Did you just buy a new computer system and don't know what to do with the old one, but would rather DO something with it instead of dumping it in the garbage?

Why not turn it into a NAS? Network Attached Storage. You already have the system, only thing you would need to do is purchase an 8gig thumb drive(to put the OS on it) and as many same size hard drives the system can handle.

Then you install FreeNAS on it. FreeNAS Project - Open Source Storage - FreeNAS Project setup the drives for sharing on your network and your done.

Here'* a good video about setting one up.


I took an old PC with a Dual Core 2 6300 at 1.86 GHZ and 2 GIG of ram and just slapped 3 different sized hard drives in it. The cool thing about FreeNAS is, it took all 3 of those drives, combined it into one BIG drive, but it still has the same redundancy of RAID. Should one drive fail, you can pull it out and replace it.

It can be setup to work with Apple, Linux and Windows operating systems all at the same time. With a little more tweaking, your files can be accessed via the WWW too.

Very interesting, almost makes me want one, maybe one of these days I'll have me a little server for personal use.
I already use my current one for things like streaming videos to my other TV'*, I run TVersity, a pretty good program..
I also use my DirecTV'* Beta Media Share feature, which sucks, but works with videos I download if I re-render them.

I like Patrick Norton, have loved his PC tips since he was on the old The Screen Savers show, watched that when it was on ZDTV, before TechTV, and I think it was later on G4TV, I forget.
I loved watching the show, especially when Morgan Webb was on.

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...ia_2004_01.jpg

Oh how I miss G4 and Olivia Munn and the legendary Halo helmet lick...
Olivia Munn Loves Master Chief - G4tv.com

Back to FreeNAS. With the add-on software, it allows you to stream to multiple devices across the house. So if you have a lot of movies and music, just copy it over and it does the rest.

Because it uses CIFS(Windows Sharing) you can map those network drives and windows will use them like as if they were its own drives. Because I use Norton 360 security, it automatically backs up all my stuff not only to an external 1TB USB drive, but also to the FreeNAS server.