this is an idea i have been wanting to do for while now. had lots of trouble trying to find info on how to do it. google searching just turns up lots of companies trying to sell you a 1u rack already built. searching on here turns up people that start the project but then stop it because it gets over thier head or budget. i am going to make myself do this. i have always wanted to anyway but since i am trying to get a network administration degree in college it would be beneficial to me in the future.

i am planning on doing a raid 5 array with 4 disks (might be overkill, might try raid 1 but i think raid 5 is cooler). computer will be an older one. havent bought one yet so not sure of the mhz or ram i will have to deal with. will probably try to do the raid in hardware with a 3Ware Escalade 7500-4 or 7506-4. they go for under $130 on ebay and work good with linux. i could do a software raid 5 but from what i have read it is just a pain in the ass to get it working right. what do yall think?

so i will have 4 disks in the raid, now for the os. this is where i start to get lost. i will probably use slackware but i have heard that there are some good simple linux based os's that are just set up for NAS. and thats about where i am stuck

my goal is to have the server showing on my windows computer just like a hard drive so i can just drag files onto it. i would also put all my p2p shares on it and direct the program to them. is that how it can work?

also i know there is a way to make an account on windows so that it stores all your user info on the network drive instead of the computer (is it called roaming?) i would also like to set it up for that. or do you have to have some kind of windows server for that?

well anyway, help? any good faqs out there or anything?

i have a setup close to this. but i have a 3 and a 2 disk raid.
im running Fedoracore 5 with samba, and i also have a slackware 9.1 server with the same config.

If your a newbie I would recomend Fedoracore5 for your os. It has an easy to use installer. and samba is not very difficult to config.

If you don't know what samba is go here to readup on it.

If you wish i could make up a howto to help get what you want faster... It's accully preaty simple to configure a samba server... I don't know why more people here don't run one.
Is there anyone here that runs a samba server?

Some people think that samba is just for hanldling Windows User logins, roaming profiles, and so on. But samba can act as a file server as well. You just creat a simple share and set properties on it.

- yes these are roaming profiles... If you have a windows NT (2000,xp,and so on; easyist to config.)
you can have extra NETWORK DIRVES load at user login. you have computers on a domain, with a samba PDC, and users login to the server with there username and this loads up a profiles, HOME DIRECTORY, but, you can also make more shares that load at windows login as well.

For example:
in my computer you would have...
c: system drive
D: cd drive
H: home directry(on server)
I: Share1(on server)
and so on...


Again if you need some help i would be more than happy to make up a HOWTO.

hey thanks for all the info. looks easier then i thought. now i am just waiting on funds

NOTE: Probly should have mentioned this earlyer... although you might already know...
Samba comes with slackware and Fedoracore... most linux distros comewith it in a package you just have to be sure to select the package at install...

I just want to add that creating a storage server is not hard. I am using Ubuntu (RAID 1) with Samba. People at my work are able to map the drive and drag-n-drop files in their Windows XP. They don't even know I'm using Linux!

My specs:
Pentium 3 667 Mhz
384MB RAM
2 x 160GB IDE Seagate hard drive (RAID 1)
Ubuntu 6.06.1 (alternate install CD)

You can definitely do it on a tight budget. As mentioned, most Linux distros come with SAMBA, or make it very easy to install. Setting up the SAMBA configuration file is standard so it will be independent of which distro you use.

Good luck!

ya thats right you can individuly map harddrives using windows/other linux boxs, whatever, or you can have a domain both work equaly well for this... but if you do want roaming profiles you have to have domain logins...

if you don't tell anyone they probly would not know you had a linux server controlling all your pcs...