NAS OS Help

[fongwee]

Hi,

I am new and is trying to DIY my own NAS. So far, the hardware that I am getting are as follows
1) MSI 880GM-E41
2) AMD Athalon II X2 250
3) 2GB RAM x 2
4) CM Elite 310
5) Acbel 470W
6) WD green 2 Tb x 4

I am still thinking about which OS to run. My requirements are as follows
1) Run from USB disk if possible
2) GUI
3) Easy to setup

Is Ubuntu easy to use and can it run from USB drive?

Thanks for any help rendered

 

[00Roush]

First up I might recommend you pick a different power supply. Not really sure of the quality of the Acbel brand. If you want a power supply that will last I recommend some the name brands. Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, Delta, Silverstone, Enermax, and PC Power and Cooling are all generally considered good brands and overall use good quality components in their power supplies. Not to say others won't work just fine but if the NAS you are planning on building will be on 24x7 a good power supply can help to ensure you don't run into problems 6 months down the road.

As for the OS... Ubuntu can be setup to be easy to use and I believe it can run from a USB disk. Out of the box though it is not that easy to use. I haven't tested the lastest Ubuntu Server version so I can't be sure but I think it is all command line based out of the box. But installing Webmin isn't too difficult and once that is done setup is much easier via a Web interface. Actually there is a step by step article here on the SmallNetBuilder website that goes through the steps on how to setup Ubuntu Server. It is for an older version of Ubuntu Server but I am fairly sure the steps are still basically the same.

I think overall though one of the easiest OSes to get setup is FreeNAS. It literally takes less than 10 minutes to boot from a CD, install the OS to a USB drive and then setup some basic SAMBA shares. I would recommend anyone who is setting up a NAS to at least try it out.

00Roush

 

[paradoxni]

I have recently built my own NAS and used Ubuntu Server + Webmin. Very easy to setup (though I do have ubuntu server experience at work) and performance is great. The webmin interface is very comprehensive, pretty much anything you can do at the command line can be done from the GUI.

This helped: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-howto/30573-build-your-own-atom-based-nas-part-2

I had Ubuntu + webmin installed and running in 15 mins!