum.

Post by **Hippy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:30 pm

<a href="http://www.freenas.org/" target="_blank">http://www.freenas.org/</a>

Post by **Jase** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 1:44 pm

Well you could attach your 5 20 gb drives in a server box in the garage but surely for that extra storage its easier to get one of these???

<a href="http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?cri ... GG&DOY=2m2" target="_blank">http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?cri ... DOY=2m2</a>

Post by **Rasputin** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:02 pm

Linux will not allow NTFS as the Disk format as Linux can not write to it. Also with Linux you will need to setup the Samba server, Which is not hard but a wee bit tricky

Post by **Hippy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:10 pm

I'm talking about free solutions jase, to put my spare drives to good use. I could happily cope without, but would be nice just to have a case where every small HDD i get can just be added.

Post by **Nellyboy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:22 pm

I tried freenas at work for a week or two on an old box. it worked fine for casual storage. I eventually stuck the hdd in a firewire enclosure and now I share it with me network buddies (mac & pc) for backup using sharepoints for osx. Its plugged into me lurvelly G5 dual core.

Mac 4T3W1n tbh

Post by **Trig** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:44 pm

I'm looking at moving 2x250gb and 2x 300gb drives tho so external is no use to me...

Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:58 pm

Single External is no use to me either as their is no hardware redundancy. If I loose the drive in the external box then it's gone.

I've been looking at multiple drive solutions as it gives the best redundancy in respect of drive failure etc maybe even get two similar boxes so that backups can be made in duplicate.

Post by **Nellyboy** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:17 pm

But what if the backup of the backup fails?

Post by **Eagle** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 9:49 pm

Nellyboy wrote: But what if the backup of the backup fails?

Then you would have to use the backup of the backed up backup