NASLite Network Attached Storage

I want to find something cheap, small, quiet, and support large HD.

I know for a file server, CPU speed is not important. Something around 500mhz, 128MB of RAM, and single HD will be fine.

There are some name brand small form factor computers - unfortunately, iPaq doesn't have CD and floppy, HP E-PC doesn't have floppy drive, and I cannot find info on whether their older models can boot from USB. Dell's SFF have both floppy and CD-ROM, but the case is too big for my taste.

What's your experience with small computers and NASLite?

From my perspective, a small form factor computer has space limitations for additional hard drives and the ventilation may not be that good.

So I would go with at least a mini tower which can easily hold 3 or 4 drives justifying the whole exercise.

If it is just a matter of one large drive then maybe an external USB box may be more appropriate.

Also don't forget that the PC BIOS does not have to support large harddrives with NASlite. NASlite bypasses the BIOS for accessing the drives.

Mini towers take too much space and are too loud.

If I want a drive for one PC only, I would just add one internally instead of USB.

I know some MB don't even support large drives in DMA mode, so NASLite cannot use the extra space.

I am still considering either E-PC or iPaq. If they can boot from USB, it is possible to replace the CD-ROM with a HD, so it will be a small NAS with two HD's (I would put 400GB HD's in it).

Has anyone successfully run NASLite with either of them?

I've been thinking about doing the same thing and also considered the iPaq and the e-PC. I think one of those will be my last resort.

I'm looking for an SFF Netvista... I almost got one on eBay recently... missed it by a couple bucks.

There are several versions... I'm looking for one that is black with a flat face in the front. The white ones with a curved front are available cheap on eBay.

They usually have a floppy and I think cooling would not be a problem. You might be able to squeeze in an extra fan somewhere.

If I find one like I want, I'm thinking I'll pull out the CD and make a NASlite with one FDD and two HDD.

jw

Our server is running on a Via Epia C7 CPU on a mini-ITX motherboard (CN 1300). It allows 2 SAT drives and 4 IDE drives to be connected directly, plus up to 8 more by USB.

I got a E-PC form eBay. Now, I don't believe it is a good case for NAS.

The HD cage has no fan, causing the HD to be pretty hot. I don't know if the cooling provided by the cage is enough to keep the HD operational for a long time.

My NAS is using quite old hardware, I dusted off an old Pentium 166MHz motherboard with 64mb of memory. I do not have any IDE-drives connected to it as I am using an PCI to S-ATA controller for my two 320gb hard drives. It is working great so far, but my question is if 64mb of memory will be enough when I add more harddrives.

64MB of RAM should due. That said I would be looking at getting another 64MB and throwing it in. The chips for those old machines are dirt cheap and I do mean dirt cheap. From what I understand the excess memory is used for buffers for read/writes to speed things up.

Mike