NAS: Network Attached Storage
Ikea: Purveyors of neat, inexpensive things.
Ikea NAS: Way-Cool, Low-Power, High-Capacity, Network Storage or general use computer.
Update: A little more can be found at my website post: http://aaroneiche.com/2009/03/31/my-diy-nas/ - hardware is the same, but this contains a bit more about it's use.
Update 2: The NAS has been in regular use for a few of months and has not had any heat issues. It does get occasionally warm on top. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred to put a small vent in the front to improve airflow, but apparently It's not necessary. The air that comes in through the port panel may be enough. Also, I've seen a number of people other places state that this costs too much compared to commercially available options. Please note that my price (about $310) includes a 1.5TB harddrive, because a NAS is worthless without a drive in it. So at under $200, I think it's a pretty good value, especially considering it's flexibility.
A long time back I stumbled across a website where a guy had put together a cheap DIY computer for $200. His costs went up and down a bit, but in the end he had a computer that he could not only experiment with, but also use as a back-up storage device. This was the first time I ever heard of a NAS.
Network Attached Storage is like an external hard drive. Instead of plugging it into your USB or Firewire port, you connect it to your local network. This is useful because it's accessible from each computer on the network. Given the right OS and permissions, you can control who can access it when, and even for what purpose.
Additionally, This little unit is a way to be a little nicer to the environment. All the electronics are RoHS compliant and the unit is Low Power, saving you some cash and the Earth some life.
This instructable will show you how to Build the NAS I built, and point you in the right direction for getting it up and running.
Ikea: Purveyors of neat, inexpensive things.
Ikea NAS: Way-Cool, Low-Power, High-Capacity, Network Storage or general use computer.
Update: A little more can be found at my website post: http://aaroneiche.com/2009/03/31/my-diy-nas/ - hardware is the same, but this contains a bit more about it's use.
Update 2: The NAS has been in regular use for a few of months and has not had any heat issues. It does get occasionally warm on top. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred to put a small vent in the front to improve airflow, but apparently It's not necessary. The air that comes in through the port panel may be enough. Also, I've seen a number of people other places state that this costs too much compared to commercially available options. Please note that my price (about $310) includes a 1.5TB harddrive, because a NAS is worthless without a drive in it. So at under $200, I think it's a pretty good value, especially considering it's flexibility.
A long time back I stumbled across a website where a guy had put together a cheap DIY computer for $200. His costs went up and down a bit, but in the end he had a computer that he could not only experiment with, but also use as a back-up storage device. This was the first time I ever heard of a NAS.
Network Attached Storage is like an external hard drive. Instead of plugging it into your USB or Firewire port, you connect it to your local network. This is useful because it's accessible from each computer on the network. Given the right OS and permissions, you can control who can access it when, and even for what purpose.
Additionally, This little unit is a way to be a little nicer to the environment. All the electronics are RoHS compliant and the unit is Low Power, saving you some cash and the Earth some life.
This instructable will show you how to Build the NAS I built, and point you in the right direction for getting it up and running.
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1: Parts and Supplies
Things you will need:
1x Stainless Steel Box from Ikea (Emu) - This actually comes in a set of two. I wanted something small, so I chose the use the 7x10 box, but the larger box will work just great.
1x Mini-ITX motherboard - The Mini-ITX form factor motherboard is really brilliant. Compact, powerful, low-power, and usually the processor is integrated right into the board, so you don't have to worry about anything. I'm using the Intl D945GCLF2
Hard drives - depending on how much storage you need, this will vary. I went with a 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11. I'll warn you that this drive has a bad reputation for RAID setups, so if you're going to do something like that, make sure you get a drive that has a better track record.
Power Supply - The Pico PSU120. This is quite a bit of power in a little package, 120w to be precise. I love these things. There's no way you'll need more power than this thing can dole out.
A Fan - I had an 80mm fan from another project hanging around, and I realized that I'd probably need it if I didn't cut some vents in the top. My fan is extremely quiet. I'll warn you that the fan onboard the motherboard is not very quiet. DON'T TRY TO RUN WITHOUT IT. The video chipset will not survive with passive cooling.
Ram - 2GB, it's the max this board will take.
An ATX power-switch - This a little power switch to turn on and off.
2x Right angle mounting brackets. You'll use these to mount the Hard-drive.
Assortment of screws and nuts - 6-32 thread screws are the standard hard drive screw, and I found that those screws of different lengths worked great for everything. I did use 8-32 for a couple of things, but there was no difference practically speaking.
Cost for Project:
Kingston Ram 2GB: $22.99
Intel D945GCLF2: $83.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB: $129.99
Ikea "Emu" boxes: $6.00
PicoPSU 120 60W kit: $54.95
Various Screws, Mounting Hardware: ~$10.00
Total: ~$308 not including shipping. No doubt you could get a NAS for cheaper than this, but you won't get the expansion or flexibility.
1x Stainless Steel Box from Ikea (Emu) - This actually comes in a set of two. I wanted something small, so I chose the use the 7x10 box, but the larger box will work just great.
