[ale] Build-yer-own NAS server

[Raylynn Knight]

On Tue, 2006-06-06 at 13:03 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> Pete Hardie wrote:
> > 1) is this a bonkers idea in the first place?
> >   
> Not in the least.  We've had all of our machines, Windows and Linux, in
> the house using a common file server for years and it is, frankly,
> invaluable.
> > 2) what should I look at w/r/t the NAS device proper (which distro,
> > mobo issues, etc)?
> >   
> If ever there were a set-and-forget application, this is it.  I run
> Gentoo on a Sockey 7 mobo with a K6-2+/550 (basically a K6-3 laptop
> CPU).  There is a PCI IDE card with two 160GB drives connected.  The box
> boots to a third non-RAID drive. 
> > 3) what type of RAID would be suitable for this?
> >   
> RAID 1, 10, 0+1, or 5.  Much depends on how cost-effective you want to
> be with your disks.  160GB was a big deal when I built my file server,
> so I could only pop for two drives, leaving me with ~150GB effective
> under RAID 1.  You *can* spread RAID 5 among onboard and not-onboard
> controllers and it won't matter terribly much.
> > 4) am I forgetting anything?
> >
> > TIA,
> >
> > Pete
> >
My solution 6 months ago was a $45 dollar FireWire card and 4 - 250GB
FireWire drives giving me 500GB with better performance than IDE.  Today
you can do better as Frys has 320 GB FireWire drives for less than $190.
I went with FireWire over SATA because I wasn't sure of the SATA driver
support in the Linux kernel at the time.

Ray