Cheap, simple NAS?

[netsider]

What's the cheapest and easier standalone NAS device there is? Is there something under 75$ (not including any actual storage) that would add NAS to my network, and allow me to just add devices via USB or SATA connectors? Performance isn't really a factor.. I just need enough bandwidth to stream HD to one device maybe.. but that's it. I'm just tired of having storage locate on a particular computer.. but don't really need it enough to justify spending a lot on it. I just figured there was a really cheap device somewhere... but I know network storage isn't exactly cheap most of the time.

I know some routers/access points also have USB storage.. but didn't see any that were made JUST for that, and I don't really need another router.

Thanks... any help would be appreciated. I've been looking here and there and couldn't come up with much that was RTR out-of-the-box besides devices that already contained storage. I want to use the existing SATA and USB hard drives/flash drives that I already have.

 

[xlt92explorer]

2-bay Lenovo ix2 diskless unit will get you close to the $75 mark ($82 at Amazon link) You can install 2 SATA drives internally and there is a USB port to connect an external drive.

Performance is just okay, but it sounds like that's not much of a concern for you. Might be worth a look.

 

[netsider]

2-bay Lenovo ix2 diskless unit will get you close to the $75 mark ($82 at Amazon link) You can install 2 SATA drives internally and there is a USB port to connect an external drive.

Performance is just okay, but it sounds like that's not much of a concern for you. Might be worth a look.

That's *exactly* what I'm looking for. I've seen those.. but thought it was something else.

Thanks for that. Is there anything even more simple than this, just out of curiosity? Something mobile/portable, maybe?

 

[TeeJayHoward]

You can probably find a computer on craigslist for around that price that'll have SATA interfaces. Alternately, you could find an ancient one for free on craigslist, and buy a simple SATA controller.

 

[scbesterman]

Another alternative would be to use any old hardware you've got laying around gathering dust and make it a server. Got spare parts?

 

[westrock2000]

You can probably find a computer on craigslist for around that price that'll have SATA interfaces. Alternately, you could find an ancient one for free on craigslist, and buy a simple SATA controller.

This is what I would say. Buy an older tower based computer and load Linux or OpenIndiana on it. This is basically what they NAS boxes are. And then you can use a good solid filesystem like ZFS. You can run it headless and login in through VNC or a command line if your not afraid of that.

ZFS does require some CPU processing to do it's thing, so you'd probably want to find something with a fairly modern CPU...like a Core2Duo at least (but I think some people have used Pentium 4's). The only disadvantage to using the older computer would be that it's not optimized for this role in terms of power usage, so it would generate more heat then something that's RISC or Atom based and has minimal hardware.

 

[dave99]

if you need very basic, maybe something like a pogoplug, which you can find them new for 25-40 bucks, you can ditch their OS and run archlinux on most of them. Typically you just plug external drives into it via usb.

http://archlinuxarm.org/

Tiny, no noise, low power use.