How to Build a NAS Device With an Old PC and FreeNAS A Spare PC and FreeNAS = NAS for Your Network Joseph Moran
If you've ever considered purchasing a NAS (short for network-attached storage) device to add storage to your home or small office network, you may have balked due to the relatively high prices they can command. If you don't have hundreds of dollars to spare on a commercial NAS product, but you do have an old or unused PC lying around, you might consider pressing it into service as a NAS device.
If you have the time and are comfortable with basic network technology, one way to convert that spare PC into a NAS server is with a free utility called FreeNAS. Like many commercial NAS products, FreeNAS is built atop FreeBSD (a compact Unix-based operating system).
FreeNAS offers pretty much all the features common in a ready-made NAS device and then some, but best of all, it can run on pretty modest hardware — the main requirements are a system with a minimum of 96 MB of RAM, a bootable CD/DVD drive, and, of course, at least one hard drive (external USB drives are also supported).
There are a few versions of FreeNAS available, but here we'll focus on the basic setup of the LiveCD version. The nice thing about this version is that you don't need to permanently install it onto your system. Instead, you can boot FreeNAS directly off of a CD or DVD — it will run from a RAM drive (using only around 32 MB of memory) and can save its configuration data to either a USB Flash drive or even an old-school floppy disk.
To get FreeNAS, go here and download the most recent version listed under FreeNAS ISO (as of this writing, it was version 0.686b2, dated 11-18-2007). After you've downloaded the approximately 44 MB file, you'll need to create a bootable CD from the ISO image file (as opposed to simply burning the file to a disc).
Windows built-in burning tools won't do this for you, but pretty much any commercial burning software such as Nero Burning ROM or Roxio Easy Media Creator will. (If you need it, ISO Recorder is a free utility that works with XP and Vista — you'll find it here.
Before loading FreeNAS, make sure your system is set to boot directly from its CD or DVD drive. You can do that from the system BIOS, which you can access by pressing a key when prompted — usually F2 or Del — right after powering up the system.
The exact menu options will vary slightly by system or BIOS vendor, but you're looking for settings that refer to boot order; when you find them, make sure that CD/DVD or optical drive is listed as the first boot device. (If you have any external drives you want to use with your FreeNAS system, you can either connect them now or wait until later.)
Installation and Network Configuration
After you've configured the system's boot order, insert a blank formatted floppy disk (or connect a Flash drive), insert the FreeNAS CD, and then reboot your system. FreeNAS will start loading and eventually display a boot menu on a 5-second timer. Leave the default option selected, and within a few seconds a splash page will appear. After a few more moments there will be high-pitched beep, which means FreeNAS is loaded and ready to configure.
After you hear that beep, press ESC to gain access to the Console setup menu. Select option 2, Set LAN IP address, and you'll be prompted about using DHCP for IPv4 and then AutoConfiguration for IPv6.
Choose Y in both cases, and after a moment FreeNAS will display the addresses that have been assigned for each. The IPv6 address isn't really important, unless you're running IPv6, but take note of the address listed for IPv4 — this is the address you'll use to access and configure your FreeNAS system.
You can test FreeNAS's network connectivity by returning to the setup menu and then selecting option 5, Ping host. Enter the address of your router, and if you get responses, you'll know your NAS system's link is up. If so, point your browser to the FreeNAS system's IP address, enter admin as the username and freenas as the password, and you'll be granted access to the configuration screen.
