Turning an old PC into a NAS - For a chomebook user?

mr_twabfish · December 20, 2019

First off, if this isn't possible just let me know

I recently acquired a Dell tower and its been sitting around for a while. I'd like to convert it to a NAS for my parents. Specs: i3-4150, 6gb RAM, old garbage HDD that needs replacing. Problem being that they have a cheap Chromebook, and use its absolute failure of a file manager to attempt to store their precious photos. Is there anyway to 1.) connect a Chromebook to a NAS. and if so, 2.) What would I need to get to make that PC into a functioning NAS/ what OS do you suggest?

mail929 · December 20, 2019

First off that computer would make a great NAS once some new hard drives are added. As for the OS it depends on how hard you want to go. FreeNAS is an operating system designed for NASs but it sounds pretty overkill for your use case. My personal preference would be to run a light Linux distro with Samba to reduce overhead but there is no reason you couldn't just run Windows and create a share from that. There are some limitations to mounting network storage on a Chromebook but it is perfectly doable. What you would need to do is make a Samba/SMB share on the NAS then use this plugin to mount it to the Chromebook.

Samfisher · December 20, 2019

7 hours ago, mail929 said:

First off that computer would make a great NAS once some new hard drives are added. As for the OS it depends on how hard you want to go. FreeNAS is an operating system designed for NASs but it sounds pretty overkill for your use case. My personal preference would be to run a light Linux distro with Samba to reduce overhead but there is no reason you couldn't just run Windows and create a share from that. There are some limitations to mounting network storage on a Chromebook but it is perfectly doable. What you would need to do is make a Samba/SMB share on the NAS then use this plugin to mount it to the Chromebook.

Nice. I have a spare Windows license that I can burn on an old PC I have too, to convert into a NAS. I am moving existing HDDs into the system and FreeNas wouldn't work for me cos they ONLY support ZFS now, which means formatting my drives, which is an instant no go as I have no damn space to move everything before the format. Just create a shared drive, map it on the other end and away it goes? Does this work with torrents? Pointing to a network drive.