Turning an old PC to a NAS.

[Stardusted]

Hello hello

I recently made a total upgrade to my gfs pc (actually I don't know if it qualifies as an upgrade, since we only kept the PSU) and have a pentium D a gigabyte motherboard and 4gb of ram as leftovers.

Now, I use large amounts of hdd space, mainly due to my hobbies (photography & music). I have 3 external MyBook WD drives, summing up to 4TBs of data, one of them being a mirror edition.

I am thinking now of turning the leftovers to a NAS, but I would really like to go cheap here. I found a decent looking pc case for a little less than 30$ (450watt psu of a brand I would rather not know its name included). I also decided to go after this http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/backplanes.php?we_objectID=7961

Would it save me some money to discard the backplane, get a better pc case (and a better psu maybe) and just screw the hard drives inside the case? I don't really think I will need disc swapping, unless of course one of my drives fails. On the other hand, it does seem nicer to have the backplane with the indicating leds the fans and all that stuff.

Also, since I will attempt to open the mybook cases and remove the drives in order to use them as internal, do you think that could be more trouble than it's worth?

Would I be better off just taking a usb hub and have them all plugged in?

PS : I really can't spend more than 110-120$ for this little project of mine, so please keep that in mind if you decide to spare some time answering

 

[x509]

Hello hello

I recently made a total upgrade to my gfs pc

Same here, but it was my wife's PC that got upgraded. Budget not so tight, but having just spent almost $2K on "upgrades," I'd also like to keep costs low. Old system is a dual Athlon 2000, 3.5 GB of RAM, etc. I know that there are no Win 7-generation drivers available.

Is it even worth it to try to salvage the MB, CPUs and RAM, or just to toss them in favor of a new-ish but low cost MB/CPU/RAM. Or put another way, what is the "entry price" for a file server for a home LAN.

 

[il_napoletano]

Hello hello

Also, since I will attempt to open the mybook cases and remove the drives in order to use them as internal, do you think that could be more trouble than it's worth?

Would I be better off just taking a usb hub and have them all plugged in?

PS : I really can't spend more than 110-120$ for this little project of mine, so please keep that in mind if you decide to spare some time answering

We have a NAS server at the moment running FreeNAS with an athlon 2000+ and it works great.

Personally I would use a USB hub...as I'm not sure if they use a firmware to organize the data

and all you would need is a case and psu...and a 2GB usb pen(to install freenas and have as boot disk)
then monitors/keyboard/mouse can be borrowed as they only have to be plugged while installing..

 

[Dangman]

I am thinking now of turning the leftovers to a NAS, but I would really like to go cheap here. I found a decent looking pc case for a little less than 30$ (450watt psu of a brand I would rather not know its name included).

Would it save me some money to discard the backplane, get a better pc case (and a better psu maybe) and just screw the hard drives inside the case? I don't really think I will need disc swapping, unless of course one of my drives fails. On the other hand, it does seem nicer to have the backplane with the indicating leds the fans and all that stuff.

First and foremost, don't cheap out on the PSU. Remember that this is holding your data. As such, a crappy PSU that dies and kills your hardware isn't a good idea. So spend the extra cash for a good PSU. Even the cheap Antec EA380D or the Corsair CX430 V2 would be a vast step-up.

So in other words, forget the backplane. You're better off from a safety standpoint wiht a better PSU and better case.

Also, since I will attempt to open the mybook cases and remove the drives in order to use them as internal, do you think that could be more trouble than it's worth?

Last time I did that, it was a pain in the ass but still doable. However, you may lose the warranty on those external drives if you open them up.

Would I be better off just taking a usb hub and have them all plugged in?

A very clunky setup since you'd effectively be having multiple power adapters plugged in the power outlet. But doable albeit very slow since you're accessing via USB. If you want faster performaance If you do go the USB hub route, make sure that it's a powered USB hub (i.e has its own seperate power adapter) to increase performance.

 

[Stardusted]

The only thing that bothers me atm is the procedure of opening the mybooks. I decided to listen to danny's advice and got that psu (the corsair one). Hopefully it wont be a big pita and i will be able to get the drives out of the cases without destroying either of them.