Building a simple NAS, which OS?

[BeastChan23]

I just bought an old Core 2 Duo machine on craigslist for $50 complete with 4GB of ram, and an SSD, it's also in a case but I'm planning on going to the store right now after I type this to go pick up a case/psu combo since this thing is small, I need more sata power connectors, it's running off a 20 pin for power instead of the 24 the motherboard has and is a measly 250w

 

What I plan on doing is moving my existing non-boot drives over to this NAS/Home server system to make more space in my H440 for more water cooling options and general airflow, my R9 290 temps scare me.

What I have are three hard drives currently with plans to expand in the near future:

750GB WD Blue

1TB WD Green

1.5TB Seagate

 

the drives currently store my media, tons of installers and general downloads, and the 1.5TB seagate drive has my Steam games installed on it as well

My current boot drive is two 120GB drives in raid 0, I plan on upgrading to a Samsung 950 Pro m.2 drive whenever they come down to more reasonable prices, so they could possibly move to the server for whatever reason.

 

I've been looking into my different OS options, and originally intended to throw FreeNAS on the machine but then realized their requirements are pretty high in terms of ram, and they want the drives in a particular format.

Since I already have data on my drives that is not an option, and they don't seem to want NTFS as a long term solution,

 

At the moment I'm thinking of putting Windows Server 2012 on the machine, is there another option that I can use with these NTFS drives? All I really need it for is just to access some data and media from my desktop, and maybe from my android tablet and phone.

I have consoles but streaming media to them would be pointless since it uses the same display as my computer.

 

Any help and thoughts would be appreciated!

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

If the system already has Windows XP or above installed, you could simply make a network drive within that Computer than can be shared on the network. I personally use Windows Server 2008 R2 because I got a license from my institution. 

[Sunshine1868]

If you want a decently full-featured server, you could always run Ubuntu with Samba. Ubuntu is free, lightweight, and powerful. plus, if you really wanted, you can add services like UPnP/DLNA servers to stream music/videos to devices on the network (smart TVs, roku, etc.)

[bobhays]

1. If you want to share it with the rest of the house you can share the windows drives as mentioned above. But it seems like you want to take them out for water cooling room.

 

2. If you take out the drive you installed steam games on they might not work the same. I'm not certain it wouldn't but don't be surprised if they don't. I'd suggest keeping one drive in your system for games and moving the other two out.

[Sunshine1868]

PS: FreeNAS only "requires" a lot of RAM because of their ZFS file system. I think if you poke around in the forums you'll find that you won't need that hefty of hardware.

[EmeraldFlame]

-snip-

As others have said, it sounds like your use case is pretty basic. Simply creating a network share within windows for each of the drives or specific folders on them would likely do you well enough. Although, you do say 1 drive has your steam games on it. You technically should be able to access these over the network, but things will likely load slowly. I'd keep that in your system locally.

 

If the system already has Windows XP or above installed, you could simply make a network drive within that Computer than can be shared on the network. I personally use Windows Server 2008 R2 because I got a license from my institution. 

I would say vista and up at this point. XP has the capability, but very honestly no one should have an XP system on a network at this point. The OS is too compromised from a security standpoint.

[Sunshine1868]

I would say vista and up at this point. XP has the capability, but very honestly no one should have an XP system on a network at this point. The OS is to compromised from a security standpoint.

...added to the fact that Microsoft has dropped support for the OS altogether, XP isn't a great option

[dalekphalm]

I just bought an old Core 2 Duo machine on craigslist for $50 complete with 4GB of ram, and an SSD, it's also in a case but I'm planning on going to the store right now after I type this to go pick up a case/psu combo since this thing is small, I need more sata power connectors, it's running off a 20 pin for power instead of the 24 the motherboard has and is a measly 250w

 

What I plan on doing is moving my existing non-boot drives over to this NAS/Home server system to make more space in my H440 for more water cooling options and general airflow, my R9 290 temps scare me.

What I have are three hard drives currently with plans to expand in the near future:

750GB WD Blue

1TB WD Green

1.5TB Seagate

 

the drives currently store my media, tons of installers and general downloads, and the 1.5TB seagate drive has my Steam games installed on it as well

My current boot drive is two 120GB drives in raid 0, I plan on upgrading to a Samsung 950 Pro m.2 drive whenever they come down to more reasonable prices, so they could possibly move to the server for whatever reason.

 

I've been looking into my different OS options, and originally intended to throw FreeNAS on the machine but then realized their requirements are pretty high in terms of ram, and they want the drives in a particular format.

Since I already have data on my drives that is not an option, and they don't seem to want NTFS as a long term solution,

 

At the moment I'm thinking of putting Windows Server 2012 on the machine, is there another option that I can use with these NTFS drives? All I really need it for is just to access some data and media from my desktop, and maybe from my android tablet and phone.

