[PLUG] Network Attached Storage - Linux experience

[Arun Khan]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Vikas Damodar Garud <vikas at techqual.com> wrote:
>
> I am looking for NAS for my home use.  I want to store data so that it may be
> accessed through multiple devices - laptops and smart phones through WiFi
> network connection.  At present, I a using SuSE and Ubuntu Linux on my
> laptops.  I have a broadband connection, accessed through WiFi router (Belkin
> N150).  The router has 4 Ethernet ports, currently unused.  I am planning to
> connect the NAS drive to one of the Ethernet ports on the router.

For a home grown solution search "Linux NAS" and one of the ref. links is
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage>
that lists quite a few open source NAS solutions.

IMO,  you should have done this in the first place.

> I looked through Seagate and Western Digital websites.  Both of them have NAS
> products/personal cloud products.  Both of them specify Windows and MAC OS as
> the supported operating systems.  Linux is not specified.  Does it mean that
> NAS drives from these manufacturers won't be useful for me at my home?

AFAIK,  in Linux you can mount CIFS (Windows Shares) as well NFS (Mac
OS X -- Apple's version of FreeBSD).

It is the vendor's short shortsightedness when they don't mention
Linux in the box.   I have paid extra money for hardware that
explicitly mentioned Linux.  The Linux mascot has given me the comfort
I will not be hassled looking for drivers.

> Or
> does it mean that I need to make some changes to some settings (if available)
> to access the drive through laptops and smart phone?  Or does it mean that
> Windows or MAC OS is necessary for initial set-up (That is manageable).  Or
> ...

I have stayed away from such products so no first hand experience.
The usual suspect would be the initial configuration which may require
IE with Active X!

>
> Any experience?  Any suggestion for useful drive for home use?  Any place
> (retailer, dealer) where I can buy the same?
>

See above.   I am using FreeNAS and I like it a lot.   You can
experiment with FreeNAS in a virtual machine - install it on one 1GB
disk image with a 25GB disk image for storage.   When you are familiar
with the Web UI, deploy it on a bare metal hardware.   Any old PC with
about 2GB RAM should be enough for your home use.

-- Arun Khan