freeNAS-msi-wind

MSI wind pc and freeNAS

specs

• Single core atom 1.66ghz
• 2gb ddr2 memory
• 2 x 300gb harddrives
• 4gb compact flash card
• Onboard nic

Materials

• MSI wind nettop
• Memory 2gb ddr2 (laptop)
• Optical to hard disk bay converter.
• Two identical Sata Hard drives of the same capacity.
• freeNAS iso, burned to a CD.
• Sata cd/dvd rom drive (Use to spin up the freenas disk)
• Screw driver.
• 4gb compact flash card.

setup

1. Install all hardware.

2. Download freeNAS and install on compact flash as embedded.

   • Embedded limits the OS from reading and writing to the compact flash card and therefor increases life expectancy. Instead RAM is used for swap and temp files.

3. Build a raid 1 (mirror) disk array with 300gb drives.

4. create any user accounts and share points. In my case SMB.

end result

.. pull-quote:: Only uses 15-30 watts of electricity, feel good leaving it on 24/7.

Inexpensive professional grade NAS. All data is backed up locally. If one drive fails replace it with a good drive and the array rebuilds itself.

Very fast response and transfer times. Very Stable. ushare allows streaming to xbox or other media extender. Overall I’m very satisfied with this project. I will eventually be purchasing larger drives, its nice to know I can swap one small drive for a larger one and have the array rebuilt itself.

references

• http://freenas.org