Crush the performance of consumer network-attached storage devices by building your own! And you can use a number of legacy parts to do this on the cheap!
A network-attached storage (NAS) device is the Robin to a LAN’s Batman. The two should be inseparable, and for good reason. A NAS box gives you a guaranteed way to store all of your files and stream your media. Running a NAS box also means that you don’t have to boot your power-leeching desktop rig every time you want to access your files from another device.
But you don’t have to go out and purchase a NAS device. You can build a superior alternative using spare parts left over after upgrading your PC.
We recently gathered a bunch of components that had been gathering dust in the Lab and built a FrankenNAS that absolutely pulverized its admittedly budget retail competitor, the $135 Linksys NAS200. Using an Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard and a dual-core 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU, we were able to shorten our transfer speeds to one-sixth of the NAS200’s on small transfers and around one-seventh on larger file moves. Note that you don’t even need top-of-the-line hardware for your device. Our open-source operating system, FreeNAS, will run on almost anything.
But just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s simple. So we’re going to walk you through the finer points of setting up a FreeNAS-based network storage device of your very own. You’ll be streaming your favorite movies in no time!
The first step in the process is building the physical NAS box, but since it’s no different from assembling a PC, we’re skipping ahead to the installation of the operating system. In order to do that, you’ll first want to set your NAS motherboard’s BIOS to boot from an optical drive.
FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD, a Unix-like open-source OS developed in the early 1990s. It’s not Linux and it’s definitely not Windows, so you should be aware that using the OS as the backbone of your file storage is going to first wipe out anything that might be on the hard drives you use. On the upside, FreeNAS itself requires no hard drive space for installation. It’s so compact, we’ll be using an embedded version that can run off a USB thumb drive or a CompactFlash card as small as 32MB.
Download the FreeNAS ISO and drop a CD in your burner. If you don’t already have software capable of burning an ISO image to a CD, download and install the free utility ISO Recorder. If you’re using ISO Recorder, right-click the file you just downloaded and choose the option “Copy image to CD.”
Once you’ve burned the image, put the CD in your NAS box’s optical drive, restart your computer, and boot FreeNAS from the CD. One caveat: Make sure your motherboard’s BIOS is configured to boot from a USB device, as we’ll be installing the operating system to a thumb drive.
We’re going to set up our NAS to boot from a USB thumb drive so we don’t limit our upgrade options. If you didn’t listen to us in the last step and are using an old mobo that just won’t boot from a removable device, you have two options. You can boot from the CD and store your configuration file on a USB thumb drive or CompactFlash card or you can partition your hard drive, copy the OS to that partition, and boot from there. Be aware, however, that you cannot use the resulting storage partition for RAID: FreeNAS allows only whole drives in an array.
Quick Tip: Double-check whether FreeNAS offers support for your hardware by checking the compatibility lists at http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=30.
When the FreeNAS Console Setup menu appears (tap the Escape key if the FreeNAS splash screen doesn’t disappear on its own), plug a thumb drive into the NAS box’s USB port and choose the menu item “Install/Upgrade to a hard drive/flash device, etc.” At the next prompt, choose the first option: “Install ‘embedded’ OS on HDD/Flash/USB.” Choose the optical drive containing the FreeNAS ISO image and hit Enter. Next, select the USB thumb drive on which you want to install the OS. Note that the installation process’s default choice is the hard drive, so make sure you’ve changed it to your thumb drive before you hit the Enter key.
After you’ve installed the operating system on the thumb drive, remove the CD and reboot your NAS box.
When your NAS box has rebooted, choose item 1 from the Console Setup menu: Assign Interface. Unplug the NAS box’s Ethernet cable and choose the OS’s Auto Detection option. When prompted, plug the Ethernet cable back in and hit the Enter key. You should get a message that reads “Detected link-up on interface XX,” where “XX” is the name of your Ethernet interface (in our example, the name was “nve0”). Hit the Enter key again.
The next screen will read “Configure OPT interface.” This enables you to configure a second Ethernet port, assuming your motherboard has one. For now, choose the option that reads “Finish and exit configuration” and hit the Enter key. Accept the naming scheme presented in the next screen and hit Enter.
Next, type the number 7 and hit Enter to reboot the computer. When the machine has finished rebooting, choose item 2 from the Console Setup menu: Set LAN IP Address. The OS will ask if you want to use DHCP. Choose Yes unless your network is set up with static IP addresses. At the next prompt, select “AutoConfiguration for IPv6.”
The OS will then give you the IP address that’s been assigned to the NAS box. You can now ping your NAS box to verify that it has joined your network and you can manage its settings using your web browser. Just type the NAS box’s IP address into your browser’s address bar. The default user name is “admin” and the password is “freenas.”
Comments are closed on this article
soup2008
April 23, 2011 at 9:15am
I see that freeNAS has support for 3tb plus hdd, but what kind of mobo would i need, i want a build with 3tb hdds eventually
visa
October 27, 2010 at 6:00am
Running a NAS box also means that you don’t have to boot your power-leeching desktop rig every time you want to access your files from another device. Replica Watches UK
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October 06, 2010 at 1:22pm
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coxwain
July 06, 2010 at 8:16pm
Some one mentioned earlier about haveing a 4 bay NAS
I think this is where it would make sense as the 4 bay NAS systems are expensive to buy
Can we install the software on the separate hard drive rather than a USB key? and can we have a multi bay RAID or Volumed NAS?
I like the idea of building my own as I have the dlnik dns 323 and the features are very basic but missing my own customization and limited to a 2 drive bay nas.
The reason you want a NAS is that it is on all the time using theoretically less power than a full system and monitor, although the 250w PS doesnt seem to get much savings.
