Here you go!
1. The case
It's a fact that occasionally things I get sent are broken in the post, and that's what happened to this lovely Chenbro Hornet. So it's missing the stylish facia that wouldn't stay in position when all the plastic lugs on it got snapped off. On the upside it's a nice Micro ATX form factor, with space for at least two hard drives and has a small integrated PSU. No one is actually going to see this computer, so it's an ideal choice for the project.
2. Missed opportunity
In my original plan for the NAS box this was my motherboard, the amazingly petite and silent VIA EPIA C3 board. It was perfect in almost all respects, using old style memory and having a 533MHz C3 CPU. There was only one major snag - it didn't have a floppy disk or any cheap way to attach one. I wrestled with many ideas of how to resolve this issue, but chose instead to just use something else.
3. The Motherboard
My alternative to the EPIA was this Jetway JV2DP, an AMD Socket A design. To make a working system I combined it with a 256MB stick of DDR266 memory and an AMD Duron 700MHz. In performance terms this is probably complete overkill for this project, but I had it spare and this seemed a valid use for it. Pentium II, III, Celeron and slower Athlon chip systems all make good donor gear for NAS.
4. Floppy Drive
In my other systems I've almost given up including a floppy drive, as I never use them to transport files between machines. But for this system one is vital, as NASLite+ uses the floppy to store vital configuration data. On the Hornet case the floppy is held in place by sprung metal clip as this is a screwless design.
5. Cooling
Because this box is going to be running 24 hours a day, then it needs to avoid overheating. This is a very nice 80mm Tek-Chain Titto fan, which I've mounted on the CPU cooler, it's got an in-built speed adjuster - so I was able to get it spinning at the perfect speed to keep everything chilled. The blue light is a nice addition as the Hornet's side has a clear panel through which it can be seen.
6. Storage
On shelves and in draws I have a number of old hard drives, but nothing of any significant capacity. If I did want to make this for almost nothing I could have used these and had a four-drive system with 8GB in total, but I thought something bigger would be more useful. This is a Seagate ST3200822A, a 200GB IDE hard drive which cost about £75 when I bought it. The grey triangle on it is part of a quick install bracket that the Chenbro case uses.
7. NASLite+
My inspiration for this project, the Server Elements website (
http://www.serverelements.com). Here after paying some money I was able to download the NASLite+ ISO, which is a commercial product. As such it isn't like other Linux implementations where you can hand copies to friends, under the license agreement you can only use one copy per PC. With a total size of just over 3MB it didn't take long to download on broadband.
8. First Boot
I attached a CD-ROM and set the machines' BIOS to boot from that. The first run must be done without a floppy disk in place. Once everything is running you can put a floppy in and save settings. To add each hard drive you must login as admin and initialise them. Be warned this erases the disks! So unless you have a utility that can convert FAT32 or NTFS to a Linux partition layout then anything that was on them will be removed. In doing this you can ask for a bad block check, but this can take a very long time on a large drive.
9. Telnet
Once the IP number of the NAS box was in the range of my network it was possible to access the machine remotely using Telnet. In this way when the box is deployed to the attic (where it will live I've decided) there is no need for either a monitor or keyboard to be attached to it. To do this you simply open a command prompt and enter Telnet 10.0.0.25 (or whatever IP you gave yours). You then be asked to login.
10. Web Server
Amazingly in this very small Linux distro Server Elements have included a web server, which you can access using a browser to see the status of the system and the individual drives. You can also access the logs for various network activities, such as those in SMB/CIFS used by networked Windows machines. Personally, I'd like this to be expanded to include the admin functions, so you can configure the box as per Telnet.
11. Enhancements
The system seems to be running okay, so how can I make it better? For starters I'm not too excited about using a useful DVD-ROM that only gets used once when the system starts. Where it lives could also be used for another hard drive, so out it comes. So how do I get it to boot from a CD without actually having a CD? Tricky, but not impossible.
