Laptop as NAS?

[Osamede]

With 2.5" harddrive increasng in size and dropping in price, I am wondering if I could just take a 2-bay laptop and make that into a NAS to serve media in my house?

Anyone have ideas of what laptop - ad OS - might be idea for this?

 

[scotty]

Sure you could, nothing stopping you. NAS's are a little cheaper and more purpose-built though. Just about any modern OS would work fine. I use XP, but it does have a 10 user connection limit. Ubuntu's a popular choice as it's free.

 

[valentin]

You could attach an external USB drive and use the laptop drive only for the operating system.
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[corndog]

Wouldn't that be a NAL?

(Network Attached Laptop)

 

[Osamede]

You could attach an external USB drive and use the laptop drive only for the operating system.

But then you file access speed will be limited by USB speed as a bottleneck, which isnt the case if the drives are onboard the laptop, rather than external.

 

[valentin]

The USB speed is practically limited to ~25-30 MB/sec.

When I download torrents using my laptop (3 yr old, Sempron 3100+, 4000 rpm drive), the laptop drive gets overloaded with about 2 MB/sec.

So, you would be either limited by the laptop drive (if it is older generation), or by the internet speed, but not by the USB interface.
Anyway, it is clear that an external drive requires more cables and is not as handy as the internal laptop drive.
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[Osamede]

At the moment, I am looking at the HP Mini 2133, which uses SATA itnernal drive and has Gigabit ethernet port. Would try ti Install FreeNAS on it, if this is a good unit.

Tying to get some more info on whether anyone has tried this as a NAS...