Dirt Cheap NAS server

[ultimatebob]

I have a friend who wants to build himself a NAS server as cheaply as possible, like under $200. It doesn't have a have a ton of storage... 2 TB to start out with would be fine.

Does anyone have some recommendations on how to do this? He's currently been looking at used servers on eBay to configure, but I bet that there are better/cheaper ways to do it.

Sure, he could probably get himself a cheap storage appliance for this price, but I think that he wants to get his hands dirty and teach himself something like configuring Samba on Linux.

 

[Elixer]

Really depends on what capabilities they want with it, how many users, if they want to get into ZFS (which really, really loves RAM) and so on...

You could check out http://freenas.org for some more into.

 

[XavierMace]

A surplus server with 3.5" bays would be the cheapest way to do it, but not necessarily the most efficient. Westmere-EP servers are usually around 140w idle. That said sub-$200 (assuming that means including drives) doesn't give you much to work with.

 

[mxnerd]

Hacked Synology. You can test it in VMware first then go physical.

https://xpenology.com/forum/forum/31-loaders/

Take your own risk, but you can feel the whole thing.

Your friend might end up buying the real Synology.