Can someone explain NAS servers to me...?

DJ...

DJ...

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I have a few 3.5" internal hard drives lying around at home and in looking into the options to use them with my new setup, I've found that I can either buy enclosures for them or set them up as an NAS server. I see NAS servers are more expensive but I'm wondering what the benefits are/would be to me.

Would I get better transfer rates than USB2.0?
Will it then act as a central storage server?
Can I then stipulate who has access and to what drives?

Any help here would be appreciated...
 
NAS - Network addressable storage,it's a network servers for your harddrives

Based upon how the drive and OS is configured regarding RAID and memory/OS you could have faster transfer speeds,both Linux and Windows Based OSes have ACL lists to maintain who can access what based upon set permissions
 
I think you mean Network Attached Storage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

Your transfer rates will depend on the speed of your network, 10/100/1000mbps, also the quality of switches used.

Basically a NAS device will allow you to take all your hardrives, RAID them either for performance or redundancy or both depending on budget. Plug a network cable in and it will be accessible from clients that are plugged into your network.

As for the speed question

http://lyberty.com/tech/terms/usb.html
 
Last edited:
have a look at http://www.freenas.org/ for the software side.
Nice thing about it is you can have a central location for your stuff as apposed to multiple external hard drives.
 
PsyWulf said:
NAS - Network addressable storage,it's a network servers for your harddrives

Based upon how the drive and OS is configured regarding RAID and memory/OS you could have faster transfer speeds,both Linux and Windows Based OSes have ACL lists to maintain who can access what based upon set permissions
Click to expand...

What are the benefits to using it though? I want to know if I going through this process is going to be beneficial to me at all...
 
Hemps said:
have a look at http://www.freenas.org/ for the software side.
Nice thing about it is you can have a central location for your stuff as apposed to multiple external hard drives.
Click to expand...

I have 4 externals and 6 internal hard drives so it would be nice to separate them up and use a single power source...
 
Do you have multiple machines accessing a central storage area?

if you only have a single machine then it may not be beneficial, if you have multiple machines then it will as a nas device will consume less power than a pc with the drives in (depending on the nas device)

Also if you have alot of drives they may not fit in a single machine.
 
I'm guessing they're varying sizes etc.

You'll probably slap them into a JBOD pool and use the NAS as a storage facility...

Benefits: NAS is storaged centric. No admin/maintenance overhead like on a server, for example. That's if you buy an off the shelf product. Creating a NAS yourself is pretty much the same as building a small Linux server for file serving, for example.

How were you thinking of connecting them? Old mobo/cpu?
 
Spazmatic said:
Do you have multiple machines accessing a central storage area?

if you only have a single machine then it may not be beneficial, if you have multiple machines then it will as a nas device will consume less power than a pc with the drives in (depending on the nas device)

Also if you have alot of drives they may not fit in a single machine.
Click to expand...

My plan is to create a complete home theatre centre all accessing a central storage unit so this is possibly the way to go then. Maybe I should just scrap the older drives and just buy two 3TB drives instead and then set them up as a NAS server...
 
DJ... said:
What are the benefits to using it though? I want to know if I going through this process is going to be beneficial to me at all...
Click to expand...

The benefits are that you can connect it to your home network and access data from any pc on the network, you can can run large arrays of disks and you can set up advanced permissions. Best way is to get yourself started is by building your own nas, I would recommend a HP Microserver. You can buy NAS "enclosures" which are convenient but man they rip you off :D
 
unskinnybob said:
I'm guessing they're varying sizes etc.

You'll probably slap them into a JBOD pool and use the NAS as a storage facility...

Benefits: NAS is storaged centric. No admin/maintenance overhead like on a server, for example. That's if you buy an off the shelf product. Creating a NAS yourself is pretty much the same as building a small Linux server for file serving, for example.

How were you thinking of connecting them? Old mobo/cpu?
Click to expand...

I've got an old machine lying around but it is incredibly noisy because it used to be a beast of a machine. I suppose I could buy a new PSU but then again I'd probably prefer more of a plug N play solution. Any advice regarding brands and models to host 2, maybe 3 drives?
 
DJ... said:
My plan is to create a complete home theatre centre all accessing a central storage unit so this is possibly the way to go then. Maybe I should just scrap the older drives and just buy two 3TB drives instead and then set them up as a NAS server...
Click to expand...

Remember that you'll have a limited amount of controller ports on a normal motherboard, say 4x SATA, 4 x IDE. The rest have to go USB. What will your total storage pool be? Buyung 2x 3TBs might be the better call.
 
I have 4 externals and 6 internal hard drives so it would be nice to separate them up and use a single power source...
Click to expand...

That's one benefit.

The main thing is that the drives are always available on the network, and not attached to a pc that has to allways be running.
Its compact and can be stored away, you can also use the NAS to manage your data.

I think (depending on the NAS) you can configure the device to show all your drives as one big drive ?
 
So if I'm reading correctly, the HP Proliant has 4 bays of storage? Which is a damn-side better than the NAS devices I've been looking at. And I then run the HP as the main nas device for all the home computers and TVs and use it as the main output to the home cinema at the same time, using openelec?
 
DJ... said:
So if I'm reading correctly, the HP Proliant has 4 bays of storage? Which is a damn-side better than the NAS devices I've been looking at. And I then run the HP as the main nas device for all the home computers and TVs and use it as the main output to the home cinema at the same time, using openelec?
Click to expand...

5. You can put a drive in the optical bay too ;)
 
DJ... said:
So if I'm reading correctly, the HP Proliant has 4 bays of storage? Which is a damn-side better than the NAS devices I've been looking at. And I then run the HP as the main nas device for all the home computers and TVs and use it as the main output to the home cinema at the same time, using openelec?
Click to expand...

I'm running a little HP ML150 as a home server. I think it has 6x SATA/SAS connections. I use Windows Homeserver 2011 as OS. Homeserver gives you the ability to join all your disks into one storage pool. It also has media sharing abilities.

Never tried openelec. Maybe I'll do a dual boot and put it to the test this weekend.
 
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