Build Advice NAS... How, what, which...stumped!

Hi everyone

I could really do with a bit of advice as I'm in a bit of a muddle!

I have 5 PCs that all handle all sorts of files and are all fitted with 1TB HDDs. Trouble is as they fill up I forget what is on which (I'm a bit disorganised), then things get difficult...usual data management issues.

I have struck upon the idea of using a NAS and once the files that I am working on have been finished with they can be archived onto the NAS and accessed when and if they are needed.

I have been looking into it tonight and am more confused than when I started.

Current hardware:
Currently I have:
4 PCs running XP Pro 32 bit
1 PC running Vista 64 Ultimate

Specs I need:
I realise that XP can't see a drive bigger than 2TB, and I need 4TB of storage so I was thinking of having 8 1TB HDDs and putting them into 4 drives of raid 1...is that possible with a NAS or does it have to be seen as one drive?


Buy a box or build a box?

I initially thought about buying a box that you just stick your drives in...not so easy as I am looking at 8 1TB drives in raid 1.

So from what I have been reading it seems that I could build a box and stick the drives in...I've never built anything like that before so it's new territory for me...

Am I basically building a standard PC? (something I have done many times and am familiar with)

What software would I be using on it to run the NAS? I don't think I need Windows Home Server as I don't want to do daily backups with it, I would be backing up manually.

Is it possible to setup a NAS with 8 1TB drives, with 4x2 sets of drives mirrored?


I'm sure other questions will come to me as I (hopefully) read some replies!

I look forward to reading any comments, and thanks for posting!

 

If you are going to build, I suggest getting and old PC, something like and old athlon or P3, and installing something like freeNas, openfiler or clarkconnect. All can be run headless and administrated through a web page from any PC on your lan. The only issue with this is sata compatibility and having enough ports.

I just changed my home server to some different hardware and installed clarkconnect, I had been using freeNas on my old server, and while there was nothing wrong with it I just fancied a change.

As for xp being able to see 2tb, I know what was the case for SP2, no idea if its changed for SP3 though. That could help out slightly. If you set up different shares on your file server/nas and make sure no single one is over 2tb then that might help you out.

As far as I know, all 3 of the OS's I mentioned support raid.

As for premade nas boxes, I have only seen them with 4 (maybe 6) hard drive slots. So maybe 2 would be the way for you to go.

 

A meaty power supply would be required to spin all those drives up at startup.

If you could find an old cooler master stacker then they should be enough room to mount all those drives, plus more if you get creative.