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Inexpensive network attached storage?

Mar 7, 2011 4:09 PM

I'm looking for an inexpensive network attached storage option for home. An empty box bring-your-own-drives option would be preferable, 4 bays and RAID capable. As close to $100 as possible without ending up with an unreliable piece of junk.

dosquatch dosquatch

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At that price point it is almost impossible to find a 4-bay NAS. Your best bet if you are looking for a bargain NAS is to use an old desktop. Then, you can probably fit up to 6 or 7 drives, and most motherboards made in the past 5 years support some type of RAID, although granted the power consumption might be higher.

If you do decide to go the desktop conversion route, I would look up FreeNAS, it has a decent web interface and works fairly well.

If you went with all new parts it would be possible to do for ~$150ish, if you re-used parts you might not even have to pay a dime.

killersquirel11 killersquirel11
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I could only find ones with 2 bays at that price point, like this one:
http://tinyurl.com/2b87afz

The ones I saw with 4 bays were $300+.

thefenst thefenst
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Spend the money for a decent case (I prefer Antec), with multiple bays (as @killersquirel11 suggested), and use a decent OS (I personally prefer either FreeBSD or OpenBSD, but Linux is also an option, of course). I have friends using FreeNAS and a couple of beige box computers with multiple drive bays in just this way. I actually think that this is a better solution than most of the products that you will find in the consumer arena for NAS.

Decent NAS can absorb a large budget in a heartbeat, and the price tends to start at around the cost of a new car. Here's a fun toy as an example:

http://www.emc.com/products/family/celerra-family.htm

shrdlu shrdlu
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y'all are awesome, thanks!

dosquatch dosquatch
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@shrdlu:
Some crazy DIY NAS setups:
http://hackaday.com/2010/10/21/90-tb-drive-array-for-home-storage-needs/
http://hackaday.com/2009/09/04/how-a-storoage-company-builds-their-own/

This is another (16TB) DIY build showing excellent craftsmanship
http://www.willudesign.com/BlackDwarfTop.html

killersquirel11 killersquirel11

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