Is there a good, inexpensive NAS for the home?

[DaveR]

I keep seeing NAS available for anywhere from $55 to $200 and beyond. What I wonder is if there is a way to have NTFS available so I can use the NAS as an image backup? The image file is often >20GB so FAT32 would be NG.

Also, I have seen that Welland makes an ME-740K but it is NDAS. Some say that you need software on each system, but point out that it is also a good security feature as someone hacking in will not be able to access it. It does support NTFS and you add your own Drive. Some have said the software is buggy and the drive disconnects.

Still, I have seen a 500GB NAS that Fry's has for $199. It is a Maxtor and I am sure it does not support NTFS.

Then there is the question of what backs up the NAS drive? Also, some have USB2 ports to add external usb2 drives and others say that the USB ports can NOT be used for external drives!

This sure seems like it is not ready for SOHO users yet.

Any ideas? Any such device that will allow you to just connect an external USB2 hard drive to the LAN?

TIA

 

[JackMDS]

Inexpensive NAS', in part are inexpensive because they use linux firmware (it free), and they run on a processor that is equal to Pentium 486 or P-II with very little memory.

There is No Good Stand alone NAS bellow $700-$1000.

An old computer with Win2000 would do better.

Or if you want fancy, http://forums.anandtech.com/me...104281&highlight_key=y

 

[DaveR]

I will have to look at that. The only thing with using an older system...and I have many of them...is that they consume so much power.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: DaveR
I will have to look at that. The only thing with using an older system...and I have many of them...is that they consume so much power.

Try building a new one. You can use any $50 case (I am using this one for my file server), a AM2 motherboard with onboard video and AMD processor. Even 512MB-1GB RAM is good. Enable CNQ and you have a very powerful NAS with low power usage.

If you want a smaller case you can get one of those Shuttle XPC cases but that will jack up your price a little. You can go really crazy and get this Shuttle barebone that uses a mobile CPU, guaranteed not to use more than 80W under load.

 

[JackMDS]

Yap you are right.

The Hard drive consumption is similar to both.

A deecnt NAS box idling (HD Off) probably consumes about 20Watts.

About 50Watts when in full work.

A Pentium-III 1GB with 512MB memory on an mATX motherboard in a working box consumes about 50-60 Watt when idling.

It consumes about 80Watt when the HD is working.

 

[Nothinman]

I keep seeing NAS available for anywhere from $55 to $200 and beyond. What I wonder is if there is a way to have NTFS available so I can use the NAS as an image backup? The image file is often >20GB so FAT32 would be NG.

I highly doubt any of them use FAT no matter how cheap they are.

Still, I have seen a 500GB NAS that Fry's has for $199. It is a Maxtor and I am sure it does not support NTFS.

So? All you need to worry about is that you can access it via the network, the filesystem it uses locally is irrelevant.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I highly doubt any of them use FAT no matter how cheap they are.

Some of them have concoctions that let them support drives formatted with FAT32 (it does not make them better).

However, for backup and storage the Drive type of format does not matter. For other purposes it means that the security of the NAS cannot be the same has the Computer with NTFS, additional propriety security systems that is independent from NTFS is usually provided on the NAS.

 

[Nothinman]

Some of them have concoctions that let them support drives formatted with FAT32 (it does not make them better).

I can understand some of the ones that let you format and plug-in your own drive supporting it, but if one actually ships with an internal drive setup as FAT it should be returned instantly.

For other purposes it means that the security of the NAS cannot be the same has the Computer with NTFS, additional propriety security systems that is independent from NTFS is usually provided on the NAS.

Just because the filesystem isn't NTFS doesn't mean you can't use explorer to manage ACLs on it, Samba does a decent job of interpreting NTFS ACLs to POSIX ACLs for unix filesystems that support them.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: DaveR
The only thing with using an older system...and I have many of them...is that they consume so much power.

The issue I have with older systems is that although they're just fine for 100 Mb/s, when you go to gigabit, as I think you should for file servers even at home these days, they typically don't have a good bus design for a decent storage controller combined with gigabit networking, and often don't even have a fast PCI bus implementation.

OTOH, if you really don't care about high performance and are willing to live with 100 Mb/s networking, then it's great to use that hardware instead of letting it go to waste. Moreover, even the bandwidth-limited gigabit performance can be decent and a lot more than you can do with 100 Mb/s.

A good way to reduce power consumption is to take advantage of lower power and sleep modes, if not just shutting the thing off for most of the time that it's not used. I have an 11 drive server running an add-on storage controller and a dual core CPU. It consumes a lot of power during boot-up, but only around 10w when it's asleep, as it is most of the time. If you can combine this with decent remote wake-up capability, you can have a combination of these advantages:

1. pricing of consumer hardware at its sweet spot
2. modern performance capability of consumer hardware at that point
3. modern bus design and available bandwidth in such hardware
4. flexibility, compatibility, availability in such hardware
5. low overall power consumption

 

[DaveR]

Thank you all.

I do have a PIII-500 that I have overclocked on a SOYO MoBo. It runs XP Pro and KUBUNTU. Perhaps I should make it a server.

The only reason I wanted NTFS is that an image backup is >22GB on several of my systems and I had heard that many NAS setups can only support 4GB file sizes (FAT32).

Still, I wonder about the PIII system staying on all the time. I would not like a fan to fail and kill the whole thing. I mean, where would I get another PIII-500?

I can also look at other things to do but at least I can try this as a test...even with its 256MB memory! It should give me an idea of how it may work.

