going smaller - using atom n270 1Gb RAM + Windows 7 as "NAS" with Drivepool

[rimmon1971]

Hi all.

I've got (out of a drawer, covered by dust) an Acer Aspire One A110 netbook (the one with terrible SSD performance, BTW).

I wonder if I can hook it to Ethernet cable and two USB drives, load Drivepool on it (RAID1) and use it as a poor man's NAS (via Windows 7 mediacenter - homegroup functionality).

Anyone dared something like this in the past?

I'd like to try because of the very low power consumption of this "thing"....

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Absolutely.  I wouldn't recommend it for a number of reasons.  Namely, the low end hardware may cause performance issues with accessing or streaming content.  Additionally, I wouldn't recommend using USB for any long term connection of drives, as it can cause issues (USB specs allow for periodic sudden disconnects of the drive, and that may happen... and over time, it can corrupt data, if it's being written when a disconnect occurs).

 

And yes, there are definitely others that have done this or similar (using net-boxes and the like).

[rimmon1971]

Thanks Christopher.

I've just bought an i3-550 4Gb RAM 500Gb HD HP Pro 8100 SFF machine, that will be connected to the pair of (externally powered) Drivepool-managed USB drives.

The machine will sit there "sleeping" for the majority of time, being awaken only for (a few of) scheduled recordings, personal video/picture import or for our viewing pleasure, so I'm quite confident that "disconnect incidents" will be rare. Am I wrong? Slightly wrong or terribly wrong?  

 

I'll report on the building of my "nas-of-all-trades", however

Thanks again 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, if it's offline most of the time, ... well, then it depends on how the drives are powered.  But that should be better.

 

I'd still recommend eSATA over USB though.