Creating my own custom NAS (advice) ?

[Chessbrain]

Hi guys, this is my first post. And after reading the rules about this section, I am hoping I am not violating any rules.

I currently have a Linksys WRT54GL, running on DDWRT. And a VERY old PC.

Now the problem is, I am trying to turn this old PC into a NAS... Unfortunately I don't know what to put on it and so on. FreeNAS doesn't work for obvious reasons. The machine has like 2Gb of RAM (just checked, DDR2 I think) and a very old processor... Basically it's not fit for some of the actually good stuff made for running a NAS in a network.


So here I am, asking for advice. Anyone got any ideas ?

EDIT: I apologize for posting the thread here... Should have posted in the General NAS section. Would be grateful if anyone can move this thread there

 

[sfx2000]

Who knows - depends on the processor - but FreeNAS might be a good solution here...

If you need a simple Samba server - drop in a linux distro and a simple config for Samba makes a fine server as well...

 

[Chessbrain]

Who knows - depends on the processor - but FreeNAS might be a good solution here...

If you need a simple Samba server - drop in a linux distro and a simple config for Samba makes a fine server as well...

As much as I agree about FreeNAS, it requires 8gb of RAM, minimum... So this machine can't run it, at least according to the official minimum requirements posted on their official site.

Since I have never heard of samba. Would you be kind enough to share some pointers as to how I would go about researching the matter? I will research by myself of course, but any extra pointers would be great

Also, thanks for the suggestion

 

[sfx2000]

Check around the web - lot's of recipes on how to do this...

Older box like your - Ubuntu 16.04LTS (maybe 32bit even), and then install/configure samba from there...

Search the forums - I did a nice post on how to configure a nice little samba server about a year or so ago in my DIY-Learning by Doing series...

 

[Chessbrain]

Check around the web - lot's of recipes on how to do this...

Older box like your - Ubuntu 16.04LTS (maybe 32bit even), and then install/configure samba from there...

Search the forums - I did a nice post on how to configure a nice little samba server about a year or so ago in my DIY-Learning by Doing series...

Awesome. Thanks a lot Can't wait to get started. If it wasn't 4AM (and exam days in the faculty) I'd have started right now xD

Anyways, really appreciate it. Will post my progress here when I am able to

 

[System Error Message]

if freeNAS wont run you can use a linux OS like sfx mentioned. My NAS uses openSUSE but has 16GB of ram, a phenom x3 unlocked to x4 and overclocked. Its a lot more effort but its basically simple to set up. You install the OS than configure it (both in GUI and command line, including firewall and services), you install the software you want for the features you want(plex for media, dropbox, etc). However for lan only file sync its complicated with linux as for SAMBA you need to set up workgroup, or perhaps you want to make use of NFS.

So its really dependent on the software features you want.

 

[Chessbrain]

if freeNAS wont run you can use a linux OS like sfx mentioned. My NAS uses openSUSE but has 16GB of ram, a phenom x3 unlocked to x4 and overclocked. Its a lot more effort but its basically simple to set up. You install the OS than configure it (both in GUI and command line, including firewall and services), you install the software you want for the features you want(plex for media, dropbox, etc). However for lan only file sync its complicated with linux as for SAMBA you need to set up workgroup, or perhaps you want to make use of NFS.

So its really dependent on the software features you want.

Sorry for the late reply... Got faculty exams

I am simply doing this as a tiny little project to have fun with. I am going to combine this with VPN using either DDWRT's built-in features or another custom PfSense machine(probably PfSense), and just have fun with it for some time. I am also doing this to learn how to work with this stuff of course