Aug 03 2007
The Largest Home IT Project Proposed
Problem statement:
1. My 1/2-T network storage has only 90 gigabytes left
2. The Linux box hosting that storage was built 5 years ago and has Giga-Ethernet compatibility and USB support problem
3. My Win-Tel box runs on an old Dell “space-saver” box with a 3.25″ disk and zero expansion slot
4. The Win-Tel box has only an mid-level graphics card that is not going to support video-editing and raw image processing
5. My daily backup job routinely fails because the Redhat-USB external hard disk issue
Proposed solution:
1. Build a new mid-level Win-Tel box
2. Convert the Dell box to a barebone Linux server
3. Use FreeNAS to build a NAS server with 1-T capacity
Budget:
1. PC: case, motherboard, graphics card, CPU, memory, XP Professional. Should use EIDE board so to reuse existing HDD. About $500 ?
2. Linux: nothing. Not sure latest Fedora has all the drivers though. If not … very very bad.
3. NAS: 1 SATA card, 2x 1-T sata HDD. 1 Giga-Ethernet NIC. total $750.
Risks:
1. I have an old IDE-board. But the new HDD are SATA. If I put in a SATA PCI card, does FreeNAS recognize it?
One user posted on 7/18/07: this card and this one both work with the latest freeNAS version.
2. What Giga-Ethernet card does freeNAS support?
According to freeNAS support page, “Any NIC controllers supported by FreeBSD FreeBSD is a Unix-like free operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).are supported by FreeNAS ”
The FreeBSD site lists the following NIC: 3Com 3c996-T (10/100/1000baseTX), Netgear GA302T, Intel PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter (82541PI),
Candidates:
HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145167&ATT=22-145-167&CMP=OTC-pr1c3watch&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3watch-_-Hard+Drives-_-Hitachi+Global+Storage+Technologies-_-22145167
SATA card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124020