How to turn a hard drive into an NAS?

Question

I just got myself a 2TB drive (this one). I'd like it to be available to all the computers in the house. Is there a SATA enclosure available that turns a drive into an NAS?

Answer 1

Plenty of choices there, e.g. this D-Link DNS-323 (2 bays for further expansion)

or the EAGLE Consus series, single SATA drive NAS Enclosures.

and about a gazillion others ... don't be shy, try your preferred search engine and look for 'SATA NAS enclosure'. :)

Answer 2

freeNAS msi wind

I built my own similar to this guide.

• MSI wind nettop single core on newegg.
• 4gb CF flash with embedded freenas. 2 gb ram, 2x300gb drives in raid 1 (mirror)

References

• http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=1768
• http://www.foxhop.net/freeNAS-msi-wind

Answer 3

Although this question has already been answered, I'd like to point out the Windows Home Server machines, from either Acer or HP. They're around the same price as dedicated NAS boxes these days; and in addition to offering all of the same benefits, they're also servers that you can dedicate to other tasks on your network (automated backup of your whole house, for example).

I was looking for a NAS in the not-so-distant past, and settled on one of the MediaSmart servers from HP. Although I bought it before the prices dropped, I'm still quite happy with the machine. You probably would be too.

As far as "turning a hard drive into a NAS," which was your original question... all of the WHS machines allow you to add differently-sized hard drives to them as you like (typically they come with one drive preinstalled, leaving 3 free bays).

Answer 4

You can use an old/new pc box. Install an operating system If you choose Linux you can install zfx-on-linux. Enable SSH and keep it configured through a terminal. Putty is good for this if you use windows. Once you have your operating system installed, connect all your drives there, old, and extra hard drives make good testers. I like ZFS, If you choose Linux you can install open ZFS, https://github.com/openzfs/zfs. Otherwise if you install Solaris, or maybe FreeBSd you can use ZFS straight. Enable a NFS or Samba Share on the system. add your drives into an array, even one drive works, you can add more later. Set the Bios to boot on power failure. Plug in network cable. You now have a NAS Server.

Note, you dont need ZFS to make this work, it was just an example. You can use a windows server for that matter. But there's normally lots of extra pc parts laying around, or readily available at 2nd hand stores that can easily be made into a nas server where you can plug all your drive/s into.

Answer 5

I'd also like to point out that lots of WAP routers now come with a USB port to attach a USB external drive which they then share to all internal network IP addresses. If you only have wired or wireless G, you could look for one of the wireless N WAP routers that support this feature. Then you'd only need a relatively cheap USB external case. While you are at it, see if you can find one with full gigabit wired ports as well.