I notice that FreeNAS has a LiveCD option. Can I boot from it to test it all out before I do an actual install? I also see some discussion that they added NTFS read/write. Has anyone tested this yet?

TIA

 

[JackMDS]

P-III 500 would do. Just get rid of the OC.

Without OC it would be more secure and would take less electricity.

Put the Box on a UPS.

 

[DaveR]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
P-III 500 would do. Just get rid of the OC.

Without OC it would be more secure and would take less electricity.

Put the Box on a UPS.

Great. Although it has been OC'ed since "birth". Can I go ahead and use UFS? Will that support file sizes >4GB?

 

[JackMDS]

I can tell you what I do with Big backups.

I backup with Acronis True image and set it to split the image files to 4GB chunks.

It also save space since True image normal setting reduce the size of the images toby 40%.

 

[Modelworks]

Older pc do just fine with gigabit networks.
Especially when they are running dedicated software.
Check out:
smoothwall, m0n0Wall, pfsense, clark connect

I run a pfsense box on a p2-400, 128mb ram, and it handles gigabit 24/7 with 4 pc's just fine. power consumption on the box is 65watts.

There are addons to all the above to allow them to be nas as well as router.

 

[DaveR]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
I can tell you what I do with Big backups.

I backup with Acronis True image and set it to split the image files to 4GB chunks.

It also save space since True image normal setting reduce the size of the images toby 40%.

Yup, I just wanted to see if TI9 would just write to UFS via the NFS. I have had TI8/9 for a while now.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Older pc do just fine with gigabit networks.
Especially when they are running dedicated software.
Check out:
smoothwall, m0n0Wall, pfsense, clark connect

I run a pfsense box on a p2-400, 128mb ram, and it handles gigabit 24/7 with 4 pc's just fine. power consumption on the box is 65watts.

What sort of large file transfer performance do you get on this setup? Over SMB?

 

[DaveR]

Well, I made the FreeNAS boot cd and put a floppy in and set BIOS to boot from CD first. I see all my disks. I tried to specify an IP but the default keeps coming up. I also said one drive was NTFS but it does not like the first option I set when I told it to mount Will have to RTFM tomorrow! This may be cool.

 

[DaveR]

Well...I did RTFM. It helped some, but there are options that needed to be configured in order for this to work. I must say that I NEVER expected FreeNAS to work on my homebuilt OC'ed PIII System. It has a SOYO MoBo and has ATA33 and ATA66. The ATA66 can not be disabled and I have a Promise ATA 100 card as well. FreeNAS 0.685RC1 found it ALL!

OK...so I booted from the ISO CD and had a blank Floppy in the drive. This IS working and I have installed NOTHING to this old PC! My question is that it is working too well! I have it mounting an NTFS drive and two FAT32 drives. This version is supposed to support NTFS, etc. So, should I trust it?

OH, when I startup FreeNAS I get a nice graphic unless I hit a key...but I do not need to...it comes up anyway with the CIFS running!

This has been a good use for this system if NTFS is OK now and TrueImage can just write to an NTFS disk...or would UFS support >4gb files over the LAN? I suppose that I can add a forth disk (160GB) and format that one as UFS if needed).

TIA

 

[Nothinman]

I must say that I NEVER expected FreeNAS to work on my homebuilt OC'ed PIII System.

Why not? It's a pretty old system and storage and network drivers are usually the first to hit Linux and the BSDs.

This version is supposed to support NTFS, etc. So, should I trust it?

I wouldn't. AFAIK the only read-write NTFS implementations that work semi-well are those that use NTFS.sys from Windows to do the real work but even with that you'll be much better off with a native filesystem.

This has been a good use for this system if NTFS is OK now and TrueImage can just write to an NTFS disk...or would UFS support >4gb files over the LAN?

If UFS supports >4G files it'll support them via the LAN too, the filesytem has no clue where the files are coming from.

 

[DaveR]

Well, the FreeNAS forum said that NTFS is good now, but don't write to FAT32.

I was surprised that it supported the hardware as I added a PCI Promise controller and it has a second ATA66 onboard one that can NOT be disabled. Some Linux distros have fits with the unused onboard ATA66.

 

[Nothinman]

Well, the FreeNAS forum said that NTFS is good now, but don't write to FAT32.

I'd still trust FAT before NTFS since FAT is much simpler and well understood by everyone while NTFS is hugely complicated and only understood by MS and people who'd paid for licenses to get the layout.

I was surprised that it supported the hardware as I added a PCI Promise controller and it has a second ATA66 onboard one that can NOT be disabled. Some Linux distros have fits with the unused onboard ATA66.

I've never had a Linux distro throw a fit about any onboard controllers, not that FreeNAS is based on Linux.

 

[DaveR]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Well, the FreeNAS forum said that NTFS is good now, but don't write to FAT32.

I'd still trust FAT before NTFS since FAT is much simpler and well understood by everyone while NTFS is hugely complicated and only understood by MS and people who'd paid for licenses to get the layout.

I was surprised that it supported the hardware as I added a PCI Promise controller and it has a second ATA66 onboard one that can NOT be disabled. Some Linux distros have fits with the unused onboard ATA66.

I've never had a Linux distro throw a fit about any onboard controllers, not that FreeNAS is based on Linux.

I had a RedHat Distro a while back that did and I think a Debian worked but only with some added boot parms. Yes, I know FreeNAS is BSD. I am reformatting an old 160GB drive now and will see if UFS works. Not sure what all the 1 drive one mount point stuff is. I assume I can use it the way I want with several systems. Will see ifI can play some miore when UFS is done.