I have consoles but streaming media to them would be pointless since it uses the same display as my computer.

 

Any help and thoughts would be appreciated!

Here's what I suggest:

 

1. Keep that 750GB HDD with your steam games locally. As others have said, it'll load very slowly, and generally offer an inferior gaming experience.

2. Just use Windows. You don't need anything special. All you need is to create some shared drives.

 

Get a 2nd PC, install Windows 7 or higher (I don't recommend XP, since it's no longer supported, and a security nightmare, plus lack of good modern hardware support). Drop your 1TB and 1.5TB HDD's into the 2nd PC, and share the drives via Windows Network and Sharing.

 

Then on your Gaming PC, map those network shares to a drive letter.

 

There's little advantage to running something like FreeNAS, unless you're actually going to get multiple (identically sized) drives together to create a RAIDZ ZFS environment. If you're just sharing straight drives, with no RAID or RAID-like setup, then using Windows is going to be simplest.

 

You COULD run Linux of some description, but you'd need to temporarily store your Data elsewhere while you reformat the HDD's to ext3 or some other Linux filesystem.

 

Honestly, Windows is ideal, especially if you can get a license for it through school (Some high schools, and most Colleges and Universities, provide you with cheap or free Windows licenses).

 

If you're in a money pinch, you could do Linux, but if you aren't familiar with Linux, troubleshooting can be a serious bitch.

[Sunshine1868]

~snip~

If you're in a money pinch, you could do Linux, but if you aren't familiar with Linux, troubleshooting can be a serious bitch.

 

Thats what the forum is for

[dalekphalm]

Thats what the forum is for

Sure if you're up for it. Just hope you love CLI, because as good as Linux Desktop GUI's have become, troubleshooting inevitably involves CLI.

 

If you want something to tinker with, get Linux. If you want it to just work and be relatively easy to solve issues with, get Windows (if you can get a legit license anyway).

 

But in the end, it's personal preference

[Sunshine1868]

Sure if you're up for it. Just hope you love CLI, because as good as Linux Desktop GUI's have become, troubleshooting inevitably involves CLI.

 

If you want something to tinker with, get Linux. If you want it to just work and be relatively easy to solve issues with, get Windows (if you can get a legit license anyway).

 

But in the end, it's personal preference

Devil's (linux's) advocate here, the CLI is not as bad as people think. besides, I have set up multiple Ubuntu servers for the same sort of application...and I've never NEEDED to use the command line. (sometimes I use it because it is faster in certain instances)

[dalekphalm]

Devil's (linux's) advocate here, the CLI is not as bad as people think. besides, I have set up multiple Ubuntu servers for the same sort of application...and I've never NEEDED to use the command line. (sometimes I use it because it is faster in certain instances)

It might not be as bad as some people think, but in every instance where I used Linux for a server purpose (File/Media Server, VPN Server, etc), I almost always had to resort to CLI for something in the end.

 

For better or worse, that's still a negative.

 

For all he's using it for, why complicate things? A simple Windows install is all he needs. Nothing fancy. The settings are simple and easy to adjust. And it's pretty easy to troubleshoot.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there BeastChan23,

 

One small note from me:

 

- Since you are building a NAS with plans on using it as a server and file-sharing center I would recommend going for NAS/RAID-class drives. I do understand you already have these ones, but NAS/RAID drives have additional features such as TLER that enable them to work much safer and more stable in such conditions and in RAID arrays. Drives in NAS devices and servers and under much more pressure and handle more workloads compared to drives in regular desktops and using these might cause more frequent problesm including drive failures which can lead to data loss.

 

I would recommend going for something like WD Red when more budget is available and consider backing up the important data from these three drives. Here's some info on WD Red: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Mn2RbL

 

- Also, since you are reusing older drives I would recommend checking their health first before trusting our data to them in the new system. Running a diagnostic tool from the manufacturer should provide you with the needed info. For the WD drives that would be WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Yxxhre Run it and see if the drives pass both the quick and the extended tests.

 

Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

 

Captain_WD.

[fire219]

Our home NAS runs Ubuntu (14.04 LTS). If you're familiar with Linux, it's probably the best way to go. If not, your WS2012 is probably the next best thing.

 

 

You COULD run Linux of some description, but you'd need to temporarily store your Data elsewhere while you reformat the HDD's to ext3 or some other Linux filesystem.

 

Every mainstream Linux distro has support for FAT32 and NTFS.

[dalekphalm]

Our home NAS runs Ubuntu (14.04 LTS). If you're familiar with Linux, it's probably the best way to go. If not, your WS2012 is probably the next best thing.

 

 

Every mainstream Linux distro has support for FAT32 and NTFS.

Fair enough. Still don't think Linux would necessarily be the best choice for this scenario, but that honestly comes down to the OP's knowledge/skill level and their desire for jumping into it. It's certainly a viable option though.