cheapest way to get my 3x1tb drives as network drives?

jasperok

Its for home use
i have a few cat5e points in the house all going back to a switch
I want to put the 3 drives i use for storage as network drives instead of installed in my pc as i like to access music and film from any of the cat5e points instead of just on the pc.
whats the cheapest way of getting them in an encloure which makes them netwrok ready/compatible,

thanks

KeRbDoG

Cheapest IMO
Get an old hdd to use as an OS hdd
Get yourself a old desktop machine with 3SATA cconnectors on board aleast (maybe another for the OS hd, or just use PATA/IDE) and install lnux/ubuntu on to the machine on the OS hd.

Power off, connect up the 3x1TB drives to the mobo/power and power on.
Hopefully the SATA drives won't mess up the disk order of the OS hdd
Install Mdadm and setup your 3x1TB drives as a RAID0.
Install Samba - set it up to use the now large raid disk as a share.

Easy
Get yourself something like this

AndrewMc

If you're thinking long-term cost, the D-Link NAS suggested by kerbdog has power consumption in the range of 37W (active) down to 13W (idle), plus drives of course. An old PC could be much more, and each extra watt will set you back another €1.42 per year at current rates. If you saved an average of 50W over 3 years, you're looking at €213 in energy savings alone.

Just something to consider, especially if you'd have to spend anything at all to tart up the old machine! I'm assuming you'd leave this on 24/7; if you switch it off when not in use, obviously not so much of an issue.

jasperok

definately lots of food for thought thanks.

seeing as i have drives and memory and cases handy i think something like this:
http://www.biostar-europe.com/v3/app/de/mb/content.php?S_ID=409

maybe the most financialy viable and a good balance of power consumption over initial cost outlay

jasperok

Ok so i am pretty sure of my hardwarwe - what is the best suggested setup regarding OS and networks my needs?

basicaly i'll plug this sytem into a switch and when i plug into any of my 5e points around the house i'd like to be able to easily view the files on the HDD and play them -
will i be able to play any hi def movies over cat5e or will i have to temporarily copy them over to play them?

Wcool

You're fine, just plug the NAS into the switch and that should be enough.
Just like your internet router, your NAS will have a web page where you can configure stuff.
The drives show up as windows network shares, ftp folders or uPnp.

For the BioStart Motherboard: just put it into a case and run any Linux or BSD on it.
Out of the box it will do all that you want and there is even a special distro called FreeNas.

Most NAS systems run a version of Linux anyway and with Linux you can setup your own FTP server, iTunes and Samba (Windows SMB ) shares. It's a bit more work than a NAS out of a box but ultimately more flexible.