Very Cheap NAS

[michaelaomahony]

Hi all, I've recently been offered a very cheap system that I'm thinking of using as a NAS however I don't know if the system is too weak.

 

The specs are:

C2d E4700

4GB RAM

 

If anyone could let me know if this is okay and potentially what OS to use, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[desertcomputer]

Drives? 

 

Ubuntu Server. 

[michaelaomahony]

Just now, MrUnknownEMC said:

Drives? 

 

Ubuntu Server. 

Yeah I have a few 500GB drives lying around that I could stick into a RAID array.

[Radium_Angel]

I have several dedicated NAS boxes, picked them up for less than 50$ on ebay.

Neatgear ReadyNAS NV+. Fantastic little boxes. Heck of a lot easier and less time consuming to set up than using a full PC.

 

[Boomwebsearch]

2 hours ago, michaelaomahony said:

Hi all, I've recently been offered a very cheap system that I'm thinking of using as a NAS however I don't know if the system is too weak.

 

The specs are:

C2d E4700

4GB RAM

 

If anyone could let me know if this is okay and potentially what OS to use, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

The CPU/processor should be fast enough for creating a NAS, although not absolutely necessary I recommend having 8GB of RAM as I think that it will highly increase (to some extent) the performance of this system that you are considering to be using as a NAS.

[ProjectBox153]

I’ve got an E8500 w/ 3GB of RAM running FreeNAS and it’s wondeful. There’s been no problems with it. 

[KingCollins]

I think you should be fine with that. My first home server was a Pentium 4 HT (1 Core!!) with 4Gb or Ram and it ran many services just fine.

 

I would recommend FreeNAS. The ZFS file system recommends 1Gb of RAM for every 1Tb of storage, by the sounds of it you should be fine.

[paddy-stone]

45 minutes ago, KingCollins said:

I think you should be fine with that. My first home server was a Pentium 4 HT (1 Core!!) with 4Gb or Ram and it ran many services just fine.

 

I would recommend FreeNAS. The ZFS file system recommends 1Gb of RAM for every 1Tb of storage, by the sounds of it you should be fine.

Yeah, that's just a recommendation though.. I am running freenas 11 with 8GB ram and 10TB of storage, and most times it shows almost approx 3.5GB free in monitoring.

[Verrm]

Take it and don't worry, it'll run great. OS is a no-brainer IMO. FreeNAS if it will be a NAS-only machine. Any mainstream linux if you want it to do more - Ubuntu Server or CentOS will work great. The FreeNAS will be easier to set and other linux versions will give you more flexibility. Don't worry too much though, both distros have awesome community to help you set up your machine if you need help.

[Dark]

On 9/24/2017 at 9:23 AM, Radium_Angel said:

I have several dedicated NAS boxes, picked them up for less than 50$ on ebay.

Neatgear ReadyNAS NV+. Fantastic little boxes. Heck of a lot easier and less time consuming to set up than using a full PC.

 

The NV+ is one of the worst NAS appliances I've owned.  It's ridiculously slow and rebuild times on decently sized arrays can take days.  Won't even bother talking about the software... 

I would never recommend one.

[Radium_Angel]

12 hours ago, Dark said:

The NV+ is one of the worst NAS appliances I've owned.  It's ridiculously slow and rebuild times on decently sized arrays can take days.  Won't even bother talking about the software... 

I would never recommend one.

Interesting, I've never had an issue with either the firmware, software, updating said software, X-RAID, or rebuilding. Shrug, maybe I got the good ones and you got the bad ones? The point being, a dedicated NAS will be easier and cheaper to setup and use rather than going the PC/FreeNAS route.