NAS build
For a while now I’ve quietly been plotting to build a server for my flat, and today I finally ordered the parts. It’ll be a quiet, low power, always-on server with a healthy 1TB of storage, with which I’ll be able to access all my files from anywhere in the world, and download torrents to my heart’s content. Just the kind of thing that gets me excited!
The hardware I’ve chosen is based on Intel’s new dual-core Atom processor, which is fairly powerful given its meagre 8W power usage. The operating system will run off a compact flash card, and a 1TB energy efficient hard drive will be used for storage. The mini-ITX motherboard can also connect to my PC via gigabit ethernet, allowing fast transfers and backups. This is all coupled with 2GB of RAM (why not, it’s cheap!), a quieter fan for the GPU and PicoPSU silent power supply. The whole system should run at about 28W idle and 39W full load (based on other people measurements), but it’ll be interesting to see what the actual consumption is.
At the moment, I plan to install FreeNAS as the operating system and software. It’s a minimal distribution of FreeBSD which runs a whole host of services such as CIFS, FTP and bittorrent, all controlled by a web interface. I’m having a long weekend soon so I should have enough time to get it up and running, assuming all the parts arrive in time. Watch this space for updates and perhaps some geeky pictures!
