Network Attached Storage - NAS

DIY-Computer-Repair can help!

Running out of storage for your files? Have an old pc just collecting dust?

After reading an article on PCMech about Network Attached Storage or NAS, I decided to tell you how to make a reliable system to backup your computer or network computers and it will not cost as much as your house.

What is Network Attached Storage - NAS? And what will it do for me?

What is it? NAS, file storage, or Network Appliance, is a very basic computer with large capacity hard drives. It also has 'redundancy' - that is the hard drives have a fault tolerance that if a drive fails you don't lose your data. This is called RAID (see this page for explanation on RAID Arrays)

One of the NAS systems I am familiar with is Network Appliance this is a high-end system that the storage capacity starts at 3 tera bytes, they also cost $25,000 or more each.

What if you want to have a Tera byte of storage for your home or small business, do you have $25k to spend? No? Well there is a way to get this type of storage with out the cost.

If your data is of high value then this solution may not be the right solution for you, but if you want to have a place to keep your backups, your sound and video files then this is cheaper than say the online solutions like Carbonite.

So what do you need to make this possible?

A old computer, a raid array controller, and the hard drives that make up your raid array.

I upgraded the drives in my server last month and paid $260 for two 500 gig SATA drives. So I have a Tera byte of storage. It is not how ever a RAID Array, it is two drives that I use all the storage, To make it a RAID of one Tera byte I would need one more 500 gig drive and the array controller.

What you will need to make the NAS:

• A computer - P III or P4 that is reliable, 256 meg of ram, network card, CD
• 3 drives (minimum - using a RAID array you need 3 drives, all the same size, add up the three drives capacity, subtract one for the parity and you have the size of the volume that will be use able. Using my upgrade, I need one more 500 gig drive, 3x500 = 1500 subtract the parity drive and I have 1 Tera byte of storage with redundancy).
• A RAID Array controller (it can be either IDE or SATA - I recommend SATA)
• Two network cards of the same make that can be teamed or bridged.
• The Operating System.

How to make the NAS:

Clean up your old computer (dust / dirt) and the hard drives that you don't want to use. You may want to upgrade the network cards to the maximum your network can handle. You may also want to upgrade the processor and memory - not necessary.

Install your RAID Array controller and you hard drives. Some PC RAID Array cards need to be setup when you first start your computer. Such as with the HighPoint controller, you pick the drives you want for your array and the type of array. I suggest if you can afford it you use a RAID 5 Array for you drives (see this page for an explanation of RAID Types) because if one fails you will be able to recover your data with a replacement drive.

Your Operating System can be Linux, Windows, or if you have the experience DOS. I suggest that you use Windows XP. Why? Because most people are familiar  with XP, it  is stable, and MS will be supporting it until 2014.

Once you have your OS installed your next task is to setup the network. If you have two identical network cards in your computer you can either 'Team' them or use Microsoft's Network Bridge. this will double the network speed of the computer. You will not see the '200MBS' but you will see a dramatic increase in your through put for the computer, this would be the same for any computer on your network. This how ever will not work if you only have two computers and want to use a crossover cable to connect them together.

Next you need to setup the volume that will hold your files, how you setup the array volume or make it multiple volumes depends on your situation. You may want to separate applications from video and sound files, or have a separate volume for computer drive images, or like me one for just games.

When you have all this done your last consideration is security. You should harden your NAS the same way a server is hardened. Also you should consider turning off services not normally used such as COM+, DCOM (see this page for a list of services you can turn off).

Now you are ready to back up your computer(s) to the NAS. You can use any backup software to do the deed, such as Windows XP Backup, or you can do it manually. You can do a search for programs that will do a scheduled backup, this is one I am testing at this time: Cobian Backup

To go a step further you may want to use a tape backup to back up your valuable data for redundancy.

Do It yourself Computer Repair Books and E-Books Index

---

Thank you for visiting my web site, and please come back again.