Home made NAS

[David Suna]

On 12/4/2012 10:43 AM, David Suna wrote:
> I have a bunch of old machines lying around which are currently just 
> collecting dust.  I would like to collect the disks from all of them, 
> put them together into a single server to act as a file server / NAS 
> on our home network.  There would probably be a combination of IDE and 
> SATA drives.  What would you recommend as the best way to achieve this 
> (with minimal cash outlay).  The home network is a mixed Windows and 
> Linux environment so I assume I would run Linux on the new server and 
> provide access to the disks via SAMBA.  For now the main function of 
> the server would be to serve as a place to do backups.  I have never 
> done anything with RAID so I don't know if that is something that I 
> should take into consideration (especially as the disks are of varying 
> sizes).
>
> Any information, suggestions or pointers would be appreciated.  I am 
> viewing this as a learning experience (in addition to making use of 
> old hardware for a positive purpose). 
Thank you all for all the useful information.

The consensus seems to be that the only real value in doing this would 
be for the learning experience as the cost benefit does not fall in 
favor of using old hardware.   Since that is not my priority at the 
moment I will give it a pass.

Thanks again.

-- 
David Suna
david at davidsconsultants.com