NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi all,

I'm thinking of setting up a NAS box and was hoping to get a few pointers and opinions. This is what I'm thinking of doing.

I've got an old Asus A7V motherboard along with a couple of Duron 600's and 256 Meg PC133 RAM lying around. Also have a couple of D-Link DFE-538 TX NIC around somewhere as well. I don't have any spare video cards, cases or power supplies.

I'm thinking of buying a reasonably large case. At this point an Antec P180. I picked this case because I can fit 10 drives in it. Giving me lots of expandability. Also because it uses 120mm fans, hopefully keeping it a bit quieter. Oh and cause it looks cool too Maybe a bit over the top? The Asus MB has room for 8 PATA drives.

I already have some 250Gig WDs and will probably continue to use them. They have worked flawlessly for me and are reasonably quiet. They get quite a hammering too.

I'm thinking of using the NASLite+ (probably USB version) as the operating system.

I'm not really interested in RAID. All the data is backed up onto DVD. It doesn't really change all that often. Any changes are normally additions so that just means adding another DVD onto the pile.

Sorry for the long list of questions to follow I need a little advise on the following.

1) I don't really want each drive I put in to show up seperately. So say I put in 3 x 250Gig HDDs I would if they show up as 1 x 750Gig HDD on the network. Is this possible?
2) What's the minimum size memory stick that I would need?
3) Can NASLite handle more than 4 physical drives?
4) What size PSU am I likely to need? I'm not sure what the current draw is on hard drives. At this point I'm leaning towards a TruPower2 550W. I was thinking about a Phantom but it's $100 more than the TruPower.
5) Can anyone suggest an AGP Video Card that doesn't need any fans for cooling. It's never going to get a work out.
6) Oh and I'm missing a heatsink for the CPU and somehow the northbridge heatsink is missing too Any suggestions on cheap passive cooling heatsinks that will work with a Duron and KT133 chipset.
7) Any advice on keeping to noise as low as possible would be welcome.

Thanks in advance

1. Basically no, although you can mount all the disks to one point as read only (they show up as subfolders).
2. 64Mb seems to be a safe bet, depends on the number of users.
3. No, not even with a PCI IDE card.
4. Pass.
5. I'm not sure why you need a video card, but if you must be able to administer the machine directly then probably the cheapest PCI card you can scrounge would be adequate.
6. Pass.
7. Less fans, quieter fans (experiment with what you can get away with). Putting the box in a cupboard, using insulation.

Pretty much all of these things have been discussed elsewhere, so if you need more detailed answers search around the forums.

Hi Runey,

Just to fill in the couple of points quis passed on

4) The PSU won't need to be hugley powerful, I think a 550watt PSU is overkill, any 300watt PSU will easily suffice

6) Try http://www.quietpc.com they have a worldwide site and stock silent or quiet CPU fans and some motherboard and graphic card heatsinks.

Good luck with your system.

Wilbur

If you have any linux expirence and you need more than 4 drives at once you may want to use ubuntu server. Although it is definately not as easy to setup as NASLite it does provide some advanced functions, as it should being that it takes up about 400 megs of disk space rather then 8mb of ram. I am recommending to you because your hardware is powerful enough to support it. If someone has a pI 133mhz I would advise against it.

http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/5.10/


Also I believe ubuntu server is probably pretty good for use with raid or pci ide controllers as it is a server system so drivers should not be a problem. Ubuntu is debian based and supports apt-get usage make installing samba, ftp,webfs, and ssh very easy. Also should be easy to also add print server and other simple server tasks.

After all this is said. I love NASLITE and it has its place. AS soon as more then 4 drives are supported I am switching back as all I need is a simple file server and ubuntu server is a little over kill for the task.