(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); I'm looking at building (from a unused PC) or buying a cheap NAS for home use.



- Use hard drives I have around the house. Some use SATA and some I don't know what the connections are.
- Access it from home over wireless AND from anywhere in the world & from different computers.
- Download/upload torrents remotely
- Store my files. ie Photography, films, music ect..


If you could give me anything where I could build such a thing OR something I could buy for up to £100ish

**Sorry for the long post, but I believe it'll help more.

Instead of buying something, I am going to tell you how to build one.

First thing though, you may want to check out You must login or register to view this content.. Instructions for here are simple: Burn the .iso file you download onto a CD or DVD; in Windows 7, just right-click the file and select Burn disc image.

I have one question though, do you know what motherboard you have and how many SATA connections you have? Since you stated that you have some, it is recommended you have four or more because you want to make sure that the motherboard has room to support all of the drives you want to use for storage.

*When FreeNAS is installed, it takes over the entire drive you install it on. (Be warned) Also, To keep all of the storage drives available, I would grab a 2GB USB key, to host the the operating system.

Since installing FreeNas does take a little time, I will dedicate a section to installing.



Insert the DVD and USB key into the computer you’re setting up as your NAS. Before you start the machine up, be sure that the ethernet cable is plugged into the motherboard. You’ll also want to have another computer that’s connected to your network up and running, as you’ll be using it to connect to and configure the NAS.

Start up the PC and enter the BIOS. (If you do not know how, just search it on google, no need to waste time there)

Once you’re in the BIOS, set the machine to boot from the optical drive. The steps will once again vary based on your motherboard model, but you should see a section that lists a Boot Priority order. Once you've set that, press F10 to save and exit; the machine will restart, query your optical drive, and then start loading FreeNAS from your CD.

You’ll know that FreeNAS is running when you see a plain blue screen with a list of options. You want to install FreeNAS onto your USB key, so select the very first option. FreeNAS will list arcane drive model numbers, so looking for the capacity of the USB key (in your case if you get the 2GB) should be the easiest approach. Follow the prompts; FreeNAS will warn you that it will delete everything off of the USB key. Click through that message, then wait till the progress bar gets to 100%.

FreeNAS will prompt you for a username and password. The default user name is “admin,” and the default password is “freenas.” You can change the default to whatever you’d like in the FreeNAS options.

I will end this part here. If you need more help, feel free to PM me.

To add to this..do you really want to store all the data on drives that could die at any given time? would be better of buying drives of same size and speed, and a few for redundancy if/when they fail.

+1 to FreeNAS as well, great OS

It really is up to you how you want to do it. I personally would recommend the previously mentioned FreeNAS on the old computer. Although if you are unwilling to go through the setup for that I would suggest a NAS from Qnap or Synology. At that price you're really only able to look at 1 bay boxes which isn't ideal but they have nice software to work with, kind of an app system really.

If you have any plans of expanding at a later time, the DIY NAS is the way to go

As far as drives go, the drives with the non-SATA connectors are most likely old/slow IDE drives. I wouldn't recommend using them at all. Not sure what you have as far as SATA drives go but if you have any doubts I would suggest picking up a pair of You must login or register to view this content. for about 50 each.

There are several ways to setup the drives, depending on how much storage you need/ how safe you need your files to be. I'm not sure how many drives you will have or the size of each.

I installed Freenas before you posted this lol.

It's okay, got it all running and set up but IF I turn it off and try to log in with the GUI it doesn't let me :S
Also, for some reason I can't automatically boot from my USB? (I know my BOIS can do it though).


+Rep to everyone who has posted in this thread.

For the USB part, in the BIOS, I believe there is an option to have a drive boot automatically. Browse through the "Boot" settings to see if there is a option.

Also, I believe it must be on at all times if not most.

I'll have another look tonight if I get time.

Yeah I think once I get another hard drive in there plus get some extra's like torrent downloading I'll keep it on all if not most of the time.

Do you have a UEFI motherboard? If so, you may need to disable "Safe boot" in the Boot settings. If not, follow what Oklahoma said.

I'll have a look tonight

How many hard drives do you actually have now?