I read about the external brick PS for the HTPC build and it sounds very interesting and wonder how that would work?
Prez1
November 22, 2009 at 9:55pm
Thought I would share my experience following the advice in the column.
In short.. AWESOME!
This
is my FIRST time building a NAS and it went so well. I built this
mainly for use as media streaming storage for my Western Digital Live
media player. I had some old computer parts lying around and tried
this out. My system:> P4 2.4gHz
> Albatron mobo
> 3.5gig DDR memory
> 250w power supply
> TP-Link Gigabit PCI nic card
> 1TB SATA Seagate HD (so far only qty of 1 =))
> AGP Chaintec Geforce Ti4200 video card
FreeNAS
is running off of a USB micro Sandisk stick. I had NO problems at all
installing and everything went smooth throughout the process! I was
completely amazed!The media is streaming through a Belkin
F5D8234-4 N+ router, with a Trendnet TEW-624UB wireless N USB stick
attached to the Western Digital Live box.Transfer speeds from
either of my computers to the NAS box is averaging 50-60Mbps with brief beginning peaks
sometimes at 90-97Mbps which is fine by me.Thank you so much for this article!
Fuzzmaster
September 02, 2009 at 9:19pm
So I went through this whole process, but it doesn't describe how to set up the drives into a RAID array. Anyone have a walkthru for that? The freenas site is not very helpful.
kookykrazee
August 19, 2009 at 11:55am
Isn't there a way to build a NAS box, not a NAS computer? I want to have box that can handle 2-4 drives and has at least 100MB ethernet but gigabit wouldn't be bad, either.
I have seen many companies attempting to sell boxes but they require you to purchase with the drives, which is silly because they are charging 2-3x the price of the drives, if you are lucky and why would I do that when I already have the drives and would prefer to set it up myself?
sillycrazy
November 24, 2008 at 8:05am
I work in IT and understand how NAS works but I think there was a general consensus by the author that everyone reading Maximum PC has full understanding about NAS. I think this should have been made a little more clear. Based on this article (pretending I don't understand NAS) I still don't see why someone wouldn't just choose to share a folder on an existing PC in their home as already mentioned here.
What also isn't made clear... if you follow these instructions and build this NAS will the disk appear local under disk management on the system connecting to it like real SAN/NAS storage? Say for example I want to build a NAS off this article and use it purely for a large array for a media center for all the DVD rips. Will it appear as LOCAL storage?
If not how is this different from just a share on another system???
swampfox357
May 27, 2010 at 10:48am
It all depends on the protocol that you're going to use.
SAMBA/SMB shares will show up just like the typical Windows file share will. That's the whole point, it emulates CIFS.
If you use iSCSI, on the other hand, any shares are going to show up as local disks when they're mounted on the host. iSCSI would typically be used if you have the need for several local hard disks, but have no space in your tower. iSCSI is completely different from SAMBA in that each disk/partition can only be mounted on one system. If you have a 1Gb LAN connection, you probably won't even notice an access time or speed difference in disk access.
dstevens
October 05, 2008 at 10:35am
hi everybody, avid reader for almost 10 years now....
first post here ;)
isnt one of the main ideas of a NAS to use less power than a PC for hosting files over a network?
where is that being accomplished at here?
wheres the gain of doing this (Linux or free bsd or win nt or any OS at all who cares?)
when you could just host off a computer you use all the time to begin with
sitting on an external usb or seperate internal 500 gb drive?
I just dont see it....
Tekmazter
October 26, 2008 at 2:54pm
You don't understand what NAS storage is.
Sure you can run CIFS on Windows or NFS on Linux ... but think about the waste in doing that. You have to install an entire OS which runs numerous services which eat up numerous resources, which require more hardware (CPU, Memory, Video [Vista] perspectives)which requires more $$$ --get the point now? Then there's the whole OS competing for resources vs whatever is accessing your CIFS/NFS shares. Not to mention, since FreeNAS runs the bare minimum of services, you have to manage less in the way of OS specifics and just deal with what's required --managing the storage!
Also, FreeNAS can run on next to NOTHING for hardware. So, unless you're streaming hi-def vid or have 300 people leveraging the thing as a shoutcast server, this box makes a LOT of sense for utilizing some old hardware just sitting around the house.
As for Software RAID --yea I wouldn't use it either. In fact, just get yourself a decent Adaptec storage controller and go with that --avoid FRAID (F-RAID, Fake RAID) cards.
ShadesOfGrey
September 30, 2008 at 9:54am
Great SW. My FreeNAS server has been running almost 2 years with no issues.
Digital-Storm
September 26, 2008 at 8:03am
From the looks of it, some editor is a little jelous. This was posted way earlier than 8am. Why does it have a time of 11am? To push it to the top?
jwalch.hawk
September 26, 2008 at 12:05pm
It was also published in the print magazine long before this...
I've noticed a similar thing has happened with a couple of the print articles put online. My suspicion is that they notice a couple things they want to change (like formatting-wise, since you can't exactly carbon copy it from the way it appears in the magazine) after they put it up, make the changes, and then basically submit it as new again.
Jokerbomb
September 26, 2008 at 7:55am
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.
The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.Right from the site, so essentially, you're installing Linux on it.
AndyYankee17
September 28, 2008 at 4:36am
ew software raid 5, god I'd hate to have to wait for that to rebuild...
AndyYankee17
September 26, 2008 at 3:32am
sounds a hell of a lot like an ftp server. may as well install a linux server OS and run F@H on it.
dc10ten
September 26, 2008 at 1:41pm
essentually yeah, but still an idea that people may not have thought of.
and why not have an FTP server run NAS box functionality? especially when it doesn't have to cost much.
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