1x Mini-ITX motherboard - The Mini-ITX form factor motherboard is really brilliant. Compact, powerful, low-power, and usually the processor is integrated right into the board, so you don't have to worry about anything. I'm using the Intl D945GCLF2
Hard drives - depending on how much storage you need, this will vary. I went with a 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11. I'll warn you that this drive has a bad reputation for RAID setups, so if you're going to do something like that, make sure you get a drive that has a better track record.
Power Supply - The Pico PSU120. This is quite a bit of power in a little package, 120w to be precise. I love these things. There's no way you'll need more power than this thing can dole out.
A Fan - I had an 80mm fan from another project hanging around, and I realized that I'd probably need it if I didn't cut some vents in the top. My fan is extremely quiet. I'll warn you that the fan onboard the motherboard is not very quiet. DON'T TRY TO RUN WITHOUT IT. The video chipset will not survive with passive cooling.
Ram - 2GB, it's the max this board will take.
An ATX power-switch - This a little power switch to turn on and off.
2x Right angle mounting brackets. You'll use these to mount the Hard-drive.
Assortment of screws and nuts - 6-32 thread screws are the standard hard drive screw, and I found that those screws of different lengths worked great for everything. I did use 8-32 for a couple of things, but there was no difference practically speaking.
Cost for Project:
Kingston Ram 2GB: $22.99
Intel D945GCLF2: $83.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB: $129.99
Ikea "Emu" boxes: $6.00
PicoPSU 120 60W kit: $54.95
Various Screws, Mounting Hardware: ~$10.00
Total: ~$308 not including shipping. No doubt you could get a NAS for cheaper than this, but you won't get the expansion or flexibility.
Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »
Making th eproper holes for yr connectors seems hell though.
Need to look more into yr PSY solution. Currntly I use a psu board that plugs directly into the connectors on the mother board and only has one lead coming out, but it is meant for a double isolated device so I always sense some voltage on the metal parts (not a good feeling)
Used FreeNas in the past. quite easy to set up, but a bit limited and as I recall, it has a proprietory file system :-)
I use Ubuntu Server. The bad thing of that is that the latest versions do not run on older boards anymore. Darn. that was always the good thing of Linux
Currently, I'm running FreeNAS 8, with a ZFS ZRAID array. I don't believe that ZFS is proprietary, but its license is (unfortunately) incompatible in terms of including it with linux.
Ideally, I'd like to go with a linux system as there's so much more broad support, but afaik, Linux doesn't have a comparable FS to ZFS (I've looked only briefly at btrfs and trying to get zfs to run on linux and haven't had much luck.)
This solution worked for me for a while, but eventually I needed more space and ended up just buying a case with a lot of room in it.
http://bit.ly/emumediabox
If the hard drives were 7500 10 000 rpm and more than one, than the space limitations and extra heat would have a chance to render the system unstable.
The usual clients for theese boards are industrial clients that use small computers to control technological proceses, automations etc.
Let's hope Intel will launch it's universal optical fiber connection and port diversity will be history.
lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap
and then building one of these to store all the media and stream it to the HTPC. So would i just have to install FreeNas on the NAS right? But then how would I access the files on the HTPC? I was reading around and it looked like you can use Internet Explorer to access the files, but since the HTPC would be using XMBC Live as it's OS, would i be able to use Internet Explorer?
Alternatively, if you don't want the NAS for anything else, you could just build this system and install XMBC on this. It'd cost less than putting together both boxes, and you could probably still access an XMBC box's drive.
But so basically if i set up XMBC live on one box, and then set up SAMBA in FreeNAS' setting or wherever you have to set it up, the XMBC box should be able to find it? And would, for example, my regular laptop running Windows be able to find the NAS and get files from it too?
i must say that i like PS2 keyboards better than the USB versions becouse with USB versions i have the experience that multiple keys pressed at the same time it doesnt take all of them (for gaming)
and those printer ports are great for programming attiny/atmega chips :)
I found out last month that these boards don't respond to the new aluminum Apple Keyboards at boot, so I had to borrow an old PS/2 keyboard.
You're right, the serial ports are good for hardware programming/ low-level communication between devices. I didn't really ever expect to have anything connected that would need the port, but If I were using this as a regular boot machine, I definitely see the advantage to having it around.
I got a little computer from MitxPC for about $300. It includes 4 gigabit ethernet ports. So, I can have NAS, network traffic control, wireless access, and host all the usual servers (subversion, http, wiki, samba, etc).
My goal was a low power (24x7) unit that could provide all the services (NAS and networking) that i needed for my house. This little ITX running Ubuntu worked out perfectly.
I am using OpenWRT in an Asus router. But, the router resources are too limited to host server software. So, I added this ITX to my network.
Are you running your ITX 24/7? What kind of power consumption are you seeing?
To answer your questions:
You can definitely do a RAID in the case, and FreeNAS has built-in software RAID support. I have not tried it, but I've been somewhat tempted. In my build, there's definitely room for at least one more drive, more if you get creative with space. If software RAID's not what you want, there's a PCI slot on the MB that you can use for a RAID controller.
On my home network (with only the two computers) we use it for backup and non-essential storage. We previously had an external drive we were using for this sort of stuff, and it would have been fine to continue to use that way. This does offer a couple of fun things:
My FreeNas is also in a custom box. Look here http://retrocomputers.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/the-apple-lciii-nas/