12. Bootable Flash
This is a Compact Flash module given to me by a friend, because 8MB isn't much use when you have a Nikon D70 camera and only three pictures can fill it. But for my purpose it's ideal, after it's been attached to the gizmo in the picture. This is a IDE/CF adapter, which allows the compact flash to act like a hard drive. Now all I need to do is work out how to get NASLite+ on to it.
13. NASLite+ to Flash
To do this I needed two pieces of software and a Flash card reader to access the card. I formatted the card as FAT and then loaded 'Magic ISO' (30 day trial version) and opened the BOOT.IMG file from the NASLite+ CDROM and copied the files in there onto the Flash. The final step was to make it bootable which I did by writing a standard Linux Boot Block using the free 'SysLinux' utility. Within minutes I had a CF drive that could boot NASLite+.
14. Drive Tray
After I'd got rid of the need for a CD-ROM I reused the space by inserting an IDE removable drive tray in its place. This was another old part which gives me the capability of adding a drive without opening up the PC. Currently NASLite+ doesn't support hot swappable drives, RAID or SATA, but it might do in the future so it's good to be ready, I think. With this attached I've now got space for three hard drives inside the Hornet case.
15. Teething Troubles
I had only one issue with my system, which was to do with S.M.A.R.T., the hard drive self test system. When you first run the system to protect you from failure NASLite+ asks any S.M.A.R.T. capable drives to self test. Unfortunately this impacts performance for the first hour on my 200GB, after which it runs perfectly. Server Elements have now decided to make this optional on future releases of the software.
16. Hornet NAS
I don't need to be convinced that this isn't the most elegant PC I've built for Micro Mart, but that misses the point I'd suggest. What we have here is a 200GB NAS box that was built almost entirely from BLOCKED_WORD/unused parts that can rival an expensive dedicated solution in almost all respects. As you might expect from me, this version is completely over-specified, and the same functionality could be had with Pentium II class hardware.
More NAS Thoughts
My NAS server has been in operation for some weeks now, and I can't help but be impressed by the speed of its file delivery, which can utilise up to 89% of network bandwidth. There are only a few things I'd change, and I may make some of these modifications in the future.
In my finished NAS box I used up one of the IDE connections with the IDE/CF adapter. As neat a solution as this is, it stops me putting 4 IDE drives in the box, as does the physical presence of the floppy drive.
I've already succeeded in removing the need for the IDE/CF device by booting successfully from a USB key, but I still require the floppy to store the configuration.
Tony Tonchev, responsible for creating NASLite+ has promised that within a few months a new product will be released that can access a USB flash device for storing the system configuration, at which point the system will boot and all four drive locations will be available, should I have the drives to fill those spaces. Longer term it looks like SATA, RAID backup and user security might be introduced with additional products. It looks like NASLite+ could quickly become a family of NAS products, ranging in price and capability.
Along the road I may completely rebuild the NAS box using a VIA EPIA board, which I couldn't use because of the floppy drive issue. As this is an entirely fan-less processor it will make a NAS box that is both quiet and cool, a Mini-NAS to keep the Hornet company. The only other thing I'd consider is making a solution that supports 1Gbit Ethernet, which should fly!
So what are you waiting for? Dig out that old PC, find some hard drives, and spend £14 on making your own NAS server.
Software you need
NASLite+
Cost: $24.95 (paid with Paypal)
WWW:
http://www.serverelements.com
Magic ISO
Cost: 30 Day evaluation (or $29.95 if you want it)
WWW:
http://www.magiciso.com
SysLinux 3.07
Cost: Free (but accepts donations of hardware or money)
WWW: syslinux.zytor.com
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. The only problem I've had in the couple of months I've had it is that my server is in my loft and during the hot weather it gets so hot up there the pc shuts down, so I am going to be moving the server to the garage where its cooler.
they could clean up in the home network storage sector, for home users intergrating pc's and networks into their a/v systems this is an ideal way to store media, you then only need small hard drives in your pc's because everything is stored centrally.