I have been using an old PC running Mepis Linux SOHO server for a while just to hold automatic dailly backups for the wife's law accountancy biz. But it is over kill for the job.

I tried USB hard disks but I have had one fail and heard reports of an awful lot of knackered ones .

So a couple of weeks ago I set up an NAS hard disk using a LAN Network Enclosure, it has replaced the Mepis server and has so far been reliable but the network performance is pretty slow.

Then I came across a freeBSD distro "FreeNAS" which designed to run on any old PC as a headless NAS device.

I pulled out a redundant 586 PC that I had configured as an IPCop firewall and it took me about 20 minutes to get FreeNAS working and about two hours to get Windows network accesss fully sorted.
It is now sitting running headless in the cupboard.
Most impressed I am network performance --- might actually spend some wonga on a a fanless Via Epia motherboard and a trio of bigish hard disks for a RAID array.
Also might try and find a couple of giga bit ethernet cards.

FreeNas url http://www.freenas.org/
FreeNas wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS

[Edited on 18/7/07 by britishtrident]

[Edited on 18/7/07 by britishtrident]

I've got a couple of hacked (Debian) Linksys NSLU2's for NAS and other useful services. Best bit of kit I've ever bought

Cheers

Dave

I haven't got a clue what it is but it sounds great!

ditto - it's all Greek to me to

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Originally posted by nick205
ditto - it's all Greek to me to

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