NASLite Network Attached Storage

I do not have an older PC that I can convert into a NAS. I would like to buy a new motherboard to use with Naslite 2. Would any of the AM2 motherboards that use the NVIDIA chipset work. I was looking at one of the following:

ASUS M2N-E,M2N, or M2N-X
Abit AN52

I would like to have an onboard Gigabit LAN if possible that will work with Naslite 2 and have the ability to add an additional SATA controller card for multiple hard drives. Can someone give me some suggestions please.

Take a look at the ASUS Terminator C3 boxes. You can get a barebone on ebay for $60. It's compact, with lots of features and all you need is RAM and drives. The onboard SATA, IDE and NIC all work with Naslite 2 so it's a one stop purchase.

For a bit more (possibly quite a bit) the ASUS M2N32 WS PRO has 2 PCI-X slots which would allow you to install quite a few different compatible hardware RAID cards - now available relatively cheaply as the PCIe variants are becoming more and more popular.

I also have reasonably high hopes that the onboard Marvell gigabit ethernet adapter might be recognised by v2.06. I'll let you know, as and when v2.06 appears.

Yeah, that is quite a bit more. I had seen your ASUS board in your signature and that had me wondering if one of the less expensive M2N versions would work as well.

I have a Windows XP machine with a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard. I decided to see if I could boot up Naslite 2 USB with this machine. I was able to get the BIOS to recognize the USB stick as a USB HDD when formatted with a partition. I was able to boot up Naslite, but it does not recognise the onboard Marvell NIC. Once I added a Linksys NIC Naslite booted up successfully.

Good news - my main PC has a DS3 inside.... Handy to know for when that motherboard gets "retired" from frontline service.

As I said, I would expect the Marvell onboard NICs to be recognised in the next variant. I used to use a Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 board in my server and initially it wouldn't recognise the onboard NIC - when I updated to v2.05, it does.

It is much appreciated that Tony & Ralph keep adding compatibilities for different hardware elements - keep up the good work chaps!

As expected, the onboard NIC on the ASUS M2N32 WS PRO is now recognised by NASLite-2 v2.06 - and is working fine.

I am not able to get Naslite 2.06 to recognize the onboard Marvell 88E8053 NIC on my Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3.

Argh... I just bought a DFI board that has two Marvell GB NICs onboard (88E8052 and 88E8053) and NasLite HDD 2.06 does not recognize either one... I thought these were popular enough to be supported.

Is buying another PCI GB NIC my only option?

Ask Tony / Ralph (nicely ) about the likelihood of the drivers for these onboard NIC's being included in v2.07 and the likely release date.....

I do not want this to come across the wrong way, so please (Tony and Ralph) do not take offense. From what I've seen Tony and Ralph almost never commit to dates and/or functionality.

On the other hand, I guess it can't hurt to ask so:

Tony and/or Ralph: Can you comment on if these Marvell chips will be supported in the next release and when that release it likely to be available. Pretty please with sugar on top.

I believe its a design choice to be very careful with using updated kernels. I'm sure the NL boys want to support as much hardware as possible, not just in a way that comprises the stability and dependability of the product. As far as this being the case with a kernel that supports the marvel chipset in question, I'll leave that to Ralph

Just about any near modern machine based on a fast P3 (700-1GHz) or an entry level P4 will more than do the trick, this also goes for the Athlon chips as well. Unless something has changed since I last was here a dual core processor and/or more than 1GB of RAM is a total waste and you will not see one packet more out of them. Here is the place you will see a big difference at, GET A 3COM or INTEL GIGABIT NIC, unless your MB has one of them on board already, since they perform far better than those based on the Realtek chips that you find in the Linksys, Dlink and other junk cards out there. Most any motherboard you choose will work just fine as long as it is based on a name brand chipset, IE intel, nVidia, AMD, and SiS. Do stay away from the cheap no name boards though.

Performance of the NAS box is based much more on the tuning of the OS and Samba software than on the hardware it runs on, Tony and Ralph have gotten it pretty well tuned up.

Mike