NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi I'm looking at setting up a cheap fast NASlite file server running at gigabit speeds, using a motherboard with a fast AMD chip and built in Gigabit LAN and graphics to minimise cost.

I'd like to know whether anyone here knows what sort of all-in-1 motherboard will/won't work at full speed serving digital audio (WAV) files to 2 machines in a recording studio (mac dual G5 + dual processor PC)

These are some of the boards that seem to fit the bill:

MSI K8T
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... tID=209817
Realtek 8110S LAN

Gigabyte GA- K8NE
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... tID=213218
Marvell 88E1111 Gigabit LAN PHY chip

Alternately there is the option of buying a cheaper board and adding a Intel PRO/1000 LAN PCI card for about the same price.

Will NASlite work properly with a PCI card if the onboard LAN is disabled in the BIOS?

What is the optimum amount of memory I would need to get?

Any advice, experiences would be very welcome since I'm very worried about encountering software/hardware incompatabilites (resulting in sub-par performance) and would like to get it right 1st time. Unfortunately I can't afford an expensive pre-built gigabit NAS solution...

Thanks a lot, Julian

The whole concept of NASlite is to use old machines, get hold of a Pentium 2 or 3 machine with a floppy and CD drive, put 256mb of RAM in it, get a Netgear gigabit pci card and away you go.

My NAS box has an old K6-2 333 AMD chip 256mb of RAM and a 400GB HDD connected to my network with a Netgear GA311 Gigabit card. My gigabit card is not yet gigabit enabled as I am waiting for a gigabit switch and yet I stream dvd movies to my xbox with exceptional quality full digital sound and no stuttering.

Super fast processors and motherboards are just not required, decent RAM and fast network connections should be all you need.

although its worth mentioning that this is not true if you plan to use the USB boot option since this is a relatively new motherboard feature

FAT, I agree IMHO I can't see the point of the USB version as you need to have modern motherboards to get the USB booting feature but the actual software requirement will run on a P2 200mhz machine, it seems like technology overkill to get around a floppy disc

If you have to put modern motherboards in then surely running a full OS and using the SATA/RAID/Print server functions would be a better alternative

I think the "road map" should've took a right turn at the USB idea and gone straight to either a fully CD config and boot version, or a version running directly off a partition on a hard drive, couple that with PCI IDE support and you could put NASlite on a small 2-4GB hdd on IDE channel 1 and then load up with as many other hdd's as you need. If the boot/config hard drive was accessible across the network but with a little security to stop you accidentally formatting it you could then keep a backup copy of the config/boot files on another pc or even burned to a cd/dvd. Like a back up to your back up machine.

I am sure lots of people think the USB idea is great but to me the biggest plus of NASlite was using up old bits of kit to get cheap NAS, come on guys I bet most of us only paid money for the hard drives maybe a stick of RAM and the software, price these systems up against something like a terrastation!! I reckon you could build a 1700GB NAS box for the price of a 1TB terrastation.

Yes Wilbur, but if you're gonna create a NAS out of an old mboard that's capable of only say ATA33 then you might as well scrap the whole idea of a GIGAbit network because the ATA33 on the mboard is going to limit your speeds regardless of if you use a GIGAbit card or how fast your HD's are in the NAS.

If your interest is in truly GIGABit, then you have to have hardware that is capable of those requirements.

There are many arguments one can make on how or what is the absolute best hardware implementation of a NASlite server. Most will probably be valid in a narrowly defined application. It is true that NASLite requirements, in terms of hardware, are very low in comparison to other solutions. It is also true that NASLite is perfectly suited for older, low-powered machines. However as a side effect of those low requirements, performance can be outstanding on more capable machines. In addition, the lack of non-essential bloat aids operating stability tremendously compared to other solutions.

To answer the original question in the thread, as my primary NAS, I use an ASUS Terminator C3 machine that I got at newegg.com for $110. The only additions were a couple of 160G Samsung SPs. The total was just over $220 for a NAS server that can hit 97% on Mbit FTP transfers. Modestly speaking, I think that’s pretty damn good, even considering the fact that NASLite uses only a small fraction of the hardware on the ASUS board. I disabled pretty much everything in the BIOS, keeping things free and clear. The system has been up for 194 days today with average drive temp of about 30 degrees Celsius.

The "free to a good home" motherboard I've got in my system supports IDE devices up to Ultra ATA133 and whilst I am aware that I'll never achieve full gigabit speeds for the sake of £15 when putting it together it really wasn't a biggy, also having a gigabit network card when coupled to the gigabit switch should stop any "bottlenecks" at the server end even if the connected machines are just on a 100 meg. Ideally the hard drives would be SATA but that can happen as and when Naslite gets SATA support, there should be loads of cheap or free motherboards out there that can support higher IDE speeds as people upgrade to 64 bit systems.

So you can still create a high speed NAS box for a small investement using old equipment without having to go to the expense of new motherboards and processors etc.

these are all very good and valid points.

However I really think that hardware discussions should be given their own forum.

In this forum people could discuss motherboards, housing and drive caddies etc.

Its true that alot of people use old hardware but we should really come up with a good list of new (i.e. purchasable globally) kit that people could buy.

The first of this would be a cheap motherboard that is 100% compatible with every version of NASLite i.e. the original point of this thread.

Personally I asked a few questions about physical housing here in the past with very little response. IMHO this aspect of a NAS build is as if not more important than the other items as NASLite supports just about everything.

Lets not forget that people that are buying NASLite + are likely to want to buy kit as well.

I agree with fat again (bit of a mutal appreciation society going on here) a hardware forum that covers all the NAS versions would be great, at least people could list the hardware that is supported and also note the stuff that doesn't work, what do you think Tony?

A sticky at the top asking users to just post a list of "whats in their box" would build into a useful database type forum of working useable hardware both old and new.

It gets my vote

I agree totally, it would be a great resource. I was only thinking the other day if the gigabit card i was going to purchase would work with naslite+.

Also none of my MB's boot from USB so I would be nice to hear of what boards do which would save a lot of time reading pdf manuals on all the different MB's

On a sad note my Nas server died the otherday in the middle of watching a film. CPU failed.

pulled the drive put it in my other pc and booted from Cd and was watching my film in a matter of mins, thats what i love about Naslite+

Hm

So Tony was that a Hm yes or a Hm no? LOL

Just thought I'd give this one a bit of a bump along, it such a great idea and fairly simple as most good ideas are.

So it would help if I read the whole forum home page, my apologies Tony it was obviously a Hm yes as you've set up the hardware forum.

The Terminator C3 looks like a good value. Do you know if it will support 4 drives and what the maximum total hard drive speace, the motherboard supports?