admin at lctn.org wrote: > I am looking at putting together a homemade NAS unit, with around > 1.5 to 2 Tb of hard drive space. Is there a recommended software and > hardware configuration that others are using to do the same? 2U Enclosure or Tower (depends upon where you're going to put it) 6 - 500 Gig Western Digital RAID Edition SATA Drives 6 - Hot-swap HD Sleds AMD64 of some kind, at least 512 MiB RAM (1-2 Gig if you've got the cash). A mobo with SATA controller (don't worry about whether it has RAID or not). Proabably a SATA DVD burner (to create backups of discrete directories). Now, where you can save money is by bypassing any sort of hardware RAID and use Linux's software raid. Debian Etch Kernel with software RAID 5 enabled and LVM2 (default for Etch) 5 drives used in RAID 5 array with 1 hot-swap OpenSSH, Samba, rsync, and NFS If you also want backups, you could thrown in at least 2 or more drives that are used as off-line backup devices. If you're selective about what data needs to be backed-up, you can get away with fewer drives. Mount the backup logical volume at "/backup" and use something like backup2l or a home-cooked backup solution that tarballs and compresses your data, then unmount. Burn data to DVD's that is in small enough chunks and doesn't change often for your "permanent" backup, or invest in tapes. -- Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/ assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */