I've recently decided I would like to try NAS so I took some parts and set up a basic system with what parts I had lying around. It is not anything crazy, but I plan on doing a raid setup later with maybe just 2 or 3 drives and get a new case and maybe a intel NIC if need be. I am really new to this NAS thing so any help would be very useful. Upgrading or changing anything in my system isn't really that much of an option due to financial restraints so I want to make use of what I have. The system My system specs are
8gbs (2 x 4) of Kingston 133mhz ram
i3-4130
Gigabyte GA-B85M-HD3
WD RED 2tb HDD
The rest of the build sits in a dell inspiron 3847 that I purchased broken for parts.
I was just looking for an OS that would give me the following features:
Accessible storage through android mobile devices as well as streaming video
Accessible storage for my other windows computers as well as streaming video
Being able to run torrents between 2am - 8am
Run xbmc simultaneously so I can use it as an basic htpc as well
I have a small amount of experience with linux, but I am open to any suggestions. I'm new to the forum so my apologies if this was placed in the wrong place.
You could try installing Open Media Vault and just installing a desktop environment on top of it, it's just Debian with a bunch of NAS packages and a webGUI. You could install LXDE or something really light and then use Plex home theater or something like that.
Well I decided the easiest thing to do was just place freenas on the desktop and buy one of the prebuilt pc/NUCs http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119098 for the media center pc. They were on sale for $113 so it was a no brainer, had some laptop ram laying around and then msata ssd off ebay for $30 and everything is good to go! Appreciate the help. It did cost me another 150 when money was tight, but if it lasts it will be worthwhile.
I would use Opensuse or Debian and set up the file system as BTRFS it has a lot of nice features and isn't resource heavy.
I would set up a Plex server for media that any device can connect to via Plex and XBMC. Then Set up a Samba share so you have a networked file system.
You could also use Owncloud to act as a cloud storage when you are out of the house.
Once you have the daemons (services) set up you can run the machine with XBMC as the default GUI so you have a HTPC.