NAS enclosure suggestions
 

I'm quickly running out of storage on my MythTV server, and the box has no more room for drives. So, I'm looking for an inexpensive (yeah I know) NAS enclosure that will allow me to add up to 4 JBOD drives, up to 5TB each, as I need them, and connect preferably via gigabit ethernet or eSata if necessary. I'm aware of the potential for data loss in large JBOD configurations and am willing to accept the risk.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what will work? Are any of the older low priced boxes good candidates; i.e. they're using Linux as their OS?

I think it is hard to beat some of the good soho nas boxes out there. Many 2x drive can attach a number of usbs but if you need dedicated 4 drive then you need to step up in price A LOT. The prices of 6 and 8 Tb drives should keep you in video for a while I'd think.

Almost all the soho nas are using some version of linux but they are not always easy to get into fully. Might look at a WD ex2. They are supposed to put in a silicondust hdhomerun tuner app if you have that.

The qnas and synology have a lot of apps and features too.

Guess you could build a simple atom based box maybe to handle this. I forget the name of one of the boxes someone here is testing. Ohondo? something like that. An ARM based board.

Hi Jefro. Since posting that, I've found an Intel SS4000E that should fill the bill. It looks like it originally had some form of Linux, and there's a post out there where someone installed some version of Debian on it. So while I was writing this, I went ahead and ordered it. Hopefully it will fill the bill.

Thanks for the update.

You should find inexpensive used HP Microservers. I bought mine (a 54L) new for the equivalent of 120$, including a 500GB disk inside; older used models can be had for about 40$ around here. I use it for backups and my home videos, four large disks configured as Raid-5, and the OS sits on an old 20GB 2.5 inch disk drive that I connect via a cheap USB enclosure.

Solid build, rather pretty (eye of the beholder, I know), never gets hot, not entirely silent but inoffensive noise (huge fan). You can install MythTV server on it directly and free your old MythTV box for other things.

Well, after getting this SS4000E and going through a lot of effort, it looks like the iop32 has been dropped after squeeze, but I can't even manage to get squeeze installed. It seems like the parts of squeeze with iop32 have been removed from all the mirrors. At least I can't get the installer to download anything. It fails trying to download bootstrap-base.

It turns out that debian squeeze for this processor has been archived. And debian support for this NAS box was dropped after squeeze. So, if anyone else is trying to find the mirror to install squeeze on an SS4000E, you have to do two things. First, see the link below and download initrd.gz and zImage. Use those instead of the ones you may have found elsewhere on the net. Second, during installation, you have to manually set the mirror to archive.debian.org. After that, it's a piece of cake.

archive.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-armel/current/images/iop32x/netboot/ss4000e/

We appreciate the info.