Building your own Nas

If you fancy doing a bit of DIY, here’s how to build a network-attached storage device

Many people are realising the benefits of accessing their data over a network.

Storing data on networkable devices gives extra capacity without messing around with disk upgrades.

It offers easy, centralised backup facilities, shared access to data that could support multiple platforms, such as PCs and Macs, and means that even if you buy a new PC or extra systems, your data is ready to be accessed from them.

The market for network attached-storage (Nas) devices has exploded over the past year.

At its simplest, a Nas is a box containing one or more hard disks, which connects to your network and presents the storage as a sharable volume. More sophisticated models support Raid, P2P or torrent downloads, or act as iTunes servers.

A Nas is normally sold either with hard disks already fitted, or as a basic unit ready to be fitted with your disks, but you can also build your own.

Nas processor and memory requirements are very modest. You could build one with an old PC, equipping it with a big hard disk and a Gigabit Ethernet card for better network performance if desired.

There are several Nas software packages. Freenas is a popular, especially as there’s no charge, but at the time of writing it was still in beta and you may not want to trust your data to something that isn’t 100 per cent complete; see www.freenas.org.

One of the best options is Naslite 2 from Server Elements. This is available as a downloadable CD image from www.serverelements.com for about £18. If you have existing hardware, you could build a very affordable Nas, that could potentially outperform a commercial model. Here’s how.

Naslite 2 is available in two main versions, both with the same functionality once running, but one boots from a CD and the other from a USB device, such as a flash memory key. If your motherboard supports bootable USB drives, the latter is preferable because the USB device can store any configuration changes that otherwise require a floppy disk drive on the CD version.

The downloadable ISO images for Naslite 2 are just 5.02MB and 6.63MB for the CD and USB versions respectively, and any CD writing program should be able to burn a disc from them. The compact OS is based on Linux and, once booted, runs in an 8MB Ram disk.

Naslite 2 requires a Pentium or better (500MHz would be fine), at least 64MB of Ram, a PCI network adapter (this could be onboard), a bootable CD (and bootable USB media of at least 16MB for the USB option), and of course a hard disk for the storage. It supports IDE, Sata, SCSI, USB and Firewire interfaces, along with hardware Raid cards or chipsets.

There’s a full list of compatible storage and network controllers at the Server Elements website, but since Naslite 2 is based on the Linux 2.4.x kernel, a wide range of chipsets is supported. Naslite 3 is due for early 2007 and will be based on the 2.6 kernel with support for newer hardware, which should include the Promise Supertrak EX8350 hardware Raid card.

Test configuration
To test Naslite, I used an old Via Epia M10000 motherboard bought from the Mini-ITX store at www.mini-itx.com.

Epia boards are ideal for Nas projects because they’re small, consume little power and have integrated processors with plenty of muscle.

Naslite 2 will happily operate with 64MB of Ram but will perform better with 256MB, so I fitted a 256MB Crucial Dimm.

For storage, I used an ageing 80GB Seagate IDE hard disk, and I would boot from an old 32MB memory key. These were components from previous Hands on projects.

The USB version of Naslite 2 is initially configured by a small bootable CD image downloaded from the Server Elements website, so you’ll need an optical drive, but this can be removed once the system’s operational.

Installation
Installing Naslite 2 is straightforward and is fully documented in a Pdf manual from the Server Elements website, but here are the basics.

Once you’ve bought a licence, downloaded the ISO image and burnt a CD, you should set your motherboard to boot from it.

With the USB version of Naslite 2, the bootable CD will launch a utility to prepare your USB storage device. Not all USB storage devices are bootable and some motherboards are fussy about what they can boot from.

I tried and failed with various memory keys, along with a USB card reader, but found an old 32MB key that worked fine. Naslite 2 USB also offers the option to configure the USB device as either a bootable super floppy or a fixed disk with a bootable partition; if one doesn’t work with your motherboard, try the other.

The first bootable super floppy option worked fine with my Epia board, although I had to set the Bios boot options to include USB-HDD and USB-Zip along with USB floppy, and disconnect the DVD drive after the key had been configured. Naslite also lets you create a kicker floppy disk to boot from, which then fires up the USB device – handy for motherboards without a USB-boot option.

Once your system is booting from the USB device or the CD, Naslite presents a list of diagnostics, some of which will fail at this point. You should then log in using the default ‘admin’ and ‘nas’ for the username and password respectively.

From the Naslite admin menu, you should change the Network Configuration so the IP address is on the same subnet as the PCs that will access it – so if your PC is on, say, 192.168.0.x, set the Nas to the same first three numbers and choose a number at the end that’s unused on your network. Change the workgroup name to match whatever you’re using on any Windows machines, then enter the licence code, save the configuration and reboot.

Upon rebooting, the Nas will still fail some diagnostics but you should now be able to Telnet into the admin menu using a PC and the IP address you gave it. You can use this to remotely configure the Nas, eliminating the need for a monitor or keyboard on the unit.

To fully unlock the Nas, you need to retrieve a code from a webpage.

Open a browser and enter http://192.168.0.200/Status/htm/unlock.htm, swapping the IP address to the one you’ve given the Nas.

You can then enter this code using the admin menu to unlock all the features before saving and rebooting again.

When Naslite boots up again, you’ll need to configure the hard disk(s) using the admin menu; full instructions are in the downloadable Pdf.

When you’re done, save the configuration and reboot again. Your Nas should then be fully accessible, although Mac owners may need to tweak their systems – see Macintosh support section.

If you use Naslite USB, you can now dispense with the optical drive. If your Nas then comprises just a low-power processor, one hard disk and a USB key, you could swap the PSU for a tiny model such as the PicoPSU, reviewed in previous Hands on columns.

Verdict
After my first attempts – see this month’s Performance column – I was impressed at how quickly you could have your own Nas up and running. With co-operative hardware, mine was ready for action just half an hour after digging around for old components. The compact unit is now happily sharing files with my PCs and Mac, while consuming just 45W.

Since I don’t need 24-7 access to the data stored on it, I’ll look at implementing power saving and some kind of suspend or disk spin-down in a future edition; and since the single disk is vulnerable to failure, I’ll also look at a Raid solution.

Pre-assembled Nas boxes are priced competitively but if you have an old PC or components to recycle, you could save money – and a DIY Nas system running Naslite 2 has the potential to outperform a commercial Nas. If you’re using a Nas or have built your own, we’d love to hear from you.

Macintosh support
If you run both PCs and Macs, one of the nicest things about a Nas is having a single storage area that is accessible from both. As a dual-platform kind of guy, this was one of my goals for my DIY Nas, although I was dismayed to find my Mac reporting an ‘Error -36’ when trying to gain access.This is a known issue with Mac OSX 10.4 when attempting to connect to Windows or Samba servers (Naslite uses Samba).

Unlike OSX 10.3, version 10.4 only supports encrypted passwords when accessing Windows or Samba servers, while Naslite employs plain text. Fortunately, the solution is well documented on the Apple website and involves a small edit to a file using the Terminal, the Mac’s equivalent of a command prompt.

Once the modification was made, my Mac happily accessed the Nas share. For more information, visit http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301580.