What is the Ideal Low-end NAS Solution?

Mark asks: "As demand for storage continues to grow and prices continue to drop, network attached storage (NAS) devices are popping up everywhere...from large enterprises to restaurants to small offices and homes. Several vendors are now offering low-end NAS solutions targeted at SOHO users, with varying results. Most of them are just standard PC components and standard IDE hard drives running Linux, but the price tag on these often far oustrips what one would expect to pay for the parts. Hence, people all over the world (myself included) are building their own NAS machines at home at a fraction of the cost. Beyond support for RAID, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, and FTP, what would the ideal home NAS operating system include? And more importantly, what should it leave out to avoid conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and instability? Are there any Linux/*BSD/other distributions out there optimized specifically for NAS applications? What does the ideal NAS distribution look like to you?"

Network limitations

[sirangusthefuzz]

It is much easier to create a NAS that far outperforms your needs. For example, how many users do you have accessing the hard drives at once? If your answer is less than 10, you probably will be able to get along fine with 7200 rpm drives. Also, if you are just setting this up attached to your home network, RAID is not necessary because the network can most likely only transfer data at 10/100 speeds. Right now, my NAS is a Slackware linux box with a 166 mhz pentium running four 200GB IDE drives. I get around 5 mb/s per user. The major factor seems to be the amount of ram in the NAS. I just upgraded to 1 GB because it is so cheap for PC 100 ram. Overall, make sure you know what is important and dont overspend for features you cant use.

Re:Network limitations

[Hatta]

RAID is not necessary because the network can most likely only transfer data at 10/100 speeds. Right now, my NAS is a Slackware linux box with a 166 mhz pentium running four 200GB IDE drives.

When one of those 200GB drives dies, you might think a little differently.

Another question...

[Anonymous Coward]

For a homebuilt file server with infrequent access, how do you minimize power draw and disk accesses (when files aren't actively being served)?

NASLite

[nm42]

If you're looking for something really low end to use at home, check out NASLite [freshmeat.net]